Introduction to Aesthetics: Philosophy, Art, Subjectivity

What is Aesthetics? Why does Aesthetics emerge as a distinct discipline? The Enlightenment crisis of reason and our relationship with nature in the modern world. The importance of 'aesthetic experience' as an antidote to modern rationalism. The relationship between art and philosophy today.

Background Reading:

1. Andrew Bowie, "Introduction" from his Aesthetics and Subjectivity from Kant to Nietzsche, Second edition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003).

Plato's Philosophy of Beauty and Critique of Poetry

Plato's philosophy of art as imitation and critique of poetry. Art as epistemically inferior and morally corrupting illusion. The ethico-educative role of art. Plato's theory of beauty and its role in philosophical knowledge.

Reading:

1. Plato, Republic, Book X, 595-608b, trans. Desmond Lee (2nd rev. ed.) (London: Penguin, 1987).
2. Plato, Phaedrus, 249d-250d, trans. R. Hackforth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).
3. Plato, "Speech of Diotima", Symposium, trans. A. Nehamas and P. Woodruff, 203c-212c (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989).

Aesthetic Judgments of Taste

Aesthetic judgments as judgments of taste: subjective, based on feeling of pleasure, yet also “universal” in scope. The differences between the “agreeable” and the “beautiful”, and between “interested” and “disinterested” pleasure.

Reading:

1. Christian Helmut Wenzel, "Introduction" in his An Introduction to Kant's Aesthetics: Core Concepts and Problems (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005).
2. Douglas Burnheim, "The Peculiarities of the Aesthetic Judgment" in his An Introduction to Kant's Critique of Judgment (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000).
3. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), §§1-9.

The Analytic of the Beautiful

How can judgments of beauty be subjective yet universal? The universal communicability of beauty and Kant's idea of a sensus communis (common aesthetic sense). Art, imagination, and freedom.

Reading:

1. Douglas Burnheim, “Purposiveness and Harmony in Judgments” in his An Introduction to Kant's Critique of Judgment
2. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, §§10-22.

The Analytic of the Sublime

The difference between the beautiful and the sublime. The mathematical and the dynamical sublime. The clash between imagination and reason. The moral / ethical significance of the experience of the sublime.

Reading:

1. Christian Helmut Wenzel, 'Beyond Beauty, The Sublime,' in his An Introduction to Kant's Aesthetics. Core Concepts and Problems (Blackwell, 2005).
2. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, §§23-29.

Hegel's Aesthetics: Art, Religion, Philosophy

Hegel on the ontological significance of art. Art as a historical-cultural practice bringing truth to appearance by sensuous means. The relationship between art, religion, and philosophy. Have we reached the “end of art” in modernity?

Reading:

1. Robert Wicks: “Hegel's Aesthetics: An Overview” in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. Frederick C. Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
2. Extracts from G.W.F. Hegel, Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art, “Introduction,” trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).

FIRST ONLINE QUIZ (Week 6)

 READING WEEK

FIRST ESSAY DUE

Schopenhauer's Aesthetics: Metaphysics and Music

Artistic genius, madness, and the ability to know Ideas. Aesthetic knowledge and metaphysics; aesthetic pleasure and the overcoming of the will. Will-lessness and the feeling of the sublime. Music as a copy of the ‘primal will’. Is music a metaphysical artform?

Reading:

 1. Arthur Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Representation, Vol. II, 1819, §34-41

 2. Julian Young, ‘Chapter VII Art’ from his Willing and Unwilling: A Study in the Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (Dordrecht: Marinus Nijhoff,1987).                                          

 3. Martha C. Nussbaum, “Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Dionysus” in The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer, ed. Christopher Janaway

Nietzsche's Aesthetics: Tragedy and Modernity

 Nietzsche on art, music, and the will. Nietzsche's diagnosis of modern culture (“nihilism”). The duality of Apollonian and Dionysian art-impulses. Tragedy as the union of Apollonian and Dionysian. Art as a counter-movement to nihilism. Do we need tragic art in modernity?

Reading:

1. Martha C. Nussbaum, “Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Dionysus” in The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer, ed. Christopher Janaway.
2. Aaron Ridley, “Redemption through Art: The Birth of Tragedy” in his Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Nietzsche on Art (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007). Walter Kaufmann (New York: VintageBooks, 1967).

Heidegger on the Work of Art

Heidegger's challenge to modern aesthetics. What is the being of the work of art? Art as a way in which truth is disclosed, revealed, i.e. “set to work”. The dynamic conflict between “world” and “earth” in the work of art. Is art a “saving power” in an age of modern technology?

Reading:

1. Martin Heidegger, 'The Origin of the Work of Art' in Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. D. F. Krell (San Francisco: Harper, 1977).
2. Julian Young, extracts from his Heidegger's Philosophy of Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

SECOND ONLINE QUIZ

Merleau-Ponty on the Phenomenology of Art

Art and perception: the aesthetic experience of the body-subject as a way of understanding the world. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological approach to art: the critique of rationalism and of mind/body dualism. Merleau-Ponty on Cezanne's painting as phenomenology.

Reading:

1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Cezanne's Doubt” in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader, ed. Galen A. Johnson (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993).
2. Galen A. Johnson, 'Phenomenology and Painting: 'Cezanne's Doubt'' in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader, ed. Galen A. Johnson.

Deleuze on Art, Sensation, and Thought

Gilles Deleuze's aesthetics of sensation: overcoming Kantian dualism. Art and the presentation of “pre-representational” experience. The distinction between figuration and the Figure. Sensation, the body, and violence in the paintings of Francis Bacon.

Reading:

1. Daniel W. Smith, "Deleuze's Theory of Sensation: Overcoming the Kantian Duality" in Deleuze: A Critical Reader, ed. Paul Patton (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).
2. Gilles Deleuze, extracts from Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, trans. Daniel W. Smith (London: Continuum, 2003)

Adorno on Art, Autonomy, and Literature

Autonomous art and freedom in modernity. Can art be autonomous as well as “political”? What is the relationship between philosophy and literature? Can literature be philosophical? Beckett's “Endgame” and the Philosophers. What can Beckett's writing show us that philosophy cannot?

Reading:

1. Theodor W. Adorno, "The Autonomy of Art", extracts from his Negative Dialectics in The Adorno Reader, ed. Brian O'Connor (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).
2. Theodor Adorno, Trying to Understand Endgame in The Adorno Reader, ed. Brian O'Connor.
3. Simon Critchley, "Know Happiness-on Beckett" in his Very Little, Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature (2nd rev. ed.) (London: Routledge, 2004).

AESTHETICS JOURNAL DUE

SECOND ESSAY DUE