Omschrijving
Rosenkranz’s prose, given new life in this fine translation, sparkles with enlivening incident and wry asides … Rosenkranz’s essay is a text to linger over.
Rosenkranz’s prose, given new life in this fine translation, sparkles with enlivening incident and wry asides … Rosenkranz’s essay is a text to linger over.
The great value of the concept of ugliness is dialectical. The contrast with the beautiful can be a distinct way of illuminating that notion, and with it the ideal of art as such. Karl Rosenkranz’s Aesthetics of Ugliness, here carefully edited, lucidly introduced, and elegantly translated by Andrei Pop and Mechtild Widrich, shows us in detail how one might understand this contrast, illuminating fundamental issues in aesthetics and in the self-understanding of modernity along the way – a very valuable contribution to any discussion.
Karl Rosenkranz (1805 –1879) was a German philosopher. He followed Kant and Herbart as professor of philosophy in Königsberg; in 1848-49 he took part in the reform government in Berlin. Andrei Pop is Associate Professor in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Mechtild Widrich is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA.