Content of Learning Activity

The philosophy of art is often reduced to an abstract questioning of art and beauty. We thus wonder about the definition of these objects presented as timeless, as if they were passing through the stories and the time. In this context, the great philosophical theories are mobilized as so many opinions, to the degree of various sophistication, but each time peremptory - "Kant said that ...". However, as soon as one looks more closely at the questions about the beautiful and the art, fundamental differences appear. - First, these questions about the beautiful and the art are born each time in a precise historical context. During the Antiquity, for example, paradoxically presented as the epoch of great art, philosophers like Plato or Aristotle wonder about the Beautiful, but this concept is related to Good or Good and not to Art. More precisely, the question of the beautiful is inscribed in the field of morality and not of aesthetics - no word exists then to differentiate, among manual activities, the work of the artist from that of the artisan. During the Christian Middle Ages, the beautiful was linked to the divine, and some centuries later, under the Ancien Régime, the representation of a social order conceived as natural. In fact, we must wait for the French revolution so that questions of beauty and art can be asked together. Secondly, these interrogations each time make sense within a more general philosophical system. A philosophical system elaborated around the question of political emancipation will not question artistic productions in the same way - it will not ask the same questions - a system built around a metaphysical problem like that of finitude. The former may find in art or artistic creation a form of resistance to the reactionary tendencies of a society, whereas the latter will see it as one of the privileged means of overcoming the anguish of death. In short, the philosophy of art is not a well delimited field that brings together scattered reflections on art and beauty, but a diffracted field opening up questions of metaphysics, morality and political philosophy. In this course, I would like to give substance to questions about art and beauty by replacing them (1) in their historical context and reintegrating them (2) into philosophical systems constructed around specific questions. In doing so, I would like to show how the questions about art and beauty, far from being reduced to opinion, opinion or subjective judgment, involve in each case far wider problems affecting major metaphysical and moral questions and political systems of an era and / or a system of thought.

Required Learning Resources/Tools

Edouard Delruelle, Métamorphoses du Sujet, De Boeck

Recommended Learning Resources/Tools

Not applicable

Other Recommended Reading

Not applicable

Mode of delivery

• Face to face

Type of Teaching Activity/Activities

• Cours magistraux

Evaluations

The assessment methods of the Learning Activity (AA) are specified in the course description of the corresponding Educational Component (UE)