PHL2270

Introduction to aesthetics

Dirk Baltzly

8 points
* 3 hours per week
* First semester
* Clayton
* Prerequisites: Available to later-year students in any faculty

Objectives When you have successfully completed this subject, you should be able to expound clearly in your written work the views of the philosophers we will be reading and provide good reasons for thinking that what they say is right or wrong. Ideally you will also have gained an appreciation of how issues in aesthetics connect with other topics in philosophy as well as with developments in 20th-century art.

Synopsis The subject divides into three parts. In the first part, we will consider some answers to the questions, `What is art?' and `Why is art valuable?' We will also examine a set of arguments to the effect that there can be no definition of art. The second part of the subject concerns the objectivity of aesthetic judgements. We commonly think that some works of art are better than others. Are such judgements merely expressions of our purely subjective preferences, or is there some fact of the matter about the relative merit of works of art which make some of these judgements correct and others incorrect? We will also ask what features of artworks are relevant to our decisions about aesthetic value. Finally we will turn to the question of interpretive judgements. We frequently disagree about what works of art - particularly literary works - mean. What determines the meaning of a literary work? The author's intention? The reader's response?

Assessment Two essays (2500 words each): 40% each
* One 1-hour examination: 20%
* One essay may optionally be replaced by a two-hour examination.

Prescribed texts

A collection of readings available from the department and on reserve in the Sir Louis Matheson Library