The Ideology of the Aesthetic by Terry Eagleton

"The Ideology of the Aesthetic" aims at presenting a history and critique of the concept of the aesthetic throughout modern Western thought. As such, this is a critical survey of modern Western philosophy, focusing on the complex relations between aesthetics, ethics and politics. Eagleton provides an introduction to these concerns, as characterized in the work of Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Lukacs, Adorno, Habermas and others.

Reviews:

From Library Journal
Although not a history of aesthetics, Eagleton's new book traces the relationship between aesthetics and political interests from the Enlightenment through post-modernism, aiming at a Marxist philosophy of the body. While starting with Shaftesbury, Hume, and Burke, he is primarily concerned with the contribution of the German philosophical tradition. He is especially interested in the Hegelians from Hegel and Marx to Benjamin, Adorno, and Habermas, and the anti-Hegelians from Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche to Heidegger and Foucault. As with his many earlier books on literary theory and Marxist aesthetics (e.g., Literary Theory , LJ 8/83), Eagleton's new volume is marked both by its clarity and its commitment. –T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong State Coll., Savannah, Ga.

"That contemporary theory would eventually turn back to consider its origins in the contradictions of philosophical aesthetics was predictable; but nothing could have prepared us for Eagleton's extraordinary confrontation with the entire modern history of this discourse, in a book which will be indispensable for years to come." – F. R. Jameson, Duke University