PHILOSOPHY OF ART

Course Objectives: Going through themes such as beauty, aesthetic judgment, representational regimes, and the relationship between art and politics, this course aims to make students think about art’s role and usage in our everyday lives and to concentrate on the historical development of aesthetic thought as one of the sub-disciplines of philosophy.

At the end of the course, students: 

• Become competent in main discussions and turning points in the history of aesthetics.
• Gain a philosophical point of view on concepts such as beauty, sublime, and aesthetic judgment.
• Commenting on actual artworks in each class, obtain the ability to apply their philosophical knowledge to practice.
• Connect aesthetics to other subdisciplines of philosophy, such as ontology, epistemology, and ethics.

Course Content: From Antiquity to the present day, this course examines various approaches to art and aesthetics formulated by different philosophers. Students will read primary and secondary texts by/on Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Benjamin, Adorno, and Ranciere.