Aesthetics

One can distinguish four ways in which science and aesthetics are related during the period since the Renaissance. First, science has been the subject of artistic representation, in painting and photography, in poetry and novels (e.g., in Byron's poetry, for example). Second, science has been used to explain aesthetic effects (e.g., Helmholtz's work on the way painters achieve visual effects or musicians achieve tonal effects). Third, aesthetic means have been used to convey scientific conceptions (e.g., through illustrations in scientific volumes or through aesthetically affective and effective writing). Finally, philosophers have stepped back to consider the relationship between scientific knowing and aesthetic comprehension (e.g., Kant, Bas van Fraassen); much of the discussion of this latter will focus on the relation between images and what they represent. In this lecture-discussion course we will consider all of these aspects of the science-aesthetic connection.

This seminar is part of a joint research project (The Idealist Project: Self-Determining Form and the Foundation of the Humanities) sponsored by the Neubauer Collegium. The focus of the year's activities is the topic of aesthetic form. There will be two conferences on this topic with the participation of leading international scholars in Autumn 2016 and Spring 2017, with the conference participants returning for seminar sessions devoted to readings of their work. Particular (but not exclusive) attention will be paid to the theory of tragedy. Important points of reference are works by Goethe, Schelling, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Benjamin, and Cavell. (I)

The academic study of opera all too often considers the score and libretto in a void, ignoring performance. But opera is a multi-dimensional art-form in which performance (staging, scene design, costume, musical direction, and of course the artistic interpretations of singers) makes an enormous contribution to the realization of the work. This course will study opera as drama in performance, asking how performance both realizes and renders determinate a musical and textual blueprint. Visitors to the class will include expert contributors in each of the major areas of operatic performance. The tentative list of operas to be studied includes: Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppaea, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Verdi’s Don Carlo and Otello, Wagner’s Lohengrin, and Strauss’s Elektra.

This course will examine two main questions: what bearing or importance does narrative film have on philosophy? Could film be said to be a form of philosophical thought? a form moral reflection? of social critique? Second, what sort of aesthetic object is a film? This question opens on to several others: what is the goal of an interpretation of a film? Is there a distinct form of cinematic intelligibility? What difference does it make to such questions that Hollywood films are commercial products, made for mass consumer societies? What role does the “star” system play in our experience of a film? We will raise these questions by attempting close readings of the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Films to be discussed: Shadow of a Doubt; Notorious; Strangers on a Train; Rear Window; Vertigo; North by Northwest; Psycho; Marnie. Selected critical readings will also be discussed. (I)

This course explores the question ‘What is art?’ when applied to visual works of art. Another way of forming the question is: ‘What differentiates a work of art from something which is not a work of art?’. The course follows several attempts to answer this question including the representational, expressive, formal, emotive, conventional and historic theories. In the second part of the course, we will address the question: ‘How do we best understand a work of art?’. We will see how these questions are related. Each topic in this course will focus on a single work of art so that the philosophical reading will be understood and evaluated in light of a guided analysis of the work in question.

What does it mean to develop a critical reading of a literary text (or artwork or film)? What is the object, the logic, the justification of critical judgment? This question – or package of questions –has been raised since antiquity (Aristotle), but has become especially pressing since historical variation emerged into the foreground of aesthetic consideration in the course of the nineteenth century. How can we understand the act of criticism in the absence of clearly formulated norms? If innovation predominates in literary and artistic production, then what is the critic to base her judgment on? In this class, seminar we will examine this question (and its various solutions) as it unfolds from Kant (Critique of the Power of Judgment) to Cavell, with such intermediate stations along the way as Friedrich Schlegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. The seminar will also consider para dogmatic examples of criticism (e.g., Auerbach, Frye, Barthes), while examining the very idea of a classic.

One can distinguish four ways in which science and aesthetics are related during the last two centuries. First, science has been the subject of artistic effort, in painting and photography and in poetry and novels (e.g., in Goethe’s poetry or in H. G. Wells’s Island of Doctor Moreau). Second, science has been used to explain aesthetic effects (e.g., Helmholtz’s work on the way painters achieve visual effects or musicians achieve tonal effects). Third, aesthetic means have been used to convey scientific conceptions (e.g., through illustrations in scientific volumes or through aesthetically affective and effective writing). Finally philosophers have stepped back to consider the relationship between scientific knowing and aesthetic comprehension (e.g., Kant and Bas van Fraassen). In this course, we will consider these four modes of relationship. The first part of the quarter will be devoted to Kant, reading carefully his third critique; then we will turn to Goethe and Helmholtz, both feeling the impact of Kant, and to Wells, a student of T. H. Huxley. We then consider more contemporary modes expressive of the relationship, especially the role of illustrations in science and the work of contemporary philosophers like Fraassen. (B) (I) (II)

“Interpretation” is called for in a wide variety of everyday and specialized domains.  Part of what attracts philosophical attention to the concept of “interpretation” are two implications which deployments of it usually seem to carry:  first, that there is a clarifying response to a meaning that is already there (i.e., “interpretation” is not pure invention); second, that, nonetheless, some creativity or innovation may be involved (i.e., “that’s one interpretation”).  How can both of these things be true?  How can the clarification or preservation of a meaning that is already there also involve innovation?  This puzzle is related to others which tend to inform contemporary debates about “interpretation”:  Is there such a thing as an objectively correct interpretation?  Can there really be a plurality of conflicting (but equally good) interpretations?  Is every take on the meaning of a text an interpretation of it, or are some meanings available without interpretation?  A further question concerns the unity of interpretation:  Does “interpretation” describe a distinctive form of understanding and explanation which, as some have claimed, picks out and structures the domain we call the “humanities”?  Or is “interpretation” rather a loose collection of different techniques for elucidation, which vary according to the type of thing being interpreted?  Taking up these questions, we will examine the concept of interpretation as it functions in a few different domains – e.g., law, literature, self-understanding – before turning to the broader question of the unity of interpretation across the humanities.  Readings will be from Wittgenstein, Kripke, Derrida, Gadamer, Iser, Sartre, Walter Benn Michaels, Charles Taylor, Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz, Atonin Scalia, Alexander Nehamas, Stanley Cavell, Richard Moran, among others.

Painting raises philosophical questions, if only because one can wonder why some particular pieces of the overall visible may attract more visual attention than others, which appear nevertheless just besides the former.  In fact, this privilege comes mostly from the radical (although subtle) difference between common law phenomena (objects) and saturated phenomena.  Among them, the two main rival postulations are idol and icon.  Concerning the idol, one may ask what precisely is its function?  How far can it reach the thing itself even more than objective knowledge (the examples of Courbet and Cezanne will be privileged)?  Concerning the icon, one may open the road to theological questions:  how far can the invisible God be aimed at through visible images?  Is iconoclasm the only option?  What theological arguments could support the claim for icons (Nicene Council II)?  Can the concept of icon be extended to other issues than “the icon of the invisible God” (Colossians 1, 15)?

Readings from Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, and Collingwood among others. (A) (I)