Blocker argues that the literary problem of absurdity is basically a metaphysical problem of being, focusing on the metaphysical distinction of being as essence and being as existence. This book compares philosophical prose with the fiction writing of four major absurdist writers—Camus, Sartre, Ionesco, and Beckett.

This book brings philosophical aesthetics into a broader cultural interest in the fine arts and draws together the classics of the history of aesthetics, the mid-twentieth century or "Analytic" aesthetics, and late-twentieth century or "Continental" post-structuralist "theory.".

An overview of Japanese philosophy from the seventh century to the present.

A defense of the embattled concept of aesthetic distance is achieved by reinstating a prominent feature of distance ignored in the current controversy. Distance is not the only supposed psychological posturing discussed by bullough, But also the space which is necessary to art between the art medium and the world represented therein. Examples from painting, Film and absurdist literature are discussed in terms of the historical tension between medium "opacity" and "transparency" in order to show how total transparency is avoided (...) to create the space between the art medium and reality, Without which art can neither "say" anything nor even exist. (shrink)

The usual strawsonian account of referring won't do for fictional entities. The problem is that we still don't have a sufficiently clear notion of ordinary referring, And the root of this problem is that referring is still perceived in terms of a paradigm relation of a description to an existing thing. But that relation is preceded by the more fundamental relation of thought to an object of thought, Whether real or imaginary. The conclusion reached is that fictional reference is an (...) institutionalized partial use of ordinary referring, Parasitic on it though leading a legitimate life of its own. (shrink)