Subject Area: Philosophy

This course explores historical and contemporary accounts of the nature of art, aesthetic experience, creative activity, imagination, expression, interpretation, and aesthetic evaluation. What is it about beauty that makes it hard to pin down? What motivates us to call something beautiful or ugly? What is the place that art has come to occupy in modern life? Do we mean the same thing by art as other ages and societies? Kant's writings on judgements of the beautiful and the sublime will be closely examined along with more recent influential thinkers in the field of aesthetics such as Heidegger, Adorno and Nancy.