The Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays on Art, Culture, and Literature

Description

A classic work on radical aesthetics by one of the great philosophers of the early twentieth century No work of philosopher and essayist Jose Ortega y Gasset has been more frequently cited, admired, or criticized than his response to modernism, "The Dehumanization of Art." The essay, originally published in Spanish in 1925, grappled with the ne

Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist. His many books include What is Knowledge? and The Revolt of the Masses. Anthony J. Cascardi is dean of arts and humanities and professor of comparative literature, rhetoric, and Spanish at the University of California, Berkeley.

"Jose Ortega y Gasset is certainly the greatest philosophical essayist of the first half of the 20th century, and very likely one of its few genuinely seminal minds. . . . The Dehumanization of Art is still among the best efforts to define and interpret the radical break in continuity between modern art and the whole Renaissance tradition of representation which ended in the 19th century."-Joseph Frank, New Republic "An erudite and magnanimous capitulation of the old to the young . . . both wise and noble."-Mark Helprin, New Criterion