Aesthetics

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Broadly speaking, philosophical aesthetics breaks into three distinct areas: (i) definitional questions about what what makes art art, questions, that is, concerning whether art, as a general category, can be defined; (ii) questions of interpretation, concerning canons and protocols for understanding artworks, whether, e.g., an artist's intentions are relevant to the meaning of an artwork produced by that artist; and (iii) questions of value, concerning the nature of aesthetic experience, the character of beauty, and the general question of the objectivity or subjectivity of value in the domain of art. These three questions divide into many subquestions, some overlapping with one another and some not; further, they play out differently across different media of art: drama, music, opera, painting, sculpture, film, photography, architecture, and so on. We will pursue these questions and in a London-centric way, availing ourselves of the astonishing range of cultural offerings throughout the city.