Why are the visual arts so important and what is it that makes their forms significant? Countering recent interpretations of meaning that understand visual artworks on the model of literary texts, Crowther formulates a theory of the visual arts based on what their creation achieves both cognitively and aesthetically. He develops a phenomenology that emphasizes how visual art gi...(展开全部)

斯洛文尼亚卢布尔雅那欧罗巴大学人文学院的哲学教授。他是爱尔兰皇家科学院院士，曾为牛津大学艺术史讲师，并为该校基督圣体学院成员。他在四所欧洲大学获得了正教授职位（其中包括德国不来梅雅格布大学和爱尔兰国立大学高威分校等），共出版了十七部涉及美学、二十世纪艺术与当代艺术领域的专著。克劳瑟教授最新出版的著作有Theory of the Art Object，以及两本有关后现代艺术的著作：Digital Art, Aesthetic Creation: The Birth of a Medium和Geneses of Postmodern Art: Technology as Iconology。

The work of Alois Riegl (1858-1905) has been highly influential in art history of the modern age. Riegl, the most important member of the so-called Vienna School, developed a refined technique of visual or formal analysis that departed from the iconological method, which emphasized decoding motifs through recourse to texts. Riegl also pioneered understanding of the changing rol...(展开全部)

Sociology of the Arts is a comprehensive overview of the sociology of art and an authoritative work of scholarship by a leading expert in the field. The book synthesizes the various theoretical models of art sociology, and provides empirical examples as well as stimulating exemplars of sociological work on the arts. Case studies of art works are from both ends of the cultural s...(展开全部)

For the fifth edition of his internationally renowned "The Arts of China", Michael Sullivan has thoroughly revised and expanded every chapter of this classic history of Chinese art from the Neolithic period to the present day. This new edition reflects the latest archaeological discoveries, pays greater attention to the art of calligraphy, provides more information on Chan (Zen...(展开全部)

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) is one of the most influential texts in the history of modern philosophy. In it, Hegel proposed an arresting and novel picture of the relation of mind to world and of people to each other. Like Kant before him, Hegel offered up a systematic account of the nature of knowledge, the influence of society and history on claims to knowledge, and...(展开全部)

Images have always stirred ambivalent reactions. Yet whether eliciting fascinated gazes or iconoclastic repulsion from their beholders, they have hardly ever been seen as true sources of knowledge. They were long viewed as mere appearances, placeholders for the things themselves or deceptive illusions. Today, the traditional critique of the spectacle has given way to an uncondi...(展开全部)

In this book, his major work, Alfred Schutz attempts to provide a sound philosophical basis for the sociological theories of Max Weber. Using a Husserlian phenomenology, Schutz provides a complete and original analysis of human action and its "intended meaning."

A lecture course that Martin Heidegger gave in 1927, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology continues and extends explorations begun in Being and Time. In this text, Heidegger provides the general outline of his thinking about the fundamental problems of philosophy, which he treats by means of phenomenology, and which he defines and explains as the basic problem of ontology.

From the late 1700s, an increasing number of British, American and continental European sailing ships brought back ship loads of exotic objects which found a ready market in America and Europe. The insatiable interest in the Orient resulted in a large range of painters depicting everyday life in China, as well as portraits of both Chinese and Westerners. Among other objects bro...(展开全部)