Enlightening book on aesthetics and art

The book under review ‘Theories of Aesthetics and Art’ examines and expounds the closeness and convergence of aesthetics and art.

It is an enormously amazing, informative, and even at times entertaining, piece of work. Dr. Iqbal Afaqi, a famous intellectual, writer and philosopher, has an exceptional knack of being able to express clearly to his readers some very complex concepts and theoretical structures on aesthetics; this is as true, as his output on art theory, and related subjects.

He mentions natural beauty’s position in the creation process of universe and quotes Leonardo da Vinci’s task towards this end.

The author not only covers the work of several philosophers from Plato to Lyotard including names like Aristotle, Kant, Baumgarten, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Theodor Adorno and Collingwood but also questions and evaluates their theories.

Bringing philosophical aesthetics into a broader cultural interest in the art, the author describes the classics of past aesthetics, mid-twentieth century or analytic aesthetics, and late-twentieth century or continental post-structuralism theory, the Greek and Roman era, modern 18th- and 19th-century period, critique of aesthetic experience; problem of defining art, status of the work of art, appraisal of the expression theory of art; continental and contemporary theory, myths of modernism, art and post-modernity, analysis of truth, cultural materialism and postmodern sublime.

In recent years the kind of the aesthetic has been adjudicated as insufficient to the tasks of literary criticism. It has been assailed for promoting class-based ideologies of distinction, for cultivating political ennui, and for indulging in irrational sensuous decadence. The author re-examines the past of aesthetic theorizing that led to the critical alienation from works of art and suggests an alternative view.

The book is a defence of the relevance and usefulness of the aesthetic as a cognitive resource of human experience. It challenges the modern-day critical tendency to treat aesthetic value as separate from the realms of human agency and socio-political change.

Dr. Iqbal Afaqi discusses ideas of experts in the field, providing a survey of recent research that will appeal to students of both philosophy and art alike.

The author addresses issues in present-day philosophical aesthetics and art theory, focusing on real examples across the arts. Some kinds of beauty, particularly the natural kinds, on their first look command our liking and admiration. But in several orders of beauty, particularly those of fine arts, it is necessary to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the right feeling.

Because of the extremely intricate natures or structures of numerous beautiful objects, there will have to be a function for reason in their perception. But seeing the nature or structure of an object is one thing, seeing its beauty is another.