The Aesthetics of War: How War Became an Art Form – Engberg-Pedersen Anders – New Literary Review – 2025 – ISBN 978-5-4448-2713-0
The Aesthetics of War: How War Became an Art Form
14.99 €
11.99 €
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The Aesthetics of War: How War Became an Art Form
14.99 €
11.99 €
The 21st century is witnessing a widespread militarization of aesthetics: Western military institutions are appropriating the creative potential of art, subordinating it to the destructive forces of war. A. Engberg-Pedersen explores the origins of this unexpected fusion and argues that today's "creative" approach to war is merely a continuation of a historical trend that traces back to a series of inventions, ideas, and debates of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Even then, military strategists and inventors borrowed ideas from aesthetic theories about the nature, purpose, and power of art, reworking them into innovative military technologies and a new militaristic doctrine that conceptualized war not simply as a practical activity but also as an aesthetic art form.
Tracing the emergence of the aesthetics of war, the author demonstrates how military discourses and early forms of war media—star charts, horoscopes, and Prussian war games—were intertwined with concepts of creativity, genius, and possible worlds in the philosophy and aesthetic theory of Leibniz, Baumgarten, Kant, Schiller, and other thinkers. Anders Engberg-Pedersen is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Southern Denmark and Head of the Humanities Department at the Danish Institute for Advanced Study.
Tracing the emergence of the aesthetics of war, the author demonstrates how military discourses and early forms of war media—star charts, horoscopes, and Prussian war games—were intertwined with concepts of creativity, genius, and possible worlds in the philosophy and aesthetic theory of Leibniz, Baumgarten, Kant, Schiller, and other thinkers. Anders Engberg-Pedersen is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Southern Denmark and Head of the Humanities Department at the Danish Institute for Advanced Study.
See also:
- All books by the publisher
- All books by the author
- All books in the series Library of the magazine "Neprikosvenny Zapas"