Art and Its Significance: An Anthology of Aesthetic Theory

Excellent selection of texts. I've now read so much about art that I cannot form coherent opinions about the subject without immediately refuting my own thoughts. Fantastic.You've ruined me, thanks!

Purchased as a required textbook, and was extremely helpful in my Philosophy of Art class. Recommended for anyone interested in art and the philosophy of art. It covers the major philosophers and their interesting views of what art actually is and what it does.

This is a tremendous book with a great variety of extracts from famous writers, I like the separate sections for art criticism and the art world.

was under the impression i was buying a new unused book

I teach university level aesthetics, and I find myself switching between this text and Hofstadter's "Philosophies of Art and Beauty." Neither does everything I'd like, but they represent the best of the rest.I like the latter (Hofstadter) because of the depth of its selections and because it's not the least bit trendy (it boasts comprehensive selections from Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Ficino, Shaftesbury, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Croce, Dewey, and Heidegger--in other words, aside from Hume it includes the seminal texts from most historically essential figures up to 1930.) But Hofstadter's book has no contemporary theory at all after Heidegger (and it inexplicably lacks some important selections from Kant).Ross' anthology by contrast includes most of the really critical material from Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger (of which most other aesthetics anthologies, surprisingly do not), plus it has selections from Hume and Tolstoy and many contemporary figures of import like Bell, Collingwood, Dewey, Langer, Merleau-Ponty, Pepper, Hirsch, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Foucault, Bullough, Danto, Bakhtin, Freud, Jung, Benjamin, Adorno, Marcuse, Lyotard, Irigaray, and others (including some theoretically minded artists like Kandinsky and Mondrian). But the early historical selections are much less comprehensive than Hofstadter's, and Ross includes no medieval or Renaissance writers at all. In short, the Hofstadter has better depth and the Ross has better breadth.The third edition of "Art and Its Significance" is greatly improved over the second edition, mostly because it expanded the Kant section to include some sections from Kant's Third Critique that were puzzlingly absent from the earlier editions (though a few critical sections are still missing), and because it has enlarged the Derrida section to include more important writings. That has certainly helped address the depth weakness, and perhaps pushes it to the top of the list. But in aiming for breadth in an apparent attempt to please everyone, Ross has included some selections (mostly in the sections on feminist and multi-cultural theory) that aren't nearly as important, influential or finely argued as texts by figures he chose to leave out. To my mind, he would have done better to include some Bonaventure, Dante and Schopenhauer, for instance, and a little more material from Plato, Aristotle and Kant--who even now, are more widely read and more cogent than some of the additional writers Ross did include.In sum, if you want an anthology that comes close to covering all the essential writers on the subject (past and present) and doing it fairly well, "Art and Its Significance" is perhaps your best choice despite its nod to trendiness. And it's still one of the most reasonably priced philosophy of art anthologies available.