Comparative Aesthetics I

                                                     

This course introduces students to the study of aesthetics, or the relationship between art, beauty and taste. The two-part paper does so in a comparative perspective using Western theories of aesthetics and Indian expositions on aesthetics in the next semester. Students are expected to develop the competence to read and understand philosophical texts and equally importantly apply their understanding deriving from such readings in the actual circumstances of dealing with art and the aesthetic experience in their everyday life. The course has arranged these texts in the form of a debate spanning across many cultures and centuries. Therefore, it is important for the student to perceive the continuities and discontinuities in thinking about aesthetics that are apparent in the two traditions that are being examined here.

Unit I: Introduction to Aesthetics

• Conception of beauty and pleasure
• The role of Culture in determining the beautiful
• Framing the problem of Comparative Aesthetics
• "aesthetics." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Student and Home Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011.

Unit 2: Greco-Roman Aesthetics

• Plato Ion and selections from The Republic (CLC, pp. 1-50)
• Aristotle Poetics (CLC, pp. 51-90)
• Horace The Art of Poetry (CLC, pp. 98-110)
• Tacitus Dialogue on Orators
• Longinus On Sublimity
• Dio of Prusa Philoctetes in the Tragedians

Unit 3: The Reaction to Art as Imitation: Art as Expression

• David Hume Of the Standard of Taste
• Tolstoy What is Art? (Chapters 1, 5-20)
• Collingwood The Principles of Art (Introduction, Book I, and Book III)

Unit 4: Kant's Aesthetics: The Critique of Judgement

• The Theory of Beauty: "Analytic of the Beautiful" (§§1-22, General Remark)
• The Theory of the Sublime: "Analytic of the Sublime" (§§23-29, General Remark)
• The Theory of Art: §§43-54
• The Deduction of Taste and the Link to Morality: §§30-42, 55-60