This book seeks to fill a void in contemporary aesthetics scholarship by considering the cognitive features that make the aesthetic and artistic worthy of philosophical study. It innovatively seeks to correct the marginalization of aesthetics in analytical philosophy by reinterpreting aesthetic cognition through an integration of Ernst Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms with Paul Crowther's theory of imagination and philosophy of art.

Introduction: Aesthetic Cognition, Cassirer, and Crowther 1. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms 2. Crowther, Imagination, and the Origins of Symbolic Form 3. Cassirer on the Rise of Aesthetics 4. Cassirer's Theory of Art and Crowther's Aesthetics 5. Visual Art and Symbolic Forms 6. Literature, Theatre, and Music as Symbolic Forms Conclusion: Aesthetic Cognition and the Future

Elena Fell received her diploma in philosophy from St. Petersburg State University and her doctorate in philosophy from the University of Central Lancashire. She is Assistant Professor at Tomsk Polytechnic University, and is the author of Duration, Temporality, Self: Prospects for the Future of Bergsonism (Peter Lang, 2012).

Ioanna Kopsiafti obtained her master's degree in art history at the University of St. Andrews, and her doctorate in art history and theory at the University of Oxford. She is Assistant Professor at Hellenic American University in Athens, Greece, and is also an Adjunct Professor at the Rome campus of Loyola University Chicago. Elena and Ioanna are co-authors of Thinking Space, Advancing Art. Cassirer and Crowther (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015).