PHIL361 SP27

This course is an introduction to aesthetics and the philosophy of art. We may cover topics such as aesthetic categories and aesthetic judgment, imagination, intentions and point of view, aesthetic hedonism, the nature of fiction and literature, make-believe, participation in fictional worlds, art and politics/social change, aesthetic and moral values, art and moral education, and difficult and easy art. We will learn about these topics through a variety of representational arts including painting and photography, film, and fiction and literature. Readings may include:

Plato, excerpts from The Republic

Aristotle, excerpts from Poetics

Kant, excerpts from The Critique of Judgment

Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste” and “On Tragedy”

Danto, “The Artworld” 

Gaut, “The Long Debate” or similar

Carroll, “Art and Ethical Criticism” or similar

Nussbaum, excerpts from Love’s Knowledge

Eaton, “Where Ethics and Aesthetics Meet” or similar

Kieran, “Forbidden Knowledge” or similar

Gendler, “The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance”

Bersani and Dutoit, excerpts from Arts of Impoverishment, or similar

Jamison, “In Defense of Saccharin”

Walton, “What is Fiction?”

Walton, “How Marvelous!”

Borges, “Pierre Menard”

Walton, “Fearing Fictions”

Jacobson, “In Praise of Immoral Art”