Karl Marx (1818-1883) has continued to be influential in many schools of philosophy, including aesthetics – even though he did not publish a specific treatise on the subject. Thinkers as different as Jacques Rancière, Roland Barthes, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Vilém Flusser were all influenced by Marx’ views. Perhaps Walter Benjamin (1936) was the most directly influenced, who in turn found resonance in …
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (1821 – 1867) was a French poet, essayist, art critic, and a translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His work reflected the changing nature of beauty, as Paris modernised and industrialised, and his poetry influenced a myriad of others – including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé. Baudelaire coined the term Flâneur in his essay The Painter of …