DIOTIMA'S CHILDREN

Diotima's Children is a re-examination of the rationalist tradition of aesthetics which prevailed in Germany in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century. It is partly an historical survey of the central figures and themes of this tradition But it is also a phil osophical defense of some of its leading ideas, viz., that beauty plays an integral role in life, that aesthetic pleasure is the per ception of perfection, that aesthetic rules are inevitable and valuable. It shows that the criticisms of Kant and Nietzsche of this tradition...[Read more]