Reseña de Choise

These excellent translations make some of Herder's most original and important contributions to aesthetics available to English readers for the first time. Of the works in this volume, only Herder's "Shakespeare" has appeared before in English. The translator's introduction gives a brief account of the birth of aesthetics as a science in 18th-century Germany, and helpfully situates Herder's writings with respect to the most important figures of that period: Baumgarten, Lessing, Hamann, and Kant. This volume will be of special interest to students of 18th-century aesthetics, as the bulk of the translation (240 pages; two-thirds of the total) is devoted to the first and fourth parts of Herder's Critical Forests. The first part engages in detail with Lessing's Laocoon, and the fourth part attacks two minor contemporaries, Riedel and Klotz. However, the significance of both discussions transcends their immediate context and should interest students of aesthetics more generally. Moreover, a growing interest in Herder's relation to Kant and to the later idealists and Romantics will make this volume relevant to students of 18th- and 19th-century German philosophy in general. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. A. N. Bunch Washington State University