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
The goal of the group is to understand and discuss Kantian aesthetics, both in Kant himself and in contemporary work. We will start by getting on the same page about the basics of Kant’s views. After that, we will more closely examine both Kant’s writings and contemporary work that is Kantian. Below is the schedule and links to readings (except for the third critique, which we hope everyone has a hardcopy of; the common version will be the Guyer and Matthews Cambridge edition). This will be updated as we go and will of course be sensitive to the interests of the group.
September 15th: Kant, Moments 1-2 of the Analytic of the Beautiful (§§1-9, pps. 89-104)
September 22nd: Kant, Moments 3-4 of the Analytic of the Beautiful (§§10-22, pps. 104-127); chapter 3 of Allison’s Kant’s Theory of Taste, which you can find here.
September 29th: Kant, §§23-29 of the Analytic of the Sublime (pps. 129-149); chapter 13 of Allison’s Kant’s Theory of Taste, which you can find here.
October 6th: Kant, §§43-53 of the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment (pps. 182-207)
October 13th: Riggle, “On the Interest in Beauty and Disinterest”
October 20th: Chs. 1-2 (with a likely focus on ch 2) of Diarmuid Costello’s Aesthetics After Modernism
October 20th: Chs. 3-4 of Diarmuid Costello’s Aesthetics After Modernism
In fall ‘25, we meet from 1,30-2,30 (eastern time) on zoom. You can join the zoom by clicking here.
Department of Philosophy
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