INTRODUCTION

The essays collected in this volume are previously unpublished writings by some of the most respected contemporary scholars of Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy and the history and philosophy of art. The idea of the collection is to highlight three aspects of Schopenhauer's aesthetics: his metaphysics and psychology of artistic creativity, his theory of the appreciation of beauty and the sublime, and his influence on the development of the philosophy and practice of the fine arts.

I hope that while engaging the specialist the book will also serve as a friendly introduction for those who have not yet looked into Schopenhauer's pages, and for whom no prior knowledge of Schopenhauer is assumed. The reader will find here a stimulating selection of detailed, comprehensive, but highly accessible studies in Schopenhauer's aesthetics, in the history and theory of art from Plato to major thinkers of the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and in the evolution of idealism, symbolism, and romanticism in music, literature, painting, and architecture.

Schopenhauer's impact on such diverse thinkers as Nietzsche, Freud, and Wittgenstein is widely recognized, and his insights into the metaphysics of the human condition have been touchstones for generations of philosophers, social-psychological theorists, and others in search of a personal philosophy. The idealism set forth in Schopenhauer's system serves as a counterpoise to the post-Kantianism of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, against whom Schopenhauer reinterprets Kant's critical idealism as its self-proclaimed only legitimate heir.