The earliest theory of art, that of the Greek philosophers, proposed that art was mimesis, imitation of reality.

The most celebrated and influential modern doctrines, those of Marx and Freud, actually amount of elaborate systems of hermeneutics, aggressive and impious theories of interpretation.

the extent that Williams' plays and Cocteau's films do suggest these portentous meanings

In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.

Contemporary writers and other artists with a style that is intricate, hermetic, demanding--not to speak to "beautiful"--get their ration of unstinting praise.

any particular morality has its dross, those elements which are no more than a defense of limited social interests and class values

consciousness--what used to be called, rather tendentiously, the faculty of contemplation

a profound sense of sexual inadequacy, which he bulwarked by all sorts of theories about sexual technique

The celebrated philosophical essays (The Myth of Sisyphus, The Rebel) are the work of an extraordinarily talented and literate epigone.

Modern thought is pledged to a kind of applied Hegelianism: seeking its Self in its Other.