The course explores traditional and contemporary
issues in aesthetics, or the philosophy of
art and beauty. We seek to understand the definition,
nature and meaning of art, the philosophical
aspects of the process of art creation and
appreciation, and the interplay between art
and its moral and social context. We explore
such challenging questions as: What is
art? What is beauty? What is ugliness? Should
art
be censored? When artistic and moral values
clash, which ones should take precedence? Why
have there been no great women artists in the
history of the Western art? Is beauty merely
in the eye of the beholder or is it an objective
property of the artwork?
While the primary
focus of the course is theoretical, we spend
a substantial amount of time experiencing
art itself in and outside the classroom through
multimedia presentations, visits to select
art galleries and guest presentations. The
primary philosophical texts by Plato, D.
Hume,
I. Kant, L. Tolstoy, N. Caroll, R. Colingwood,
G. Dickie, A. Danto, N. Goodman and others
provide a framework for our analyses of concrete
artworks and the particular artworks serve
as case studies of the plausibility of the theoretical
views studied in the course.
