Beauty is significant to us in many different registers, but perhaps the least appreciated has to do with its distinctively metaphysical significance. For Hegel, aesthetic experience offers us its own distinctive perspective on the nature of reality, and in this book David Ciavatta shows how in Hegel's ground-breaking Aesthetics, his astute observations on art and on beauty in nature relate to and illuminate wider themes in his metaphysical thought. To experience and be compelled by the be...

Phenomenology and the Arts develops the interplay between phenomenology as a historical movement and a descriptive method within Continental philosophy and the arts. Divided into five themes, the book explores first how the phenomenological method itself is a kind of artistic endeavor that mirrors what it approaches when it turns to describe paintings, dramas, literature, and music. From there, the book turns to an analysis and commentary on specific works of art within the visual arts, li...