New waves in metaethics

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Adam Gearey

"Law and Aesthetics draws on the work of poets as well as philosophers. Taking as its starting point Shelleys assertion that poets are unacknowledged legislators,the book suggests that there is a way of thinking that, as yet, has not been taken up by those who make use of literary aesthetics to understand law. The book tracks this aesthetic thinking through the failures of critical legal studies and stages an encounter with psychoanalysis, before suggesting that an aesthetics of law can be exhumed from Nietzsches work. The aesthetic is a call to the creative: fashion new law. A review of contemporary legal theory that makes use of aesthetic perspectives suggests that dissident and radical Nietzschean energies continue to animate legal thought. In the final chapter, an aesthetics of law is shown to make for an interruption of legal categories, and the generation of new legal relationships. The book concludes with a further meditation on Shelleys poetry, and a call to continue in the spirit of aesthetic reinvention."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

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Bruce Aune

Contemporary philosophy is marked by a setting aside or dissolution of the traditional problems of modern philosophy. Thus the problem of our knowledge of the external world is widely believed to have been disposed of or dissolved by Wittgenstein and others. In this book, Bruce Aune challenges this assumption. In the first half of Knowledge of the External World, Aune considers the history of the problem in the work of the great modern philosophers, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Kant, and Mill. Then turning to current debates, he argues that the problem has re-emerged and that an entirely new approach is needed. By examining the attempted dissolutions, Aune shows that the fundamental problem remains as a serious intellectual issue: one concerning the nature of permissible experimental or `inductive' inference. To resolve this issue, he undertakes a revision of empiricist epistemology and the development of the required theory of inference. Knowledge of the External World is an excellent historical systematic analysis of a central problem of philosophy and a fine introduction to the theory of knowledge. It will be essential reading for students of epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy -- Publisher's description.

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John Richardson

Here, Richardson navigates key areas of current thought - from music theory to film theory to cultural theory - to explore what it means that experience of music is now cinematic, spatial, and ultimately visual as much as it is auditory.

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Allen Carlson

"Allen Carlson shows how much of our aesthetic experience does not encompass art but nature, in our responses to sunsets, mountains, or more mundane surroundings, such as gardens or the views from our windows. He demonstrates that, unlike works of art, natural and ordinary human environments are neither self-contained aesthetic objects nor specifically designed for convenient aesthetic consumption. On the contrary, our environments are ever present constantly engaging our. He argues that knowledge of what it is we are appreciating is essential to having an appropriate aesthetic experience and that scientific understanding of nature can enhance our appreciation of it, rather than denigrate it." "Aesthetics and the Environment also shows how ethical and aesthetic values are closely connected, argues that aesthetic appreciation of natural and human environments has objective grounding, and explores the important links between ecology and the aesthetic experience of nature. This book will be for those involved in environmental studies and aesthetics and all who are interested in the controversial relationship between science and nature."--BOOK JACKET.