Courses
Nietzsche’s Aesthetics
Instructor: Bret Schneider
Enrollment OPEN for October 2023
Art was emphatically the cornerstone of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy. Moreover, Nietzsche's theories of art heavily influenced — directly or indirectly — the ways we think about art and culture today. In this short course we will read Nietzsche's central writings on aesthetic experience, and learn why art is so central in our modern society.
Enrollment closed
Our understanding of how art changes and the stories we tell ourselves about its development in history constitute our theory of what art is and can be today. Whether implicitly or explicitly, our conception of the history of art is an account of how its present came to be and what tasks its future poses. Thus, the study of the history of art is more than an intellectual interest of artists; it plays a crucial role in our capacity to determine what art can become.
This course studies the evolution of art throughout its more than 30,000-year history, from the oldest cave paintings at Altamira and Lascaux to the emergence of modern art in the nineteenth century. How has the role of art in society changed from what it meant for an Egyptian, who lived in the same way for generations, devoted to tradition and religion, to its value for a bourgeois individual, preoccupied with the building of industries, the enjoyment of cities, and the ephemeral quality of modern life? We will discuss the development of art’s history primarily by reading Arnold Hauser’s 4-volume text The Social History of Art, paying close attention to what is unique about the problems of aesthetic objects in distinct historical epochs and seeking to clarify the unprecedented qualities of art in our moment.