Richard Kearney is Professor of Philosophy at University College, Dublin and a visiting professor at Boston College. He has been a visiting lecturer at several universities across the US and Europe. His publications include: States of Mind (1995), Poetics of Modernity (1995), and The Wake of Imagination (1998).David Rasmussen is Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. He is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Philosophy and Social Criticism (1978–), the Philosophy and Social Criticism Book Series (1995–), and Cultural Hermeneutics (1973–7). He is the author of The Handbook of Critical Theory (Blackwell, 1996) and Reading Habermas (Blackwell, 1990).

"Richard Kearney and David Rasmussen must be congratulated on their judicious selection of the main texts in continental aesthetics. Indeed, the result is so successful that the volume could as readily serve as a textbook for a course in continental philosophy as for a course in aesthetics. This volume surpasses all previous collections in the area." Robert Bernasconi, University of Memphis"Collecting key selections from influential texts, this Anthology displays a wide range of important European theorists, past and present, and should prove very useful for courses in aesthetics and literary theory." Richard Shusterman, Temple University, author of Pragmatist Aesthetics

• Preface viiiAcknowledgments xPart I Romanticism 1Introduction 31 The Critique of JudgementImmanuel Kant 52 Letter of an Aesthetic Education of ManFriedrich Schiller 433 The World as Will and RepresentationArthur Schopenhauer 464 Lectures on AestheticsG. W. F. Hegel 995 The Philosophy of ArtFriedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling 1276 Biographia LiterariaSamuel Taylor Coleridge 1397 The Birth of TragedyFriedrich Nietzsche 143Part II Modernism 161Introduction 1638 The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical ReproductionWalter Benjamin 1669 The Origin of the Work of ArtMartin Heidegger 18210 Lectures on AestheticsLudwig Wittgenstein 21211 Leonardo da VinciSigmund Freud 21612 The Ideology of ModernismGyoÈrgy LukaÂcs 22213 The Aesthetic DimensionHerbert Marcuse 23514 Aesthetic TheoryTheodor Adorno 24215 Discourse in the NovelMikhail Bakhtin 25416 Taste and the Reproduction of ArtBenedetto Croce 27117 What is Literature?Jean-Paul Sartre 27618 Eye and MindMaurice Merleau-Ponty 28819 On Leveling the Genre Distinction between Philosophy and LiteratureJuÈrgen Habermas 30720 Truth and MethodHans-Georg Gadamer 32121 Metaphor and the Problem of HermeneuticsPaul Ricoeur 339Part III Postmodernism 359Introduction 36122 Note on the Meaning of the Word ``Post'' and Answering the Question ``What is Postmodernism?''Jean-FrancËois Lyotard 36323 The Death of the AuthorRoland Barthes 37124 This Is Not a PipeMichel Foucault 37425 The Laugh of the MedusaHeÂleÁne Cixous 38826 Travels in HyperrealityUmberto Eco 40027 SimulationsJean Baudrillard 41128 EconomimesisJacques Derrida 43129 Literature One More TimeMaurice Blanchot 45130 The Malady of Grief: DurasJulia Kristeva 457Index 473