Presents the main studies in the philosophy of art and criticism through both a historical and an analytic lens. It looks at the classical arguments of Plato, Kant, Hegel, and Dewey, as well as current conceptual frameworks for identifying what makes for a work of art. Emphasis is placed on the significance of these theories to the art of the twentieth century.

Philosophical aesthetics traditionally asks about the experience of aesthetic pleasure and the place of beauty, truth, taste, meaning and he sensuous in art. Beyond Aesthetics shifts the ground to some more contemporary concerns: performativity, embodiment and bodily life, sex, gender and desire, horror, violence, abjection and disfiguration. As well as philosophical writings, material will be drawn from art and architecture criticism, drama and performance studies, queer theory, psychoanalysis, and social theory.