The girl plays with nonrepresentational dolls. Her games are devoid of any narrative content, amusements that depend upon their own intrinsic form. If you make her a present of a toy, she will discard it and play with the box. And yet she will only play with a box that once contained a toy. Her favorite toy was a notion about color. She lost it in the snow.
From Angle of Yaw by Ben Lerner
Date
January 22
January 29
February 5
February 12
February 19
February 26
March 5
March 19
March 26
April 2
April 9
April 16
April 23
April 30
Readings
Plato on beauty: selections from the Symposium, Phaedrus, and Republic; Lear, “Plato on Why Beauty is Good for the Soul”; Janaway, “The Fine and the Beautiful”
Plato on ‘art’: selection from the Republic; Nehamas, “Plato and the Mass Media”; Janaway, “Against Mimetic Poetry”
optional art history: Shakeshaft, selection from Beauty and the Gods; Bahrani, selection from Infinite Image
optional: Moss, “What is Imitative Poetry and Why is it Bad?”; Nehamas, “‘Only in the Contemplation of Beauty is Life Worth Living’”; Ludwig, “Eros in the Republic”
Capital ‘A’ Aesthetic: Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, moments 1-4 of the Analytic of the Beautiful; Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good”
Capital ‘A’ Aesthetic: Moran, “Kant, Proust, and the Appeal of Beauty”; Lord, “To Know Beauty Exactly: Eros and the Aims of Aesthetic Judgment”
Kierkegaard, Preface to Either/Or; selection from The Musical Erotic
Sibley, “Aesthetic Concepts”; “The Aesthetic and Non-Aesthetic”
Kant on Art: Kant, §§43-53 of the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment
Hegel on the Marriage Art and the Aesthetic:
Modernism and the Divorce of Art and the Aesthetic: Pippin,
Modernism and the Divorce of Art and the Aesthetic: Danto
Kantian Couple’s Therapy: Costello
Platonic Couple’s Thearpy: Nehamas
Administrative
We will be meeting from 11,45-1,00 on Thursdays. You should have received calendar invites from Zoom with the links.
Department of Philosophy
426 Claudia Cohen Hall
229 S 36th St.
Philadelphia, PA
PhilPapers
Google Scholar
Critical Chunks