Told in rhyming verse, a stone is considered from a variety of environmental and emotional perspectives, as it sits where it is, surrounded by grass, dirt, and water, an unchanging certainty in the world.

German philosopher and significant 18th century late Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant wrote "Critique of Judgment" in 1790 to solidify his ideas on aesthetics. Divided into two sections, one on aesthetic judgment and the other on teleological judgment, "Critique" proceeds to analyze the human experience of the beautiful and the sublime. From the effect of art and nature to the role of imagination, from objectivity of taste to the limits of representation,...

"From Chloé Cooper Jones--Pulitzer Prize finalist, philosophy professor, Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant recipient--a groundbreaking memoir about disability, motherhood, and a journey to far-flung places in search of a new way of seeing and being seen. "I am in a bar in Brooklyn, listening to two men, my friends, discuss whether my life is worth living." So begins Chloé Cooper Jones's bold, revealing account of moving through the world in a body...

Written sometime in the 4th Century BC, Aristotle's "Rhetoric" is the definitive treatise on the art of persuasive public speaking. The art of oratorical persuasion was an essential skill for the successful politician during the days of ancient Greece and Aristotle's "Rhetoric" is considered one of the greatest works from antiquity on the subject. Like many of the surviving works attributable to Aristotle, "Rhetoric" was not intended for public dissemination,...

First published in 1757, the treatise "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful", by the Irish philosopher Edmund Burke, provides a distinct transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. Burke's treatise was the first fully realized exposition that separated the definition of the sublime from the beautiful. His work received much attention from other philosophers upon its publication and influenced thinkers...

A seminal work of philosophy and an invaluable resource for students of aesthetics, this volume deeply influenced a generation of art historians. Author Benedetto Croce's theory that art is expression-his signature contribution to aesthetics-allowed art historians to accept many artifacts previously deemed unworthy of study as valuable contributions to the history of art.

German philosopher and influential 18th century late Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant wrote "Critique of Judgment" in 1790 to solidify his ideas on aesthetics. Often referred to as the "third critique", it follows Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," published in 1781, and "Critique of Practical Reason", published in 1788 and completes his "Critical" project. Divided into two sections, one on aesthetic judgment and the other on teleological judgment,...

Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, and profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, and chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways. Yet it is never viewed with indifference. In this Very Short Introduction, the renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explores the concept of beauty, asking what makes an object-either in art, in nature, or the human form-beautiful, and examining how we can compare differing judgments of...

"A Pulitzer Prize-winning dance critic teaches us to appreciate--and enact--grace in every dimension, from the physical to the emotional, "--Amazon.com.

Eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove, an African-American girl in an America whose love for blonde, blue-eyed children can devastate all others, prays for her eyes to turn blue, so that she will be beautiful, people will notice her, and her world will be different. The story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove, the tragic heroine of Toni Morrison's haunting first novel, grew out of her memory of a girlhood friend who wanted blue eyes. Shunned by the town's...