Sensibility and Sense: The Aesthetic Transformation of the Human World

摘要

The subject matter and the many insights in this text nmake it a signifcant book for the new century. It raises nthe questions that need to be asked of the academic ndiscipline of aesthetics. Moreover, it indicates the nscope of the task before us if we are to take the social nrole of aesthetics seriously. As a book it is somewhat nhampered by some lack of cohesion between its parts. nIt still bears the traces of being constructed with the nuse of separate essays: these make up six of its twelve nchapters. This introduces a loosening of the narrative nthread and overall argument and, in places, both repe-ntition of a point and even seeming contradictions. This nis unfortunate because what it does have to say is fresh, ntrue, and tremendously important.