Aesthetics Across the Color Line: Why Nietzsche (Sometimes) Can’t Sing the Blues

Imagine Immanuel Kant discussing art with bell hooks and Cornel West. Or Friedrich Nietzsche hanging around at a blues club. In Why Nietzsche (Sometimes) Can’t Sing the Blues James Winchester brings the western philosophical tradition into dialog with contemporary African-American thinkers in an attempt to bridge (or at least understand) the culture gap in aesthetic judgements. In this unique study, James Winchester urges philosophers to reexamine traditional aesthetic theory in light of recent writings by prominent African-American thinkers. Winchester focuses on the black-white cultural divide in the United States, but his theories also help frame the way we think about all cross-cultural aesthetic judgements. It is high time this book appeared in this age of multiculturalism.