Abstract: Considerable controversy has raged around the question of postmodern culture and its products. This book attempts to overcome some of the antagonistic viewpoints involved by developing themes from the work of Kant, Benjamin, and Merleau–Ponty in the context of themes from contemporary culture. Attention is paid to such topics as the relation between art and politics, the problematics of poststructuralist and feminist approaches to art, the emergence and re-emergence of theories of the sublime, and the continuing possibility of artistic creativity. The central theme is that there are experiential constants around which art and philosophy constellate. At the same time, however, due account must be given of the ways in which such constants are historically mediated. By articulating various aspects of this relation, it is shown how postmodern sensibility can be more than that of an alienated consumerism. Understood in the proper theoretical context, it is grounded on experiences and artefacts that humanize.

Keywords: aesthetics, Benjamin, creativity, consumerism, critical aesthetics, feminism, Kant, Merleau–Ponty, postmodernism, poststructuralism, philosophy of art, the sublime