Abstract: What, if anything, has art to do with the rest of our lives, and in particular with those ethical and political issues that matter to us most? This book shifts the focus of inquiry from the usual question of what art is, to the question of what the function of art should be if art is to have a value for us. It examines the role of art in the overall economy of our ethical lives and compares the uses of art with those of history, philosophy, and religion. Instead of the usual focus on either poetry or painting, musical modernity represents the central features and dilemmas of the social and historical situation of art today in a particularly radical, acute, and clear fashion. The range of questions asked is not limited to those traditionally asked by writers on aesthetics, but also includes issues in poetics and hermeneutics, such as diegesis and mimesis, narrative and lyric, and the validity of interpretation. Thus, the two areas of inquiry that all too often ignore one another, the philosophical aesthetics and literary theory, are brought together here.

Keywords: art, music, literature, painting, modernity, abstraction, poetics, hermeneutics, diegesis, mimesis