Includes bibliographical references and index.

Formalism and the lessons of Dante -- OOO and art: a first summary -- Formalism and its flaws -- Theatrical, not literal -- The canvas is the message -- After high modernism -- Dada, surrealism, and literalism -- Weird formalism.

In this book, the founder of object-oriented ontology develops his view that aesthetics is the central discipline of philosophy. Whereas science must attempt to grasp an object in terms of its observable qualities, philosophy and art cannot proceed in this way because they don't have direct access to their objects. Hence philosophy shares the same fate as art in being compelled to communicate indirectly, allusively, or elliptically, rather than in the clear propositional terms that are often taken wrongly to be the sole stuff of genuine philosophy.