Product Description
A company's strategies define its future direction specifying not only target market positions for many years to come, but also the key competitive advantages both at the level of the market offers and for resources. Developing future strategies is an important and complex task which is the core issue in this book. After a short introduction to strategic planning a heuristic process for determining future strategies is presented. This process is divided into seven steps and for each of these steps detailed recommendations for problem-solving are provided and illustrated through many concrete examples.
The new edition is improved and contains new material. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description

In this creative and engaging reading, Richard Kuhns explores the ways in whichDecameron'ssexual themes lead into philosophical inquiry, moral argument, and aesthetic and literary criticism. As he reveals the stories' many philosophical insights and literary pleasures, Kuhns also examinesDecameronin the context of the nature of storytelling, its relationship to other classic works of literature, and the culture of trecento Italy.

Stories and storytelling are to be interpreted in terms of a wider cultural context that includes masks, metamorphosis, mythic themes, and character analysis, all of which Boccaccio explores with wit and subtlety. As a storyteller, Boccaccio represents himself as literary pimp, conceiving the relationship between storyteller and audience in sexual terms within a tradition that goes back as far as Socrates' conversations with the young Athenians.

As a whole, Boccaccio's great collection of stories creates a trenchant criticism of the ideas that dominated his social and cultural world. Addressed as it is to women who were denied opportunities for education, the author's stories create a university of wise and culturally observant texts. He teaches that comic, religious, sexual, and artistic themes can be seen to function as metaphors for hidden and often dangerous unorthodox thoughts.

Kuhns suggests thatDecameronis one of the first self-conscious creations of what we today call "a total work of art." Throughout the stories, Boccaccio creates a detailed picture of the Florentine trecento cultural world. Giotto, Buffalmacco, and other great painters of Boccaccio's time appear in the stories. Their works and the paintings that surround the characters as they prepare to leave the plague-ridden city, with their representations of Dante, Aquinas, and other thinkers, are essential to understanding the ways the stories work with other works of art and illuminate and enlarge interpretations of Boccaccio's book.

Product Description

Making decisions is certainly the most important task of a manager and it is often a very difficult one. This book offers a decision making procedure for solving complex problems step by step. Unlike other texts, the book focuses on problem analysis, on developing solution options and on establishing the decision making matrix. The book is intended for decision makers in companies, in non-profit organisations and in public administration. It is an approach to helping them to solve complex problems successfully. The book is also addressed to students and to participants in executive courses.

Product Description

Customer Reviews (4)

The Best (or Second Best) Aesthetics Anthology in English
I teach university level aesthetics, and I find myself switching between this text and Stephen David Ross's "Art and Its Significance."Neither does everything I'd like, but they represent the best of the rest.

"Philosophies of Art and Beauty" is the text I most often use for my classes simply because what it does, it does better than any other available anthology: aside from some missing Kant sections and no Renaissance writers or Hume selections, it has virtually every essntial text and passage written by the most enduringly influential philosophers of art up to 1930 except perhaps Tolstoy.It includes Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Ficino, Shaftesbury, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Croce, Dewey, and Heidegger. (It has no Gadamer, contrary to the claims of another reviewer.)But the book includes no contemporary theory at all except that of Heidegger.And the chapter introductions, while solid, are certainly dated since it's been almost a half a century since the book was compiled.

Ross' anthology, by contrast, includes the really important material from Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger (which most other aesthetics anthologies, excepting Hofstadter's, do not), plus it has selections from Hume and Tolstoy and many contemporary figures of import. But the early historical selections are much less comprehensive than those in Hofstadter's volume, and Ross includes no medieval or Renaissance writers at all.

I like the Hofstadter text mostly because of the depth of its selections and because it's not the least bit trendy.But since Hofstadter's book has no contemporary theory at all after Heidegger, it may not be the text for those who want a broad representation of theory.

In sum, if you want an anthology that comes close to covering all the essential writers on the subject (past and present) and doing it fairly well, "Art and Its Significance" is perhaps your best choice despite its nod to trendiness.But if you want to concentrate on pre-20th century theory and know you've covering almost all the important writings of those figures, then Hofstadter's "Philosophies of Art and Beauty" is the better book.And it's perhaps the most reasonably priced philosophy of art anthology available.

