Aesthetics

Is opera an archaic and exotic pageant for fanciers of overweight canaries, or a relevant art form of great subtlety and complexity that has the power to be revelatory? In this course of eight sessions, jointly taught by Professor Martha Nussbaum and Anthony Freud, General Director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, we explore the multi-disciplinary nature of this elusive and much-maligned art form, with its four hundred-year-old European roots, discussing both historic and philosophical contexts and the practicalities of interpretation and production in a very un-European, twenty-first century city.

Anchoring each session around a different opera, we will be joined by a variety of guest experts, one each week, including a director, a conductor, a designer and two singers, to enable us to explore different perspectives.

The list of operas to be discussed include Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppaea, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Rossini’s Barber of Seville, Verdi's Don Carlos, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Wagner's Die Meistersinger, Britten's Billy Budd, and Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking. (A) (I)

The seminar will explore aspects of Nietzsche’s theory of value, especially regarding morality and aesthetics, in the context of two major intellectual 19th-century influences on his thought:  naturalism (especially through Schopenhauer and German Materialism) and Romanticism.  The first half of the seminar (led by Leiter) will emphasize naturalistic themes in his understanding of morality in On the Genealogy of Morality and excerpts from Beyond Good and Evil.  The second half (led by Forster) will examine the influence of Romanticism, including in The Birth of Tragedy and selections from later works.  

Is opera an archaic and exotic pageant for fanciers of overweight canaries, or a relevant art form of great subtlety and complexity that has the power to be revelatory? In this course of eight sessions, jointly taught by Professor Martha Nussbaum and Anthony Freud, General Director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, we explore the multi-disciplinary nature of this elusive and much-maligned art form, with its four hundred-year-old European roots, discussing both historic and philosophical contexts and the practicalities of interpretation and production in a very un-European, twenty-first century city.

Anchoring each session around a different opera, we will be joined by a variety of guest experts, one each week, including a director, a conductor, a designer and two singers, to enable us to explore different perspectives.

The list of operas to be discussed include Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppaea, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Verdi's Don Carlos, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Wagner's Die Meistersinger, Strauss's Elektra, and Britten's Billy Budd. (A) (I)

Is opera an archaic and exotic pageant for fanciers of overweight canaries, or a relevant art form of great subtlety and complexity that has the power to be revelatory? In this course of eight sessions, jointly taught by Professor Martha Nussbaum and Anthony Freud, General Director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, we explore the multi-disciplinary nature of this elusive and much-maligned art form, with its four hundred-year-old European roots, discussing both historic and philosophical contexts and the practicalities of interpretation and production in a very un-European, twenty-first century city.

Anchoring each session around a different opera, we will be joined by a variety of guest experts, one each week, including a director, a conductor, a designer and two singers, to enable us to explore different perspectives.

The list of operas to be discussed include Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppaea, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Verdi's Don Carlos, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Wagner's Die Meistersinger, Strauss's Elektra, and Britten's Billy Budd. (A) (I)

We will discuss all seven volumes of Proust's magisterial novel, In Search of Lost Time (1913-1927). In order to be able to do so in a ten week quarter, students must announce their intention to register for the course before the end of the Spring quarter of 2018, and pledge to have read the entire novel before the March, 2019 beginning of the seminar. (They can do so by emailing Robert Pippin at rbp1@uchicago.edu.) The novel is well known for its treatment of a large number of philosophical issues: including self-identity over time, the nature of memory, social competition and snobbery, the nature of love, both romantic and familial, the role of fantasy in human life, the nature and prevalence of jealousy, the nature and value of art, the chief characteristics of bourgeois society, and the nature of lived temporality. Our interest will be not only in these issues but also in what could be meant by the notion of a novelistic "treatment" of the issues, and how such a treatment might bear on philosophy as traditionally understood. We shall use the Modern Library boxed set of seven volumes for the English translation, and for those students with French, we will use the Folio Collection paperbacks of the seven volumes. (I)

The general question to be addressed: might film (fictional narratives or “movies”) be a reflective form of thought, and if so, might that form of reflection be considered a philosophical one? The genre to be interrogated with this question in mind will be melodramas, narratives of great suffering and extreme emotional experiences, the best of which explore how we might make sense of such suffering. A prominent question: the difference between tragedy and melodrama, and the bearing of that difference on the general question. Another: might such films be a form of collective self-knowledge at a time? Another: might such films be a unique way to explore the problems philosophers call “moral psychology,” and what difference should it make to philosophers if the psychological subjects in such an inquiry are women? We shall watch nine films in connection with these questions: Stella Dallas (1937); Now Voyager (1942); Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948); Caught (1949); Rebel Without a Cause (1955); All That Heaven Allows (1955); Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974); Written on the Wind (1956); and  Imitation of Life (1959); Readings will include Stanley Cavell's Contesting Tears, and essays by Linda Williams, Laura Mulvey, George Wilson, Christine Gledhill; Victor Perkins, Rainer Fassbinder, Thomas Elsaesser, and others. (A) (I)

In this class we will consider closely attempts to understand tragedy philosophically. Sophocles' Oedipus the King and Shakespeare's Hamlet, two texts that have particularly attracted philosophical attention will serve as constant reference points, but other paradigmatic tragedies (Euripides Bacchae, Goethe's Faust, Beckett's Endgame) will also be considered. Among the philosophical contributions to be considered are works by Aristotle, Schiller, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Scheler, Schmitt, Benjamin, Murdoch, and Menke. Major issues to be dealt with: the structure of tragic plot; the tragic affects; catharsis; ancient and modern tragedy; tragedy and the tragic; the aesthetics of tragedy; tragedy and society; tragedy and the sacred.

Is opera an archaic and exotic pageant for fanciers of overweight canaries, or a relevant art form of great subtlety and complexity that has the power to be revelatory? In this course of eight sessions, jointly taught by Professor Martha Nussbaum and Anthony Freud, General Director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, we explore the multi-disciplinary nature of this elusive and much-maligned art form, with its four hundred-year-old European roots, discussing both historic and philosophical contexts and the practicalities of interpretation and production in a very un-European, twenty-first century city. Anchoring each session around a different opera, we will be joined by a variety of guest experts, including a director, conductor, designer and singer, to enable us to explore different perspectives. The tentative list of operas to be discussed include Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Rossini's La Cenerentola, Verdi's Don Carlos, Puccini's Madama Butterfly, Wagner's Ring, Strauss's Elektra, and Britten's Billy Budd. (A) (I)

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.

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.