Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics and the Reconstruction of Art

by Paul Mattick Jr. (Editor)

This collection of essays explores the rise of aesthetics as a response to, and as a part of, the reshaping of the arts in modern society. The theories of art developed under the name of 'aesthetics' in the eighteenth century have traditionally been understood as contributions to a field of study in existence since the time of Plato. If art is a practice to be found in all human societies, then the philosophy of art is the search for universal features of that practice, which can be stated in definitions of art and beauty. However, art as we know it - the system of 'fine arts' - is largely peculiar to modern society. Aesthetics, far from being a perennial discipline, emerged in an effort both to understand and to shape this new social practice. These essays share the conviction that aesthetic ideas can be fully understood when seen not only in relation to intellectual and social contexts, but as themselves constructed in history.

268 pages, Paperback

First published May 28, 1993

About the author

Paul Mattick Jr. (born 1944) is a Marxist theorist and philosopher.

He is the son of council communist theoreticians Paul Mattick Sr. (1904-1981) (author Paul Mattick) and Ilse Mattick (1919-2009).

Mattick obtained his PhD from Harvard in 1981, and is currently chair of the Department of Philosophy at Adelphi University in New York. He was previously the editor of the International Journal of Political Economy, and is the author of several books on philosophy of language, aesthetics, and the critique of political economy.