Undergraduate Course: After Aesthetics: Philosophy and/as Art (HIAR10128)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh College of Art |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type | Standard |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Credits | 20 |
| Home subject area | History of Art |
Other subject area | None |
| Course website |
None |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | This module follows on from the new third-year module ¿The Rise of the Aesthetic: Art, Nature and the Ideal¿. It focuses on the late-nineteenth and twentieth-century critique of the concept of aesthetic experience and of related notions of subjectivity, particularly in the work of existential phenomenologists but also in the work of Frankfurt School critical theorists and some post-structuralist writers. The notion of aesthetic experience developed from eighteenth-century idealism and became of central importance to art-historical discourse as well as philosophy of art in the nineteenth century. Alois Riegl, for example, narrated the shift from classical to Christian art in terms of a more subjectivised mode of representation, while Heinrich Wölfflin saw in the transition from ¿Renaissance¿ to ¿Baroque¿ the move from a world of discrete entities to one unified in the fugitive nature of subjective visual experience. However, the claim that ¿feeling¿ or a universal sense of humanity in experience defines our relationship to art was rejected by a number of radical thinkers from the later nineteenth century onwards. For example, Nietzsche¿s existentialism attempted in different ways to reframe the significance of art to human culture; Freud¿s psychoanalysis undermined the notion of the unity of the subject and the motivations for artistic activity; more recently, Paul de Man attacked the very notion of aesthetics on political grounds. Students will engage with these challenging debates in module texts via presentations, group work and by bringing to class examples from the history of the arts that amplify or challenge the ideas under discussion. |
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
1. At the end of the module students will be able to:
1. Explain verbally and in writing some key arguments in the development of post-aesthetic philosophy of art.
2. 2. Distinguish between the positions taken by thinkers studied in the module on the role of art in human society.
3. 3. Engage in open discussion with peers, defending their own views clearly and respecting the views of others.
4. 4. Work effectively in a group context.
5. 5. Conduct independent library research in support of written work and present their ideas succinctly and clearly using both theoretical and visual material.
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Assessment Information
| 2500 word essay 50%, 2 hour examination 50% |
Special Arrangements
| None |
Additional Information
| Academic description |
Not entered |
| Syllabus |
Part 1 ¿ Nietzsche on Art
The Birth of Tragedy
Part 2 ¿ Freud and Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (excerpts) and Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood
Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny
Part 3 ¿ Art and Phenomenology
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ¿Cézanne¿s Doubt¿ and ¿Eye and Mind¿
Martin Heidegger, ¿The Origin of the Work of Art¿
Martin Heidegger, ¿The Origin of the Work of Art¿ (continued)
Part 4 ¿ From Heidegger to Post-Structuralism
Jacques Derrida, ¿Restitutions, or The Truth in Pointing¿
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, Chapter 1
Jean François Lyotard, The Inhuman
Coda ¿ Against Post-Aesthetics
Jacques Rancière, Aesthetics and its Discontents
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| Transferable skills |
Not entered |
| Reading list |
Selected Bibliography
Primary Texts
¿ Jacques Derrida, ¿Restitutions, of The Truth in Pointing¿ in The Truth in Painting, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987
¿ Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: an archaeology of the human sciences, New York: Vintage Books, 1973
¿ Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, (Pelican Freud Library, Vol 4), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983
¿ --------------------, ¿Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood¿, ¿The Uncanny¿, Art and Literature (Pelican Freud Library, Vol 14), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988
¿ Martin Heidegger, ¿The Origin of the Work of Art¿, in Julian Young and Kenneth Hayes (trans.), Off the Beaten Track, Cambridge: CUP, 2002
¿ Galen Johnson (ed.), The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1993
¿ Jean François Lyotard, The Inhuman: Reflections on Time, London: Polity, 1993
¿ Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, in Raymond Geuss and Ronald Spiers (eds.), The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, Cambridge: CUP, 1999 (rev.ed.)
¿ Jacques Rancière, Aesthetics and its Discontents, London: Polity Press, 2009
Key resources
David Cooper, A Companion to Aesthetics, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995
Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy (on-line at http://plato.stanford.edu)
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| Study Abroad |
Not entered |
| Study Pattern |
Students meet for ten two-hour seminars per week over one semester.
Students are expected to read widely and independently around the material studied.
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| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | |
Course secretary | Mrs Sue Cavanagh
Tel: (0131 6)51 1460
Email: Sue.Cavanagh@ed.ac.uk |
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