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Title: The ultimate Aesthetics resource and primer
Review: If you are interested in aesthetics, this is an essential. I am doing research on the German Enlightenment, and only Croce offers a detailed discourse on thinkers whose importance only matches their obscurity. The first half of this book presents Croce's own aesthetic theory: an atheistic theory with a Hegelian twist (he wrote what is living and what is dead of Hegel) that is spiritual without being religious. The second half of the book is the real gem. This is a detailed history of aesthetics, in all its obscurantist glory! Do not deny yourself a book that is both an illuminating introduction to aesthetics via its history, a penetrating theory of aesthetics, and a great reference book for an aesthetician. The man who coined the term aesthetics, Alexander Baumgarten, is developed in this book ... one of the few books that goes beyond mentioning his name and importance.
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