"Indispensable turn-by-turn directions for those navigating the ideas of nine philosophers who set the stage for thinking about art and society. Clear and comprehensive, Noël Carroll is the perfect guide to the history of aesthetics." —Dominic McIver Lopes, University of British Columbia

"Carroll's Classics in Western Philosophy of Art is a masterful series of commentaries on nine classical writings on art by philosophers in the Western tradition—learned and penetrating in exegesis, equally penetrating in critique. It's not just one philosopher after another. Carroll takes note of what later writers say, explicitly or implicitly, about earlier writers, and imagines what those earlier writers might have said in response. He is host to a conversation. How I wish these commentaries had been available when I was still teaching philosophy of art! I would have been spared my own exegetical labors over these often-difficult texts, and my teaching would have been immeasurably improved." —Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology, Yale University