A Theory of Art

This philosophical theory of art, addressed to anyone with a serious interest in the arts, has three main objectives: to shift the focus of aesthetics from the question "What is art?" to the question "What is art for?"; to describe the social and historical situation of art today; and to combine aesthetics with poetics and hermeneutics. A distinctive feature of the book is its argument that music exemplifies the current condition of art in a particularly revealingfashion.