A Theory of Art [Paperback]

What, if anything, has art to do with the rest of our lives, and in particular with those ethical and political issues that matter to us most? Will art created today be likely to play a role in our lives as profound as that of the best art of the past?

A Theory of Artshifts the focus of aesthetics from the traditional debate of what is art? to the engaging question of what is art for? Skillfully describing the social and historical situation of art today, author Karol Berger argues that music exemplifies the current condition of art in a radical, acute, and revealing fashion. He also uniquely combines aesthetics with poetics and hermeneutics. Offering a careful synthesis of a wide breadth of scholarship from art history, musicology, literary studies, political philosophy, ethics, and metaphysics, and written in a clear, accessible style, this book will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in the arts.

Prologue. The Function and value of art
Part I.Aesthetics: the end of artworks
1. Aesthetics I. The nature of art
2. Aesthetics II. The uses of art
3. Aesthetics III. The genealogy of modern European art music
Part II.Poetics and hermeneutics: the contents and interpretation of artworks
4. Poetics I.Diegesisandmimesis: the poetic modes and the matter of artistic presentation
5. Poetics II. Narrative and lyric: the poetic forms and the object of artistic presentation
6. Hermenetics. Interpretation and its validity
Epilogue. The power of taste
Notes

Berger's goal in this book is to explain how art functions, and what is its purpose. By doing so, he hopes to provide a framework in which political debates (as well as philosophical ones) about the meaning and importance of art can become more fruitful....The book reveals an author of formidable intellectual power and erudition. --he Trenton Times

Berger provides his 21st-century readers with anl3°