ARTH 383 - Art and Philosophy: Aesthetics and Affect from Kant to Barthes
- M&W - 15:00-17:30
- EV-1.605
- INSTRUCTOR: STEFAN JOVANOVIC
This course will examine the qualities of feeling in art from the point of view of philosophical aesthetics and psychoanalytic theory. Beginning with the question of taste as formulated in Kant’s third Critique, we will consider not only the judgment of beauty in its subjective and universal validity, but also those dimensions of aesthetic judgment relative to gender and social class. We will then explore the category of the sublime in modernity and its associations with feelings of grandeur, awe, fear and pity. In the second part of the course we will turn to the investigation of aesthetic feeling in the psychoanalytic study of art and literature starting with Freud’s discussion of the ‘uncanny’ (das Unheimliche) in his 1919 essay of that name. Finally, we will consider the significance of affect within photographic theory and practice in the exemplary work of Roland Barthes. Throughout the course, our analysis and discussions will also address such questions as the possibility of philosophical truth in art and the relation between aesthetics and ethics. The course will examine artworks from a wide range of artistic movements, genres and practices, from the 18th century to the present.