Understand the philosophy of art
I read this book for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of art. This book is an excellent way to get a general idea of the vast field of philosophy of art. Aesthetics = philosophy of Art, thinking about art. Using writings from over fifty philosophers on art form Plato to Hans-Georg Gadamer gives the reader a great grounding in all of the philosophical theories of "what is art." The reader will find that how we engage art today is different then how the ancient Greeks did, art was embedded in a cultural context for them. Art was not in museums or in dance halls. Art is in a special zone of experience today in museums, etc. Tragedy for Greeks was part of their politics and religion, sculpture and painting the same way. Music until recently, (after the enlightenment) was for religion or some kind of official function. Philosophy tries to come up with theories about art; it may be a fool's errand. A set of principles that define and illuminates or explains the full measure of art is probably not attainable. However, just because a theory is wrong doesn't mean it has no value, we can draw import from all of them.By using excerpts from different philosophers the reader gets a good understanding of the major art movements, which I identify below.


The "Imitation theory" of art- means it copies something in the natural world. Art refers to some objective reality outside the mind and artwork. (Plato, Aristotle). . Sometimes the imitation theory is also known as the "representational art theory" because the artwork represented something in the world but is not a simplistic idea of copying. The art forms that are most representational are representational sculpture, painting, and drama. The background and implications of the imitation theory first originated in ancient Greece. The imitation theory is the traditional theory that held sway with artists and philosophers up into the eighteenth century Romantic period in Europe. In order for one to fully grasp the meaning of the imitation theory, it is necessary to understand the nuanced meaning of the Greek word for imitation. The Greek word for imitation is mimçsis; thus, art is the imitation of nature for the Greeks. However, mimçsis is a very complex word with many nuanced meanings. It can also mean a representational copy. Plato uses it in speaking of painting. For example, if a Greek painter painted a bird that looked bird like, that would be a sense of mimçsis. Aristotle says art is an imitation of nature, but not just "copying" it. Aristotle does not mean that when art does what it does it reproduces a natural thing. Rather, what Aristotle means is that art impersonates the power of nature to produce something. Human art does something along the lines of what nature does which is very different. Nature produces a tree from out of its power of generation without any intervention from nature, a builder produces a house out of materials which requires the intervention of an agent; however, Aristotle sees no fundamental bright line between those two examples.

The "Expression theory" of art- refers to something going on in the human mind. Art refers to some subjective reality of the human mind, such as ideas, feelings, and cognitive faculties. (Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer). The expression theory is the prime competitor to the imitation theory. The expression theory is a modern phenomenon that turns to the subject. This theory became prevalent with the rise of the Romanticism movement of the nineteenth century. With the expression theory--a shift takes place from the objective outer world of the imitation theory to perception of the mind the subject of the expression theory. Expression theorists expect artworks will produce certain human emotions in the audience. Thus, the expression theory has a certain power in focusing on the mind of both the creator and the audience. Expression theorists argue that the theory has a certain power in being able to articulate the communicative and educative power of the mind.

For example, the artist has an experience that the rest of us have not noticed. Then the artist tries to express this experience in the artwork, which she hopes will transmit to the audience so they can share the artist's experience. The idea in the expression theory that artworks have an educative power is central to Robin Collingwood's theory. The whole idea is that the artist is some kind of educator and the artwork becomes some kind of educational vehicle for people. Of course, art can have so much power in this regard, as in the case of Shakespearean tragedies like Macbeth. Thus, the expression theory gives artwork a new importance, especially in the medium of the written word, since it purports that artworks like literature are something we can learn from that we cannot do any other way.

Contemporary Art Theory
The "Historical artworld," theory- art involves an interrelated complex of artists, artwork, audience, artworld/institutions. All these work in concert with each other, and changes through history adds even more fluidity. This complex changes through history, reflecting a tension between normalcy and creativity (Nietzsche, Dewey, Heidegger, Gadamer).

The features and significance of the historical artworld theory, which more properly should be termed a "notion," is that it does not "locate" art in any one of the four traditional factors of artist, artwork, audience, and artworld institutions that people have traditionally examined to define what art is. The historical artworld notion expands beyond the traditional four factors and takes into account history, and the tension between creativity and normalcy. Thus, the historical artworld notion looks at art through a more broad interpretation then the imitation and expression theories do, by adding history and the tension between creativity and normalcy as well. Thus, the historical artworld notion is better at explaining the fluid relationships between the various facets involved in art. The idea is that it uses "hermeneutics" which means "interpretations" that are in Martin Heidegger's words more "world disclosive." Therefore, the historical artworld notion tends to be less dogmatic than a theory and really seeks to serve as a guidepost for understanding art.

