Aesthetics: The Key Thinkers offers a comprehensive historical overview of the field, introducing the contributions of philosophers who have shaped aesthetic, from its origins in the work of the ancient Greeks to contemporary developments in the twenty-first century. Now thoroughly revised and updated throughout, this second edition includes thirteen new chapters, covering primary figures that are less frequently addressed in similar historical overviews, such as Shaftesbury, Jean-Baptiste Du Bos, and Bernard Bolzano from the early modern period, and such twentieth-century thinkers as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Susanne Langer. The new edition also expands its coverage of post-1960 aesthetics with chapters on Frank Sibley, Stanley Cavell, and Jerrold Levinson, among others. By reconstructing the history of aesthetics through its thinkers, this collection illustrates the most important attempts to address the nature of aesthetic judgment, the status of art, and the place of the arts within society. Book jacket.