PHL 2015 Introduction to Aesthetics
This course is designed to be a survey through Western theories on aesthetics. Aesthetics is concerned with questions around art. What is art? How do we evaluate what has artistic merit? How is beauty connected (or not connected) to aesthetics? How does art inform culture and vice versa? Do we care about the artist's intention in our reaction to works of art? Must art be political? We will look at how our understanding of what can be considered art has mutated over the time through looking at both tradition high art as well as contemporary sources of art.
LA