Edith Landmann-Kalischer Essays on Art, Aesthetics, and Value

This volume brings together essential essays by an important but neglected thinker in early twentieth-century German philosophy, Edith Landmann-Kalischer. As the first English translation of her writings, this volume represents a landmark step in the effort to restore to its rightful place her philosophy and, in particular, its methodologically unified approach to aesthetic, moral, and epistemic value. The three essays translated - “On the Cognitive Value of Aesthetic Judgments: A Comparison of Sensory Judgments and Value Judgments” (1905), “On Artistic Truth” (1906), and “Philosophy of Values” (1910) - demonstrate a philosophical mind at home with the then emerging disciplines of phenomenology and psychology during one of the most fecund eras of philosophy in German-speaking lands. Drawing on the ferment of this period and engaging with its leading thinkers (e.g., Brentano, Husserl), Landmann-Kalischer crafts a unique and powerful contribution to aesthetics, the philosophy of art, and value theory. And far from speaking simply to the concerns of her day, in these essays she tackles questions that remain as pressing for us today as they were in her time. Are beauty, goodness, and truth real or merely subjective? How do we experience these values? Does our experience of value lead to judgments that can be true or false? Can those experiences lead to knowledge? Is a science of value possible at all? In Landmann-Kalischer's essays, we find rigorously argued and compelling answers to these questions.

Samantha Matherne is the Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of the Humanities in the Philosophy Department at Harvard University. She is the author of Seeing More: Kant's Theory of Imagination and Cassirer for the Routledge Philosophers Series. Daniel O. Dahlstrom is John R. Silber Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. He is the author of five books, including Heidegger on Logic and The Heidegger Dictionary, and editor or co-editor of twenty collections. In addition, he has translated works by Mendelssohn, Schiller, Hegel, Feuerbach, Husserl, and Heidegger.