One of the most significant features of the historical artworld notion, unlike the imitation and expression theories, is that as Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer argue, the theory of hermeneutics purports that it is impossible to approach anything independent of historical influences that have already shaped us and therefore, mold how it is we would approach anything. There are already operating influences in how we regard anything in the world, and art would be included in that. By contrast, the imitation theory is too "narrow" in its "accepted rules" of art because it only seeks to imitate objects in the world and disregard the importance of historical influence in creating artworks. One of the ways to understand this is by examining child development. Every adult has been a child, and every child has been shaped by cultural influences through all sorts of ways, education, rearing, etc. In other words, any human self will always be equipped with ways of seeing; therefore, there is no such thing as coming to see something as all by itself. Thus, when we approach a work of art, before we even engage it we are already equipped with inheritances from our tradition and our culture that come to us by way of education and other kinds of influences. No engagement with a work of art is a blank slate-- we are not a tabula rasa. For example, in the case of Greek tragedy, we would have to know what the historical circumstances were and what it was like for the work to be performed at that time. Therefore, any approach to art always carries the art history with it, because historical influences are always shaping how we begin to see anything.

My study has convinced me that Gadamer's hermeneutic circle is the most comprehensive and exciting theory of art that has made a real impression in the art world.

I recommend this work for anyone interested in philosophy, philosophy of art.I strongly recommend Gadamer's "Truth and Method" for an in-depth understanding of the hermeneutic circle and its explanation of art.

Good start, but don't stop here.
This is an excellent and very well done anthology. Covering the classic readings, Croce, Plato, Ficino, Salsbury, Schelling, Dewey and others. The editors take space to introduce each selection and highlight its contribution to the field of Aesthetics. The selections are fair, even those including the existentialists, such as Nietzsche and Heidegger, who make large shifts in direction in Aesthetics. Hofstadter also contributes his own translation of Heidegger's selections and Schelling's selections. These are very good in particular.

The first difficulty is that the volume fails to point to advances beyond Heidegger. No volume cancontain all the imporant classical and contemporary readings, but it should
have some sort of suggested reading list for newer materials. The problems of Aesthetics that have confronted the field since the 50's and 60's arejust as important as the ones of ancient and medieval European culture. The problem of interpreting pure music (no lyrics) and its aesthetic effects in especially important to this field. Even Ayn Rand, who had a quick philosophical (if often flippant or facile) remark on any facet of culture, admitted she was confounded by the act of interpreting and judging pure music.

To address this, the reader should also read or purchase Arthur Danto's volumes. In particular Danto has articulated the main problems of the field (such as the problem of making value judgements) and set the tone. Problems such as ethnocentrism and cultural relativism in Western Aesthetics also need to be investigated by serious students of this topic.

Another issue to investigate that this volume misses is the category of the "Artist," which did not exist in ancient Greece or Rome as we knowit today. In fact, the category of Artist, whether bohemian or otherwise, seems to be a fairly recent invention, and has had profound consequences for Aesthetics. To investigate this more, start by reading Flauber's novel "Sentimental Education." This staple of French literary realism will help jump start you past this anthology of philosophical readings.

The Classics of Aesthetic Literature
This anthology of aesthetic texts surveys the key figures from the classic Western tradition in aesthetics beginning with Plato.Since the book's first pulbication in 1964, Hofstadter and Kuhns have been known among theoreticians, historians, and philosophers alike for this book's remarkable contribution to the field of aesthetics.In this book, one will find selections from the ancient Greeks: Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus; to the medieval: St. Augustine; to the Neoplatonist: Ficino; to the German Idealists: Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer; as well as others like: Shaftesbury, Croce, Nietzsche, Dewey, and Heidegger.This motley assortment is an indisputable must for every art historian, philosopher of art, literary critic, aesthetician, theoretician, and the general scholar. I would relish the opportunity at seeing a 21st century revision of this work; perhaps professor Kuhns may consider such a project with some of his brilliant collegues at Columbia University. ... Read more

Product Description
Part of the authoritative four-volume reference that spans the entire field of child development and has set the standard against which all other scholarly references are compared. Updated and revised to reflect the new developments in the field, the Handbook of Child Psychology, Sixth Edition contains new chapters on such topics as spirituality, social understanding, and non-verbal communication.

