The intricate forms of living things bespeak design, and thus a creator: nearly 150 years after Darwin's theory of natural selection called this argument into question, we still speak of life in terms of design--the function of the eye, the purpose of the webbed foot, the design of the fins. Why is the "argument from design" so tenacious, and does Darwinism--itself still evolving after all these years--necessarily undo it?

The definitive work on these contentious questions, Darwin and Design surveys the argument from design from its introduction by the Greeks, through the coming of Darwinism, down to the present day. In clear, non-technical language Michael Ruse, a well-known authority on the history and philosophy of Darwinism, offers a full and fair assessment of the status of the argument from design in light of both the advances of modern evolutionary biology and the thinking of today's philosophers--with special attention given to the supporters and critics of "intelligent design."

The first comprehensive history and exposition of Western thought about design in the natural world, this important work suggests directions for our thinking as we move into the twenty-first century. A thoroughgoing guide to a perennially controversial issue, the book makes its own substantial contribution to the ongoing debate about the relationship between science and religion, and between evolution and its religious critics.

This book examines the revolution in Sanskrit poetics initiated by the ninth-century Kashmiri Anandavardhana. Anandavardhana replaced the formalist aesthetic of earlier poeticians with one stressing the unifunctionality of literary texts, arguing that all components of a work should subserve a single purpose—the communication of a single emotional mood (rasa). Attention was redirected from formal elements toward specific poems, viewed as aesthetically integrated wholes, thereby creating new literary critical possibilities.

Anandavardhana’s model of textual coherence, along with many key analytic concepts, are rooted in the hermeneutic theory of the Mimamsakas (Vedic Exegetes). Like Anandavardhana, the Mimamsakas made the unifunctionality of texts their most basic interpretive principle.

While Anandavardhana’s teleological approach to textual analysis gained rapid acceptance among the Kashmiri poeticians, another aspect of his theory became controversial. He argued that rasa, and certain other poetic meanings, cannot be conveyed by recognized semantic processes, and therefore postulated a new semantic function, dhvani (“suggestion”) to account for them. The controversy over this “suggestion” rapidly became the central topic in poetics, to the exclusion of teleologically based criticism. While dhvani ultimately gained universal acceptance among Sanskrit poeticians, the conflict over its existence, ironically, marginalized Anandavardhana’s preferred approach to poetic analysis.

Why read Kant’s Critique of Judgment today? Does this classic of aesthetic theory still possess the vitality to prompt those of us engaged with art and criticism to think more deeply about issues that move us, issues such as the force of aesthetic experience, the essence of art, and the relationship of beauty and meaning? It does, if we find the right way into it.

Michel Chaouli shows us one such way. He unwraps the gray packing paper of Kant’s prose to reveal the fresh and fierce ideas that dwell in this masterpiece—not just the philosopher’s theory of beauty but also his ruminations on organisms and life. Each chapter in Thinking with Kant’s Critique of Judgment unfolds the complexity of a key concept, to disclose its role in Kant’s thought and to highlight the significance it holds for our own thinking.

Chaouli invites all who are interested in art and interpretation—novice and expert alike—to set out on the path of thinking with the Critique of Judgment. The rewards are handsome: we see just how profoundly Kant’s book can shape our own ideas about aesthetic experience and meaning. By thinking with Kant, we learn to surpass the horizon of his thought and find ourselves pushed to the very edge of what can be grasped firmly. That is where Kant’s book is at its most thrilling.