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The course surveys philosophical approaches to the nature of beauty, art, and creativity. Students will be exposed to classic writings from important thinkers in both western and eastern traditions. Thinkers may include (but are not limited to) Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Kant, Confucius, Zhuangzi, etc.
This book is a philosophical investigation of the sense of taste. Beginning with the Greek thinkers who classified taste as an inferior, bodily sense, the book then proceeds to trace the parallels between notions of aesthetic and gustatory taste that were explored in the formation of modern aesthetic theories. The book presents scientific views of how taste actually works and identifies multiple components of taste experiences, and looks at the different meanings food and drink convey in art and literature as well as in ordinary human life and proposes an approach to the aesthetic value of taste that recognizes the representational and expressive roles of food.
This book provides an overview on the history and present of aesthetic theory. It contains a comprehensive survey of the field of aesthetics, with selections drawn from ancient, medieval, renaissance, modern, and contemporary sources. It provides a radically new perspective on the genesis and development of aesthetic theory by including an expanded section on early modern aesthetics. The book likewise pays special attention to the interdisciplinary nature of aesthetics, reconstructing some of the dialogues in literary theory and art criticism that gave rise to philosophy's more systematic efforts. It introduces contemporary debates by including a number of thinkers not yet anthologized.
