HISTORY OF AESTHETICS

The course analyzes history of aesthetics authors and themes since antiquity, with particular reference to some key categories such as creation, form, symbol, artistic perception, expressiveness, imagination, imitation, fruition. The aim, according to the Dublin descriptors, is to provide students with some notions related to the modern and contemporary historical-artistic debate, in order to understand and deepen the fundamental issues of the discipline and develop autonomous judgments. The aesthetic studies, object of the course, will increase the ability to interpret aesthetic phenomena in general and will develop the student's expressive and argumentative ability. The ability to organize the data provided by the discipline in a critical and creative way will be stimulated and students will be able to relate aesthetic ideas with other fields of knowledge.

Frontal lectures. The texts in the program will be read in the classroom and guided discussions will be held on the topics addressed.

A - General part (4 ECTS): The main historical stages of aesthetics: (from Antiquity to the Renaissance, from the Baroque to the eighteenth century, Idealism, Romanticism, Marxism, Neoidealism, Positivism, Evolutionism, Psychological Aesthetics, Linguistics, Semiotics, Human Sciences, Vitalism, Pragmatism, Analytical Aesthetics, Phenomenology, Existentialism, Hermeneutics, Deconstructionism). The themes of aesthetics: beauty, form, symbol, taste, genius, imagination, mimesis, ugly, sublime, tragic.

B - Monographic part (2 ECTS):

- Ernst Cassirer: three seminars on art as a symbolic form (language and art and the educational value of art).

A – General introduction (4 ECTS)

E. Franzini- M. Mazzocut-Mis, Estetica, Milano-Torino, Mondadori, pp. VII-XIX e 1-319.

B – Monographic course (2 ECTS)

E. Cassirer, Simbolo mito e cultura, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1981, pp. 149- 219.

-  S.K. Langer, Problemi dell’arte, Palermo, Aesthetica Edizioni, 2013, pp. 7-150.

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