The Aesthetic Imperative: Writings on Art 1st Edition

Have you been assigned this book for a graduate philosophy seminar? Are you researching the meaning of art in the bourgeois aesthetic? Are you a fan of Sloterdijk's other big dense books?Then great! Buy it, the price is very reasonable for such an academic tome.If not, well, maybe this isn't for you. Really, it's not. Just like it wasn't really for me. I can read (and write) precise English on complex subjects, but I'm not versed enough on art and philosophy to follow the ideas here for more than a page or two. It is incredibly dense. It is not easy to follow. It does not flow. It is not for the everyman. And it has no pictures!

I have waited a long time since I first received this volume, hoping to convince myself that I understand Sloterdijk's thinking clearly enough to have a valid basis for reviewing him. I am no stranger to critical and philosophical writings about the arts and literature, and I know that often they can seem opaque or even purposely confounding. So I have read and re-read most of the essays in this collection, and several have surprised and fascinated me, while others seem to fall into that opaqueness that leaves me uncertain of my own understanding. His views challenge conventional ideas about the topics he explores, and some of these essays might seem (do seem, at least to me) to be about something other than art, though I suppose the "aesthetic imperative" is always somewhere on the ground of discourse. In assigning only three stars, I am more admitting my own limited understanding than dismissing Sloterdijk's thoughts. His work is impossible to summarize and very difficult to reduce to simple principles or statements. But the work is, at the very least, always challenging and stimulating.

From music to Monet, Peter Sloterdijk takes-on art in all its forms. He provides powerful insights and opinions in a masterful way and invites the reader to examine all of the arts from many different angles. This is a must read for any serious student of the arts.

Peter Sloterdijk’s The Aesthetic Imperative is highly provocative, deeply learned, and extremely wide ranging. He attempts to recover and redefine aesthetics from the vantage points of the history of philosophy and broadly defined cultural appreciation. The author trots out his philosophical forebears and redefines many of their words and concepts. This technique is effective when used in moderation, but becomes a kind of cryptography when applied to the extent that it is used in this volume. The repeated references to the masters, combined with redefinitions of their key terms, cheats the reader by suggesting that what is said has the same authority as the original. The repeated use of the word, “competence “ in the essay on design renders the word nearly meaningless, much as saying banana over and over renders the word into a sound without meaning.Sloterdijk admirably draws attention to the subject matter. His delivery is convoluted and assured; his erudition so vast that his choices of subject matter and the conclusions he draws gain a kind of gravitas. It is exhausting to decode the references to his philosophical forebears. We must therefore contemplate these matters for ourselves unless we simply reject him as over-educated, pompous and arrogant.In the end, this volume as impossible to pin down as to the subject of art itself. This is frustrating because when too many definitions are twisted and remade, logic and reason cannot follow. The supposedly philosophical becomes a work of art, one that is too arrogant, and too dialectical. I reject the method and the conclusions, but, and this a very big but, I am directed to contemplate art and culture anew, an altogether admirable result.

Increíble libro con muy buenos ensayos sobre arte y estética