Bøker av Frederick C. (Syracuse University) Beiser

Frederick C. Beiser presents a study of the pessimism that dominated German philosophy from the 1860s to c. 1900: the theory that life is not worth living. He explores its major defenders and chief critics, and examines how the theory redirected German philosophy away from the logic of the sciences and toward an examination of the value of life.

Diotima's Children is the first comprehensive re-examination of the rationalist tradition of aesthetics as it prevailed in Germany in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. This tradition is of the greatest historical importance because it gave birth to modern aesthetics, art criticism, and art history.

This is the first history in English of German historicism, the intellectual tradition which holds that history is the key to understanding all human values, beliefs and actions. Beiser surveys the key thinkers from the mid-18th to the early 20th century and illuminates the sources and reasons for this revolution in modern thought.