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College aantekeningen Thinking About Art I: Philopshy Of Art (LWX011P05)
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LECTURE 1 Hume and Kant (1/2)What is philosophy?
- Asking questions (about everything in life, the non-physical)
- No specific method, no fixed way of ‘how to do philosophy’.
- Questioning answers rather than answering questions.
- Everything is up for debate
- Meta-level of asking questions
- All sciences ask questions, but philosophers question the concepts / presuppositions
of other sciences: What is law? / what is nature?
- Different branches: philosophy of science, of art, ethics, etc.
Philosophers ask questions in order to:
- Find the ‘essence’
- Lay bare presumptions (rethink our common sense)
- Analyze concepts and argumentations
Methods:
- Conceptual analysis / text analysis
- Developing new concepts
- Rational argumentation
- Debate
Sources of philosophy:
- Tradition
- Science
- Public sphere
What is philosophy of art?
- Thinking about / questioning art and its concepts.
- Relation to art history / art criticism
- In philosophy, art becomes increasingly important
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?
Hume and Kant on beauty and taste
Problem of taste
- Are judgments if taste merely subjective and / or individual?
Enlightenment
- The questioning about traditions and used concepts
- “Have the courage to use your own reason” (Kant)
- Challenging authority: power and knowledge
- What is the foundation of our ideas of truth / goodness / beauty
, Traditional vs. modern aesthetics
- Quarrel between the ancients and the moderns: should we copy the ancient
traditions or can we find new rules of beauty and art.
- How do we legitimize our judgments of taste?
- Rationalism vs. empiricism
- Baumgarten:
- To say something is beautiful is actually to say something is perfect.
- Aesthetics as the science of beauty
- Beauty has a mathematical / scientific explanation.
- Rule- or concepts-based aesthetics.
Hume and Kant
- Problem with rationalist approach
- You do not have to know what something is, in order to call it beautiful.
- Beauty is a feeling not a concept.
- Problem of Hume and Kant: judgements of taste are expressions of (subjective)
feeling … but does this make them completely arbitrary and/or individual?
David Hume
- ‘of the standard of taste’
- Following problem / paradox:
1. Judgments of taste are expressions of a sentiment (or feeling)
2. A sentiment can never be false/wrong (or misplaced)
3. Some judgments of taste are clearly more valid or valuable than others.
two of these statements can be true at the same time, but not all three!
- Standards of taste is what critics/experts have agreed on
- Aesthetic judgments depend on the agreement / recognition of others.
LECTURE 2 Immanuel Kant on beauty / taste (8/2)
Immanuel Kant (1724/1804)
- Beyond rationalism and empiricism
- Knowledge is not a mere reflection of the world, but it’s a construction of the mind.
- Three critiques:
1. Critique of pure reason: how can we legitimize logical and scientific
judgments?
2. Critique of practical reason: how can we legitimize moral judgments?
3. Critique of judgment: how can we legitimize aesthetic judgments.
Judgment
- “judgment in general is the ability to think the particular under the universal.”
- being able to label things: ‘this is a dog’.
- A judgment involves the interrelation between our imagination and understanding.
- Our mind subsumes intuitions / objects (of the imagination / perception) under
concepts (of the understanding).
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