Philosophy of Art and Literature

Continental philosophy is often, and unfairly, dismissed as (bad) literary criticism. While it is true that, thanks to Martin Heidegger, art and literature have played a crucial role in the development of continental thought, the past three decades have witnessed among continental thinkers an increasingly pronounced abandonment of literary and artistic obsessions in favor of an emphasis on the ethical and the political. In the meanwhile, traditionally marginalized artistic forms (film, television, graphic novels) have been granted philosophical importance, and writers traditionally regarded as literary figures (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James, David Foster Wallace) are being considered part of the American philosophical heritage. What is the status of the aesthetic in the wake of these changes?

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