Beauty 15-PHIL-390H-001 Winter 2010-11
General Topic
This course is an introduction to theories of beauty from Plato to the present. For Plato, the great philosopher of Ancient Greece, the beautiful was an objective value. We aspire to both goodness and beauty because we love and desire them. Kant, a philosopher of the late eighteenth century, had a very different view. For him beauty is a kind of pleasure, although it is distinct from mere sensual pleasure. When someone claims that a painting or a vista in nature is beautiful they are claiming that everyone ought to take pleasure in it. These rival views about beauty continue to be influential. For example, Alexander Nehamas defends a broadly Platonic of beauty, as the object of love and desire. He describes how he fell in love with Manet’s famous painting Olympia and was led by this love to get to know the work ever more intimately. Arthur Danto is in the Kantian tradition. He points out that in the recent past artists have moved away from beauty as a value. They are no longer interested in the “easy” pleasure that beauty bestows, and seek instead the grotesque, the ugly, the horrific, even the disgusting, such as Damien Hirst’s cow’s head covered with maggots. Beauty also has important political implications. Some feminists argue that beauty is a value determined by those in power, chiefly men, and that women spend huge amounts of time and money trying to instantiate a false ideal of beauty. Others argue that beauty is a biologically adaptive trait. This course will address all these and other topics.
Required Texts:
All readings will be posted on Blackboard
Topics and Readings
Week One, Jan 3-7: Plato’s conception of beauty.Love of beauty leads us towards love of the good.
Reading:Excerpts from Plato’s Symposium.
Week Two, Jan 10-14:The Neo-Platonic Tradition: Beauty, Truth and Goodness coincide in The One (God).
Reading: Excerpts from Plotinus, Enneads.
Elaine Scarry, excerpts from On Beauty and Being Just
Week Three, Jan 19-21:A Contemporary “Platonist” View of Beauty
Colin McGinn argues that “virtue coincides with beauty of soul and vice with ugliness of soul.”
Reading:Colin McGinn,Ethics, Evil and Fiction, chapter 5: “Beauty of Soul.” Movie clip: Brief Encounter.
Week Four, Jan 24-28: The Politics of Personal Beauty
Naomi Wolff argues that personal beauty is a myth. There are no standards of beauty excerpt those imposed by specific social or cultural groups. Nancy Etcoff disagrees, pointing out there are some beauty universals, probably due to beauty’s important role in evolution.
Reading: Naomi Wolff, The Beauty Myth (excerpts)
Nancy Etcoff, The Survival of the Prettiest (excerpts)
Week Five, Jan 31-Feb 4: The Eighteenth Century Tradition: David Hume. The “standard of taste” (the criterion for what counts as beautiful in art) is set bythe pleasure experienced by certain sorts of critics, namely criticswho have developed certain capacities to a high degree.
Reading: David Hume, “On the Standard of Taste”
Week Six, Feb 7-11: The Eighteenth Century Tradition: Burke and Kant. Edmund Burkeon the difference between the beautiful and the sublime. Immanuel Kant on the judgment of taste (the judgment that something is beautiful).
Reading: Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (excerpts)
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of the Power of Judgment (excerpts)
Weeks Seven-Eight
Feb 14-16: No Class.
Feb 18-21: A contemporary assessment of the Kantian View.
Reading: Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment continued
Roger Scruton, Beauty, chapter 1, “Judging Beauty”
Feb 23-25: Beauty and Kitsch
Kathleen Higgins, “Beauty and Its Kitsch Competitors”
Week Nine, Feb 28-March 4: Recent Theories of Beauty: Arthur Danto. Is beauty at all relevant to the appreciation of contemporary art?
Reading: Arthur Danto, The Abuse of Beauty (excerpts)
Week Ten, March 7-11: Recent Theories of Beauty: Alexander Nehamas. Nehamas brings us back to Plato with an account of beauty as the object of eros or (erotic) love.
Reading: Alexander Nehamas, Only a Promise of Happiness (excerpts)
Requirements
- Regular attendance,thoughtful class participation, and regular postings to Blackboardare all necessary condition for obtaining any grade higher than a C+.
- Four short (one page double spaced) written responses to the readings, two by the end of week 4 (Jan 28) and two by the end of week 8 (Feb 25). You will be allowed to write a fifth paper to replace one of these grades (within the time constraints), if you want to. I will give further directions in class about these papers.
- On Wednesday or Thursday of each week, please post to the Blackboard discussion board ONE sentence commenting on an interesting argument that you’ve read or insight that you’ve acquired in the week’s reading and discussion, and ONE question that remains for you e.g. concerning the plausibility of a view we’ve discussed. Then please respond to at least ONE of the questions raised by other students. Deadline for the week’s comments: Thursday afternoon at 4 p.m. Deadlines for responses to questions: Friday morning at 9 a.m.
- A longer paper (5-6 pages) on an assigned topic. You will be given a choice of topics drawn from the readings in the course.
Grades
Grades will be assigned mainly on the basis of written work.
Short papers 40% [switched to 50%]
Final paper 50% [switched to 40%]
Class participation and Blackboard commentaries10%.
In grading essays the main things I look for are (a) clarity in exposition of the ideas in the reading, and (b) critical abilities, i.e. the ability to explain the virtues of a particular position, and to point out any difficulties the position might face. An original perspective is always welcome, although it’s hard to come by in philosophy. In general, it’s a good idea when writing about philosophical ideas to be as explicit as possible: think of what you’re doing as writing for someone who knows nothing about the subject and is a little slow on the uptake!
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