Problems of Aesthetics

Pre-requisites: None

Course objectives: Student will be introduced to relatively wide range of aesthetic issues and to various types of argumentation within aesthetics, so she could realize their importance both for general philosophy and theory of individual arts.

Course description: Issuesto be considered include the nature of art as a cultural form and its changing status in different historical epochs; genre, stylistic and thematic complexity and diversity of art; implications of that complexity and diversity in terms of how to define, interpret and evaluate a work of art; representation of reality in art; question of truth in literature; and question of emotion in art, including the nature and logical status of expressive properties of artworks.

Learning Outcomes: Student should be able to understand problems of aesthetics and types of argumentation within aesthetics without the usual simplifying and reducing the aesthetic issues to secondary concern in philosophy and culture in general.

Literature/Reading:

• Ričard Volhajm, Umetnost i njeni predmeti, prevod Anike Krstić, 2002
• Stephen Davies, The Philosophy of Art, 2006
• Paul Oskar Kristeller, „The Modern System of the Arts (I)-(II)“, Journal of the History of Ideas, 1951, 1952
• Leon Kojen, Umetnost i vrednost, 1989, str. 7-76
• Rosalind Hursthouse, „Truth and Representation“, Oswald Hanfling (ed.), Philosophical Aesthetics: An Introduction, 1992, str. 239-296