Aesthetics and Modernity from Schiller to the Frankfurt School

The essays in this book investigate the complex and often contradictory relationships between aesthetics and modernity from the late Enlightenment in the 1790s to the Frankfurt School in the 1960s and engage with the classic German tradition of socio-cultural and aesthetic theory that extends from Friedrich Schiller to Theodor W. Adorno. While contemporary discussions in aesthetics are often dominated by abstract philosophical approaches, this book embeds aesthetic theory in broader social and cultural contexts and considers a wide range of artistic practices in literature, drama, music and visual arts. Contributions include research on Schiller’s writings and his work in relation to moral sentimentalism, Romantic aesthetics, Friedrich Schlegel, Beethoven, Huizinga and Greenberg; philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Benjamin, Heidegger and Adorno; and thematic approaches to Darwinism and Naturalism, modern tragedy, postmodern realism and philosophical anthropology from the eighteenth century to the present day. This book is based on papers given at an international symposium held under the auspices of the University of Nottingham at the Institute of German and Romance Studies, London, in September 2009.

Jerome Carroll is Lecturer in German at the University of Nottingham, where he specialises in German history of ideas, aesthetics and modern German theatre. His publications include Art at the Limits of Perception: The Aesthetic Theory of Wolfgang Welsch (2006) and he is currently working on the German tradition of philosophical anthropology from the eighteenth to the twentieth century.
Steve Giles is Emeritus Professor of German Studies and Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham. He has published widely on modernism and modernity in cultural theory and on Bertolt Brecht. His most recent book is a translation and edition of Brecht’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (2007) and he is currently working on two new editions of Brecht’s theoretical writings.
Maike Oergel is Associate Professor in German at the University of Nottingham, and works on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Anglo-German intellectual and literary relations and the intellectual landscape of the Goethezeit. She recently published Culture and Identity: Historicity in German Literature and Thought 1770-1815 (2006) and is currently researching the impact of political paranoia on cultural transfer and exchange between Germany and Britain around 1800.