Cosmopolitan Aesthetics

Daniel Herwitz is Fredrick Huetwell Professor of Philosophy, History of Art and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, USA where for a decade he directed the Institute for the Humanities. His previously published books include Aesthetics, Arts and Politics in a Global World (2017), the award winning Star as Icon (2008), and M.F. Husain (1988). Herwitz frequently writes for galleries in New York City, London, Cape Town and other places.

“This book asks how one can reconcile the universalizing theories of post-Enlightenment aesthetics with the current realities of a globalized economy. Herwitz's answer, in short: cosmopolitanism, a dialectic of homogenization and diversity. [He] reconsiders the relationship of contemporary art to sociopolitical events and institutions by circling back to the 18th and 19th centuries of Kant and Hegel and then to Danto in the 20th century. These philosophical inquiries are interleaved with case studies of specific artists, many of whom hail from the Global South and thus provide welcome counterbalance to the still-dominant First World narrative. In Herwitz’s telling, 21st-century artistic cosmopolitanism also sheds new light on historical aesthetics, providing a means for reevaluating how the personal and the universal were reconciled in aesthetic theory. These are big, unwieldy topics and Herwitz's clear, conversational style makes the material accessible. That said, it is inevitable that a subject of such scope leaves much territory unexamined and a great deal of art unaccounted for … The book provides a useful introduction to issues of globalization as it pertains to art. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; graduate students.

• AcknowledgementsList of FiguresHow to Use This Book1. Introduction to Globalization2. The Global Art World Today: Problems and Prospects3. Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism 4. Cultural Property and Aesthetic Synergy5. Meaning and Medium in Art6. Taste in its 18th Century Context7. Aesthetic Judgment from a Cosmopolitan PerspectiveBibliography Index