ENGL7026 · English

Aesthetics: Philosophy, Politics, Art

Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences

Fulfills the graduate theory requirement.This course will be a discussion-driven survey ofaesthetics--that subdiscipline of critical thought that attempts to answer the fundamental questions of what art is and what role it plays in our lives. Over the course of the semester, we will likely read texts by philosophers and critics including Immanuel Kant, Paul de Man, Arthur Danto, Stanley Cavell, and Jacques Rancire; and we will consider works by writers and visual artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Alexander Kluge, and Ben Lerner. Specific topics to be addressed will include: the relationship between subjective and objective claims about beauty; the connection of aesthetic experience to political activity; the challenge of modernism to classical standards of taste; and the so-called end of art. This class should be of interest to students of literature, music, visual art, and philosophy.