Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in Aesthetics

by Paul Guyer

Values of Beauty covers major ideas and figures in the history of aesthetics, from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. All of the essays emphasize the complexity, rather than isolation of our aesthetic experience of both nature and art. They also reveal the interconnection of aesthetic values, such as beauty and sublimity, as well as prudential and moral values. Paul Guyer emphasizes the idea of the freedom of the imagination as the key to both artistic creation and aesthetic experience.

Genres: Philosophy, Art

382 pages, Paperback

First published June 13, 2005

About the author

Paul Guyer is an American philosopher. He is a leading scholar of Immanuel Kant and of aesthetics and has served as Jonathan Nelson Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Brown University since 2012.

Guyer has written nine books on Kant and Kantian themes, and has edited and translated a number of Kant's works into English. In addition to his work on Kant, Guyer has published on many other figures in the history of philosophy, including Locke, Hume, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and others. Guyer's Kant and The Claims of Knowledge (Cambridge University Press) is widely considered to be one of the most significant works in Kant scholarship. Recent works by Guyer include Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant's Response to Hume (Princeton University Press), and The Cambridge Companion to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Cambridge University Press).

His other areas of specialty include the history of philosophy and aesthetics. His three-volume work A History of Modern Aesthetics was published by Cambridge University Press in February 2014. Guyer was President of the American Society for Aesthetics in 2011–13. Guyer was also President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in 2011-12.