Hendrix (architectural design, art and architectural history, Roger Williams U.) describes how the aesthetics of Plato led to that of Plotinus, and from Plotinus to Schelling and Hegel in the philosophy of spirit, identity philosophy, and transcendental idealism. He approaches art as philosophy, as a product and instrument of intellect, finding ongoing dialectic between the universal and the particular, reason and perception, allegory and symbolism, and freedom and necessity. Hendrix analyzes the Symposium of Plotinus against Schelling's The Philosophy of Art, Bruno, or On the Natural and the Divine Principle of Things, and System of Transcendental Idealism to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Philosophy of Mind and Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics. Hendrix notes in his conclusion that the precepts of neoplatonism and transcendental idealism deserve reconsideration in the expression of twenty-first century art and architecture. Annotation 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
