Kathleen Marie Higgins Book order

Exploring the interplay between aesthetics and the grieving process, Kathleen Marie Higgins emphasizes how sensory experiences can provide grounding during times of loss. The book discusses both culturally scripted rituals, like funerals, and everyday activities, such as storytelling and engaging with art and music, as vital for healing. By highlighting the significance of aesthetic practices, Higgins offers insights into how they can facilitate personal and communal flourishing amidst grief, ultimately illustrating the transformative power of beauty in navigating sorrow.

This volume examines the motives behind rejections of beauty often found within contemporary art practice, where much critically acclaimed art is deliberately ugly and alienating. It reflects on the nature and value of beauty, asking whether beauty still has a future in art and what role it can play in our lives generally. The volume discusses the possible “end of art,” what art is, and the relation between art and beauty beyond their historically Western horizons to include perspectives from Asia. The individual chapters address a number of interrelated issues, including: art, beauty and the sacred; beauty as a source of joy and consolation; beauty as a bridge between the natural and the human; beauty and the human form; the role of curatorial practice in defining art; order and creativity; and the distinction between art and craft. The volume offers a valuable addition to cross-cultural dialogue and, in particular, to the sparse literature on art and beauty in comparative context. It demonstrates the relevance of the rich tradition of Asian aesthetics and the vibrant practices of contemporary art in Asia to Western discussions about the future of art and the role of beauty. 

Music plays an important role in our lives, bringing us closer to one another. The author investigates this role, examining the features of human perception that enable music's uncanny ability to provoke, despite its myriad forms across continents and throughout centuries, the sense of a shared human experience.

Kathleen Higgins explores the enduring relevance of Plato's arguments on the ethical value of music. She asserts that music fosters positive attitudes and behaviors, offers practice in essential ethical skills, and serves as a symbol for ethical ideals, highlighting its significant role in moral development and societal values.

Nietzsche's Zarathustra is a guide through the convoluted territory of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It shows the philosophical significance of the fictional format as a means to simultaneously propose alternatives to traditional dogmas within the Western tradition and reveal the danger of mistaking doctrinal formulations for living philosophical insight.

This book offers a lively and unorthodox analysis of Nietzsche by examining a neglected aspect of his scholarly personality--his sense of humor. While often thought of as ponderous and melancholy, the Nietzsche of Higgins's study is a surprisingly subtle and light-hearted writer. She presents a close reading of The Gay Science to show how the numerous literary risks that Nietzsche takes reveal humor to be central to his project. Higgins argues that his use of humor is intended to dislodge readers from their usual, somber detachment and to incite imaginative thinking.