
Aesthetics
A Very Short Introduction
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Narrated by:
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Alex Wyndham
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By:
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Bence Nanay
About this listen
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that explores the nature of art, beauty, and taste. It doesn't just consider traditional artistic experiences such as artworks in a museum or an opera performance, but also everyday experiences such as autumn leaves in the park or even just the light of the setting sun falling on the kitchen table. It is also about your experience when you choose the shirt you're going to wear today or when you wonder whether you should put more pepper in the soup. Aesthetics is everywhere. It is one of the most important aspects of our life.
In this Very Short Introduction audiobook, Bence Nanay introduces the field of aesthetics, considering both Western and non-Western aesthetic traditions and exploring why it is sometimes misunderstood or considered to be too elitist - by artists, musicians, and even philosophers. As Nanay shows, so-called "high art" has no more claims on aesthetics than sitcoms, tattoos, or punk rock. In fact, the scope of aesthetics extends far wider than that of art, high or low, including much of what we care about in life. It is not the job of aesthetics to tell you which artworks are good and which ones are bad. It is not the job of aesthetics to tell you what experiences are worth having. If an experience is worth having for you, it thereby becomes the subject of aesthetics. This realization is important because thinking about aesthetics in this inclusive way opens up new ways of understanding old questions about the social aspect of our aesthetic engagements and the importance of aesthetic values for our own self.
©2019 Bence Nanay (P)2020 TantorPeople who viewed this also viewed...
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-
The Aesthetic Brain
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- By: Anjan Chatterjee
- Narrated by: Bernard Setaro Clark
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Aesthetic Brain takes the listener on a wide-ranging journey through the world of beauty, pleasure, and art. Chatterjee uses neuroscience to probe how an aesthetic sense is etched in our minds and evolutionary psychology to explain why aesthetic concerns feature centrally in our lives. Along the way, Chatterjee addresses fundamental questions: What is beauty? Is beauty universal? How is beauty related to pleasure? What is art? Should art be beautiful? Do we have an instinct for art?
-
-
Disappointing
- By Clara on 12-22-15
By: Anjan Chatterjee
-
Aesthetic Intelligence
- How to Boost It and Use It in Business and Beyond
- By: Pauline Brown
- Narrated by: Vivienne Leheny
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this groundbreaking audiobook, Pauline Brown, a former leader of the world’s top luxury goods company and a pioneer in identifying the role of aesthetics in business, shows executives, entrepreneurs, and other professionals how to harness the power of the senses to create products, services, and experiences that stand out, resonate with their customers, and create long-term value for their businesses. The power is rooted in Aesthetic Intelligence - or "the other AI", as Brown refers to it.
-
-
Good but too surface level.
- By gil nevo on 04-28-20
By: Pauline Brown
-
The Principles of Aesthetics
- By: Dewitt H. Parker, Israel Bouseman
- Narrated by: Terry Rose, Jason Leikam
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Principles of Aesthetics can be considered the definitive work on aesthetics, the philosophy of art, beauty, and taste. It is the result of a series of lectures given by Dewitt H. Parker, and gives a comprehensive review of a truly extensive subject. Every person has some sense of the beautiful and the ugly. We all admire certain images, combinations of sound, taste, smell, or feeling. But where does this enjoyment come from?
-
-
The Why of Beauty Explored!
- By Philosopher King on 02-13-17
By: Dewitt H. Parker, and others
-
Critical Theory (Second Edition)
- A Very Short Introduction
- By: Stephen Eric Bronner
- Narrated by: Justin Price
- Length: 4 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Critical theory emerged in the 1920s from the work of the Frankfurt School, the circle of German-Jewish academics who sought to diagnose—and, if at all possible, cure—the ills of society, particularly fascism and capitalism. In this book, Stephen Eric Bronner provides sketches of leading representatives of the critical tradition (such as George Lukács and Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse and Jurgen Habermas) as well as many of its seminal texts and empirical investigations.
-
-
A Superfluously Grandiloquent Exegesis of an Ostentatiously Verbose Tome
- By Anonymous User on 03-01-25
-
Existentialism
- A Very Short Introduction
- By: Thomas Flynn
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 4 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the leading philosophical movements of the 20th century, existentialism has had more impact on literature and the arts than any other school of thought. Focusing on the leading figures of existentialism, including Sartre, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, and Camus, Thomas Flynn offers a concise account of existentialism, explaining the key themes of individuality, free will, and personal responsibility, which marked the movement as a way of life, not just a way of thinking.
-
-
NOT an Intro to.
- By RAYMOND BARRY on 01-02-25
By: Thomas Flynn
What listeners say about Aesthetics
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-31-23
Great Introduction to Aesthetics
I liked the emphasis on inclusion of all types of aesthetic philosophy, and found it did a good job at inspiring me to explore this field further.
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- Anonymous User
- 07-15-24
great intro into aesthetics
i have learned some good distinction of what art is and what athestics is, that's by itself is a good value on its own.
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- CA
- 03-15-24
Postmodernist garbage
This is from a strict doctrinaire postmodern orthodox point of view, a very parochial, cynical and nonsensical approach to philosophy. Noobs don’t get duped. Caveat emptor.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Mr Timothy Webber
- 10-05-21
Critique of 'Western' Aesthetics - A Virtue Signal
Me: hmm this introduction is taking a while...
Narrator (Chapter 1): ...neither will I focus on uniquely ‘Western’ ideas that blatantly fail to resonate with the rest of the world, regardless of the prestige of the dead white males who came up with them.
Me: *eye roll* ok great, good for you... can you talk about aesthetics now?
Narrator (Chapter 2): ...feminist film theory ...extremely influential... highly sexualized 'male gaze'...
Me: ffs
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Summary: this book is obsessed with contrasting 'Western' with 'non-Western' and subsequently fails to do what it should: engage or excite the reader about Aesthetics.
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9 people found this helpful