Volume 2: Cognition, Perception, and Language, edited by Deanna Kuhn, Columbia University, and Robert S. Siegler, Carnegie Mellon University, covers mechanisms of cognitive and perceptual development in language acquisition. It includes new chapters devoted to neural bases of cognition, motor development, grammar and langauge rules, information processing, and problem solving skills. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Easy to Read, Easy to Follow
Clearly the Easiest Text in Law School.The author explains the law and applies it.The facts of each case makes the rule of law easy to understand.It is important for the reader to keep track of the directionthe cases are headed.Also keep track of "bright line" or"case by case" rules.The only supplement you need for thisclass is the current newspaper headline!Brief each case, and mind yourfacts! ... Read more

Product Description
Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
This comprehensive reference brings together in one place all available information that has been generated over time, both through general research investigations and studies of specific configurations, on the aerodynamic effects induced by the exiting flows of jet and fan powered V/STOL aircraft in hover and transition flight. Authored by several of the foremost authorities in the field, here for the first time is an all-inclusive compilation of existing experimental data along with in-depth discussions on jet interference effects. For the working professional or those in engineering graduate programs, especially those involved with V/STOL, this book will prove an invaluable resource. It also provides the researcher with a starting point for future investigations that could be applied to new aircraft development programs. The unique characteristics of V/STOL flight bring with it unique aerodynamic challenges. This book describes the flow fields generated by the mixing of exit flows with surrounding and free stream air and their effects on the aircraft and the surrounding environment.These flows have differing effects depending on the aircraft configuration and if the aircraft is in hover or transitional flight. The aerodynamic/propulsion interactions affect the total lift, drag, and pitching moments, effectiveness of jet reaction control jets; ground effects; thrust loss, landing surface damage, and effects on the operational environment. Each of these issues is fully presented, illustrated, and discussed in detail. In addition, a chapter is devoted to present and future efforts in V/STOL research and how it relates to developing Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods for analyzing and estimating the flow fields around these aircraft and their effects. Each of the book's chapters includes an extensive list of references from which the material in that chapter is derived. ... Read more

Product Description

Das Treffen von Entscheidungen von großer Tragweite bildet die wichtigste Aufgabe von Führungskräften. Es handelt sich dabei um eine schwierige Aufgabe, weil die bedeutsamen Entscheidungen meist auch komplex sind. Das vorliegende Buch stellt ein Entscheidungsverfahren vor, mit dessen Hilfe komplexe Probleme schrittweise bearbeitet werden können. Die Ausführungen legen im Vergleich zu anderen Texten zur Entscheidungsmethodik großes Gewicht auf die Problemanalyse, die Variantenentwicklung und die Erarbeitung der Entscheidungsmatrix. Das Buch eignet sich für Führungskräfte, die sich fundiert aber trotzdem praxisbezogen mit der Bewältigung komplexer Problemstellungen auseinandersetzen möchten. Es bietet auch eine gute Grundlage für eine auf die Praxis ausgerichtete Ausbildung an Universitäten und Fachhochschulen. Die Neuauflage wurde sprachlich überarbeitet und enthält wichtige Erweiterungen.

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This Book Is In German. ... Read more

Product Description
Written by a philosopher from a philosophical point of view, this book places the contribution of psychoanalysis to the understanding of art within a philosophical framework and seeks to show by argument and example the potential and unrealized power of psychoanalytic theory for a philosophy of art and culture.The author begins with a detailed study of Freud's theory of art and culture and the ways in which it was explicated and developed through the later work of Kris, Hartmann, Anna Freud, and Kernberg. He then offers examples of interpretations of art which illuminate the discussion of specific problems in the art of the past and present. The author's philosophical approach to psychoanalytic theory brings out features of the theory along with possibilities for its application which have been neglected or unrecognized in recent discussions of aesthetics. The form in which psychoanalytic theory is presented makes the book ideal for the work of art historians, literary critics, and philosophical aestheticians as well as students of philosophy of art and aesthetics. ... Read more