Why do we mark off a special domain called "art" in which people make and observe special things? How is it that we sometimes turn our attention in a special direction called "aesthetic" and gain an intrinsic reward in doing so? Why do "art" and the "aesthetic" seem so important? Are they really? What is at stake in discerning aesthetic quality in human lives? What can we learn about "reality" and "humanity" by addressing these questions?

The purpose of this course is to practice persistent thinking and reasoning (philosophy) while searching for answers to some of the chief puzzles posed by aesthetic experience and criticism. We aim to strengthen our capacity for thinking critically and construc-tively at the same time that our capacity for appreciative response increases.

Course readings will be assigned in Aesthetics in Perspective, ed. Kathleen Higgins, and in handouts. We will also make a variety of aesthetic observations, especially of art works.

Grading will be based on class participation and journal-writing (30%), a 1,000-word criticism study (15%), a term project (30%), and a take-home final examination (25%).

P R O J E C T E D S C H E D U L E

Week of
Jan. 15 Introduction. What is aesthetic experience?

" 20 Criticism and its premises.
Read Bloom, "Music" 190-194, and Plato, "The Form of Beauty" 11-17
The REPRESENTATION paradigm of art; art as imitation. What can or should be represented?
Read Plato, "Art and Appearance" 114-121

" 27 An art as a representational strategy: the new art of film.
Read Langer, Panofsky, Kracauer handouts

Feb. 3 The autonomy of the art object; the "masterpiece."
Read Berger, "Oil Painting" 464-466, and handout
The problem of the aesthetic object's distinctiveness.
Read Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" 98-102, and Saito, "The Colorization Controversy" 435-440

Feb. 10 The modern subjective turn of the representation paradigm.
Read Kant, "The Four Moments" 44-53, and Nietzsche, "On Beauty and Ugliness" 54-57
A representational aesthetics of nature.
Read Kant on the natural sublime (handout)

" 17 The EXPRESSION paradigm of art.
Read Tolstoy, "What is Art?" 362-364; Bell, "Emotion in Response to Significant Form" 365-367; and Collingwood, "Expressing Emotion" 371-376
Creativity; "genius."
Read Rilke, "Letters to a Young Poet," 293-294, and Truitt, "Daybook" 295-301

" 24 Expression ownership issues.
Read Rudinow, "Can White People Sing the Blues?" 558-566, and Carroll, "The Image of Women in Film" 567-574
The distinctiveness of aesthetic response.
Read Bullough, "Psychical Distance" 164-167, and Dickie, "The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude" 172-179

Mar. 3 Can emotion be evaluated? Kitsch.
Read Kundera, "The Nature of Kitsch" 397-398, and Calinescu, "Kitsch and Hedonism" 399-403
An emotive aesthetics of nature.
Read Saito, "The Japanese Appreciation of Nature" 140-147

SPRING BREAK

Mar. 17 Alternatives in non-Western traditions?
Read Okpewho, "Principles of Traditional African Art," 653-661; Wither- spoon, "Navajo Aesthetics" 736-742; Keene, "Japanese Aesthetics" 678- 687; Goswamy, "Rasa" 688-703

" 24 The INTERVENTION paradigm of art.
Read Cage, "Experimental Music" 148-151; Heyd, "Understanding Performance Art" 490-493
Different meanings of aesthetic freedom.
Read Binkley, "Piece: Contra Aesthetics" 88-97, and Appiah, "Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?" 503-508

" 31 The revolution.
Read Wicke, "'Love Me Do'," 467-475
Can artistic interventions be evaluated?
Read Kuspit, "Art and the Moral Imperative" 222-225, and handout

Apr. 7 Is nature an intervention?
Read handout
Evaluating "environmental quality"
Read handout

" 14 Entertainment.
Read Collingwood on art vs. amusement (handout)
Roughness and cruddiness in contemporary art and culture.
Read handouts

" 21 Project presentations

" 28 Conclusion

FINAL EXAM DUE AT ASSIGNED TIME IN FINALS WEEK.

THE AESTHETICS JOURNAL--GUIDELINES

For your course notebook, a loose-leaf binder is strongly recommended. This will allow you to hand in just the newest pages of your journal each week, and also to incorporate the course materials that are handed out with your own writings.

Each week you will be asked to write one page in answer to a particular question, usually bearing on the week's readings. You will be expected to turn in with it another page (or more--but please not much more) of independent reflections on your own aesthetic experience. The purpose of this requirement is to encourage you to pay attention to things and to give you practice in articulating your thoughts and relating them to the theories and descriptions studied in the course. You may write about anything at all that can plausibly be called "aesthetic experience," but do not write only about one kind of experience all semester; push yourself periodically to give thought to a different domain or a different sort of issue.

Use your independent journal twice in the semester to react philosophically to ideas in selections in Aesthetics in Perspective that are not assigned to the class. You choose when and which pieces.

You can skip two pages of work without penalty--either by not turning in the entire assignment for one week or by leaving out parts of assignments on two separate occasions.

The journal will be graded unsatisfactory (-), satisfactory (\/), or very good (+) depending on the attentiveness and thoughtfulness it shows.

GUIDELINES FOR THE ART CRITICISM STUDY

The business of "critics" is to make evident what art works and aesthetic experiences mean and what they are worth. Without criticism there could be no philosophical aesthetics (at least, no intelligent philosophical aesthetics).
Your assignment is to find out how the writings of two critics are informed by fundamental conceptions of aesthetic experience. You will read a certain body of critical literature and draw conclusions from it.
You may deal with critics working in the same field (e.g. two music critics), or with critics in different fields (e.g. a music critic and a "nature writer"), or with a critic and an artist or group of artists in the same field.

The literature: The most accessible form of critical literature--and the form I most highly recommend for this assignment, inasmuch as we are surrounded by it throughout our lives and ought to practice thinking about it--is the brief review that appears in newspapers and magazines. If you go this route, read at least five reviews by each critic you discuss.
Perhaps the simplest way to proceed is to go through succeeding issues of the New Yorker, the Sunday New York Times, or Time or Newsweek. --You may also read lengthier pieces. Useful articles and essays are often found in critical anthologies.
Interviews with artists frequently appear in periodicals. See also the "Artists on Art" items in the course bibliography. You may want to consider a number of statements by artists working in one field.

Your conclusions: This is an exercise in philosophical diagnosis. You want to get to the bottom of ways of thinking. Show how what the critics say about the worth and importance of particular works of art or experiences (or what artists say about what they are trying to do) points to certain basic assumptions they are making about the nature of aesthetic experience. They might set forth these assumptions openly, but they might rely on them without discussion. Compare and contrast the assumptions made by one critic with those made by the other (or by the artist or artists). --You will not be able to discuss all the material you find in these writings. Decide what is most interesting, and concentrate on that in your paper.

GUIDELINES FOR THE TERM PROJECT

You can design your aesthetic project in different ways, but it should have two parts: an EVIDENCE section and an ANALYSIS section.

Evidence: Functioning as a critic, present an object or objects of aesthetic experience. This might involve exhibiting one or more works of art; it might involve describing one more experiences. Make your evidence work as a philosophical hook: lead your audience to take seriously one or more questions that (we will see) go deep.

Analysis: Functioning as a philosopher, you must define and explain the question(s) raised by your evidence. There will be some aspect of the question that seems quite difficult to account for--if it's a good question--and there will probably be different ways of thinking about the matter that seem, at first, equally valid. Your job is patiently, clearly, and reasonably to unravel the problem and come to a position on it that makes sense.