The Radical Aesthetic

Rating:
Summary: Think about art, but feel that thought
Review: Even though I do not agree with everything Armstrong says, this is one of the most important and succesful attempts to reflect philosophically about emotions in art (my own research field) from a contemporary theory perpective (critical theory, poststructuralism, feminism).

She may not be the first one to make the oppositions between emotions and cognition as well as subject and object collapse, but because she is so conscious of the dialectical implications, this is a pure pleasure to read. She is a brilliant writer, personal and objective at the same time, rethorically following the theoretical idea.

Her ultimate goal is to save the field of the aesthetics in a historical situation where the anti-aesthetic (the reduction of art to something else) is the dominating paradigm. She does that by advancing theory rather than by restoring an old view on art, and I love her for it!