Early Modern Aesthetics

J. Colin McQuillan is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at St Mary's Unversity. He is the co-editor, with Joseph Tanke, of the Bloomsbury Anthology of Aesthetics (2012).

• Acknowledgments / Preface / Introduction /1. Ancients & Moderns / A Second Renaissance / Promoting Modernism / Defending Antiquity / Early Modernism / 2. The Fine Arts / Five Major Arts / National Traditions Systems of the Arts / Philosophical Systems / 3. The Critique of Taste / Varieties of Criticism / Physiology & Psychology / Society & History / Genius & Taste, Critique & Science / 4. Aesthetics / A New Science / Changing the Subject / The Philosophy of Art / The Embarrassed Etc. / 5. Early Modern Aesthetics Now /Artistic Modernism / The Latest Laocoön / Historicism & Naturalism / Aesthetics Now / Bibliography / Index

This fine book narrates a story of a time before, and after, “aesthetics” became a subdiscipline of philosophy. Colin McQuillan examines “early modern aesthetics” in an engaging manner, informed by diverse philosophical traditions. His account of the various contexts surrounding the generation of proto-aesthetic and aesthetic claims is highly informative. An insightful, lucid, well-documented book.