《论优美感和崇高感》是康德在第三批判之外唯一的一篇美学著作。充分显示了作者的风格、人格与若干重要思路。书中的主要内容有两点：一是优美与崇高的对立与统一，一是强调美的主观性。

本书首先简要回顾了阿伦特的生平，帮助读者通过其经历来了解阿伦特思想的形成、发展过程，并就其关于极权主义、人类的境况等方面的思想进行了清晰论述。她的哲学研究清楚地显示了那种在她看来对人类的生活至关重要的前途和希望，并同时为当代的哲学、政治、伦理、社会等启迪着的重要问题。

When disillusioned Swedish knight Antonius Block returns home from the Crusades to find his country in the grips of the Black Death, he challenges Death to a chess match for his life. Tormented by the belief that God does not exist, Block sets off on a journey, meeting up with traveling players Jof and his wife, Mia, and becoming determined to evade Death long enough to commit one redemptive act while he still lives.

Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his pregnant and unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.

A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he unknowingly captures a death on film.