H. O. Mounce

"This book presents a clear exposition of Tolstoy's What is Art?, highlighting the value and importance of Tolstoy's views in relation to aesthetics. Mounce considers the problems which exercised Tolstoy and explains their fundamental importance in contemporary disputes. Having viewed these problems of aesthetics as they arise in a classic work, H.O. Mounce affords readers fresh insights not simply into the problems of aesthetics themselves, but also into their contemporary treatment. Students and interested readers of aesthetics and philosophy, as well as those exploring the works of Tolstoy in literature, will find this book of particular interest and will discover that reading What is Art? with attention, affords something of the excitement found in removing the grime from an oil painting - gradually from underneath there appears an authentic masterpiece."--Jacket.

The Pragmatist tradition in philosophy has, through the work of Richard Rorty, recently achieved a status until now has not been accorded to its founder, Charles Sanders Peirce. Much of Peirce's work and his life has remained hidden and little explored, status instead lying with William James, who is known to have misinterpreted Peirce's work. The Two Pragmatisms: From Peirce to Rorty maps out the changing status and key ideas of the Pragmatist movement explaining the diverging paths of the 'Two Pragmatisms' from Peirce's pioneering work on the theory of signs, to Rorty's seminal writings on the 'mirror of nature'. The Realism of Peirce is contrasted with the anti-Realism that characterises much of the contemporary writing on Pragmatism. The work of Rorty in particular is used to explain the importance of Pragmatism today, in particular through his debt to Dewey, whom he has described as one of the three most important philosophers of the century.