History of art and philosophy of art are rarely taught together. Since that’s what we’re doing in this class, perhaps it’s worth borrowing another term for the philosophy of art to talk about this strange, contested field: ‘aesthetics’. But what is it? What do we study? And how? What and who does it include and exclude?

The word aesthetics comes up a lot in everyday life, so we feel like we know what it might mean without having to think about it: beautiful people, bodies, places, and things. Perhaps it’s something we can buy. After all, cosmetic surgery clinics tell us they offer ‘aesthetics’. As a way of asking questions about the history and philosophy of art, however, we’re asking about the nature of beauty and art. What kinds of things are they? Is ‘beauty’ the same in all places and times or is it different depending on when and where you ask this question? How do historical, social, political, cultural, and technological factors affect art and how we look, think, talk, and write about it?

These are big questions. We’re not going to resolve them once and for all because philosophers have been asking them for centuries. So we’ll keep things simple. Each week, we’ll read a classic philosophical text. But art is complex, so we’ll do something unique – pairing our philosophical text with a great essay written by a critic, bringing them into dialogue so one refracts the other, making us ask new questions about old ideas.

This will not only give us a solid grounding in major theories of art, but engage with the tasks of the critic: to look for ourselves; to think, to judge for ourselves; to have the courage to say what we really think or feel about something.

Students will be assessed in three ways: contributions to in-class discussions (including visits to gallery spaces and informal discussions); a "personal map" of their understanding of the themes and how it has changed during the class; a review of an exhibition in a gallery or museum (preferably in Vienna, others also welcome).

Sessions

1. Introduction
   
   
2. Photography
   Walter Benjamin
   
   
3. The simulacrum
   Plato/Susan Sontag
   
   
4. Catharsis
   Aristotle/James Baldwin
   
   
5. Grace
   The Renaissance/Vladimir Nabokov
   
   
6. Taste
   David Hume/Pauline Kael
   
   
7. The sublime
   Immanuel Kant (and Søren Kierkegaard)/Zadie Smith
   
   
8. The "end of art"
   Hegel/Mark Greif
   
   
9. Intoxication
   Friedrich Nietzsche/Aldous Huxley
   
   
10. Mass culture
    Theodor W. Adorno/Umberto Eco
    
    
11. Frames
    Jacques Derrida/Judith Butler