Not available to order

Publication date:

30 September 2016

Length of book:

360 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498506519

Phenomenology and the Arts develops the interplay between phenomenology as a historical movement and a descriptive method within Continental philosophy and the arts. Divided into five themes, the book explores first how the phenomenological method itself is a kind of artistic endeavor that mirrors what it approaches when it turns to describe paintings, dramas, literature, and music. From there, the book turns to an analysis and commentary on specific works of art within the visual arts, literature, music, and sculpture. Contributors analyze important historical figures in phenomenology—Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. But there is also a good deal of work on art itself—Warhol, Klee, jazz, and contemporary and renaissance artists and artworks.
Edited by Peter R. Costello and Licia Carlson, this book will be of interest to students in philosophy, the arts, and the humanities in general, and scholars of phenomenology will notice incredibly rich, groundbreaking research that helps to resituate canonical figures in phenomenology with respect to what their works can be used to describe.
The appropriate audience for this volume is wide. It will be both enjoyable and enlightening for professional and student philosophers, artists, writers, and poets. The progression from each piece to the next is both thoughtful and natural, thanks to the editorial work of Carlson and Costello. In sum, this book explores the relationships between artist and work, work and witness, and artist and witness in a way that is meaningful and interesting to anyone interested in either art (broadly construed) or philosophy. . . . I thoroughly recommend this book to all who are interested in phenomenology or art, as much can be learned from this volume on both accounts.