Junior Tutorial

Topic: The Immorality of Art (instructor: C. Kirwin)
Can art lead us to virtue-and, if so, can it also lead us to vice? Should art be in the service of morality and the greater good of society, or should the artist pursue only "art for art's sake"? Can a work of art be morally bad but still artistically good? To investigate these and related questions, we'll begin at the beginning, with Plato's famous attacks on art and artists, and then look at several key texts from the history of the philosophy of art, focusing on the question of the relationship between art and morality as it is explored in these works. Towards the end of the course, we will start to relate our findings to issues in our contemporary culture, studying some feminist critiques of the aesthetic concept of beauty, as well as aesthetic developments driven by oppressed groups striving for emancipation through art. Throughout the course, we shall be looking at various artworks-including examples of painting, sculpture, literature, music, film, and photography-that connect up to the themes that we discuss.

Topic: On Freedom and Its Absence (instructor: P. Brixel)

The aim of this course is to explore the idea of freedom in political philosophy. The course is divided into three parts. In the first part, we will try to determine the relations between freedom, choice, desire, and the good by examining empiricist, existentialist, rationalist, and capability-based approaches to the definition of freedom. In the second part, we will ask what kinds of obstacles constitute constraints on freedom. Is freedom simply the absence of human interference, or the absence of domination, or can we be unfree even if we are not interfered with or dominated? In the third part, we will deploy what we have learned so far in an investigation of specific questions about freedom or unfreedom in relation to labor. Does the value of freedom impose restrictions on what work should be like? Do workers under capitalism enter the labor-contract unfreely? Is leisure necessary for freedom? This investigation will deepen our understanding of the various philosophical conceptions of freedom and unfreedom.