L&S Curricular Connections

What or who decides whether something is beautiful or not? What purpose do beauty and art serve? Where do originality, genius, and inspiration come from? What do art and beauty have to do with freedom and human progress? We will examine primarily western European and North American approaches to beauty as presented in works of philosophy, literary theory, and theories of art and aesthetics, exploring key theoretical questions as they evolve among several intellectual arenas over many centuries.

Artistic beauty and the beauty of nature lend themselves to discussion of abstract philosophical concepts: truth, eternity, goodness and harmony. In this course we will examine primarily western European and North American historical approaches to the beauty of art and nature as represented in works of philosophy, literary theory and theories of art and aesthetics. This course is not a comprehensive survey of the history of philosophical aesthetics nor of art; the goal is instead to examine key theoretical questions as they evolve among several intellectual arenas and over many centuries.