After the great social and cultural transformations of the 20th Century, the philosophical investigation in the field of "German aesthetics" has to face two questions. On the one hand, it has to take into account the increasingly important development of the analytic approach to aesthetics. On the other, it has to preserve its own traditional cultural heritage. In this context, the present volume - edited by Alessandra Campo (alessandracampo81@gmail.com) and Micaela Latini (micaelalatini@quipo.it) - offers an annotated bibliography of German aesthetics from 2001 to 2010.
This study does not claim to be an exhaustive account of the wealth of secondary literature on aesthetics in the German areas of the 21st Century. The aim of this book is, rather, to capture the distinctive features of contemporary German aesthetics by mapping its most promising topics, its prospects and potentialities.
The goal of this volume is to outline and identify four main trends in German contemporary aesthetic research. The volume is, therefore, divided in four parts, each provided with a theoretical introduction as its critical compendium. The opening chapter, entitled ÒPoetics and RhetoricÓ, focuses on the recent studies in the field of these two traditional aesthetic disciplines. The second section, "Aesthetics and Anthropology", is devoted to the investigation of the anthropological origins of aesthetics, in relation to emerging contemporary issues. The last two chapters explore the most innovative topics in aesthetic research. The third chapter adopts an interdisciplinary approach in order to examine the impact of the Iconic Turn on German aesthetics. The last and closing chapter, entitled "The New Aesthetics between Technology and Globalization", analyzes the relationship between aesthetics, new technologies and the distinctive contemporary social and cultural phenomena of the global era. A list of keywords at the end of each chapter helps to foreground the fundamental theoretical issues. What emerges is the richness and the potentiality of the most recent aesthetic debates that have dominated German cultural investigations during the past ten years.