Table of Contents

Acknowledgments / Preface / Introduction /1. Ancients & Moderns / A Second Renaissance / Promoting Modernism / Defending Antiquity / Early Modernism / 2. The Fine Arts / Five Major Arts / National Traditions Systems of the Arts / Philosophical Systems / 3. The Critique of Taste / Varieties of Criticism / Physiology & Psychology / Society & History / Genius & Taste, Critique & Science / 4. Aesthetics / A New Science / Changing the Subject / The Philosophy of Art / The Embarrassed Etc. / 5. Early Modern Aesthetics Now /Artistic Modernism / The Latest Laocooen / Historicism & Naturalism / Aesthetics Now / Bibliography / Index

About the Author

J. Colin McQuillan is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at St Mary's Unversity. He is the co-editor, with Joseph Tanke, of the Bloomsbury Anthology of Aesthetics (2012).

Reviews

This fine book narrates a story of a time before, and after, "aesthetics" became a subdiscipline of philosophy. Colin McQuillan examines "early modern aesthetics" in an engaging manner, informed by diverse philosophical traditions. His account of the various contexts surrounding the generation of proto-aesthetic and aesthetic claims is highly informative. An insightful, lucid, well-documented book. -- Robert R. Clewis, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Gwynedd Mercy University
There is a myth of the origin of modern aesthetics that overemphasizes the British tradition and aesthetics as an independent discipline. Professor J. Colin MacQuillan's book Early Modern Aesthetics disenchants readers from the myth and convinces them with a more authentic account of the origin of modern aesthetics. -- Peng Feng, Professor of Aesthetics at Peking University