Aesthetics

Academic Year 2025/2026 - Teacher: CHIARA MILITELLO

Expected Learning Outcomes

This course explores the history of aesthetic to the present day. The course is designed to provide students with an introduction to the discipline of aesthetics and philosophy of art, with particular reference to the historical development of the subject and its relation to the arts, literature, music, cinema and photography. At the end of the course, students are expected to demonstrate an understanding of basic concepts and methods of aesthetics and philosophy of art. Students will gain an understanding of the nature of beauty, art, and philosophy; they will also be introduced to the central questions of aesthetics.

Dublin descriptors:

A. Demonstrable knowledge and insight about philosophical reasoning in general and the fundamental concepts of aesthetics in particular.

B. Ability to apply one's knowledge and insight to new or unknown aesthetic problems.

C. Ability to formulate judgements on aesthetic issues, taking into account the social responsibilities associated with the application of one's knowledge in the education of new generations regarding the role of art in the lives of individuals and society.

D. Ability to communicate one's knowledge clearly and unambiguously to people with and without a background in philosophy and aesthetics.

E. Learning skills that enable one to enter into a follow-up study with a largely self-directed or autonomous character.

Course Structure

The teaching will be carried out through lectures, a method that will ensure the transmission of contents and methods. In order to achieve the objectives relating to learning and communication skills, questions for clarification and deepening by the students will be encouraged during the lessons.

Required Prerequisites

No prior knowledge is required.

Attendance of Lessons

La frequenza del corso è fortemente consigliata, perché l’esposizione delle teorie filosofiche da parte del docente facilita molto l’acquisizione dei contenuti da parte degli studenti.

Detailed Course Content

The aesthetic experience. Aesthetic evaluation. The relationships between aesthetics and literary and artistic criticism. The search for essence in aesthetics. The logic of discussing art, beauty, and aesthetic experience. Similarities between works of art. The function of the definitions provided by aesthetic scholars. The criteria of critical appreciation. The error of traditional aesthetics. The classical model of aesthetics. The absence of aesthetic rules. The history of the idea of beauty. Beauty, truth, and goodness. The disintegration of the harmonious paradigm of a perfect cosmic order. The manifold and the individual in the modern age. The revenge of the sublime and the ugly at the end of the eighteenth century. The aesthetic value of deformity and dissonance in the twentieth century. The discredit that afflicts the concept of beauty today. The activity of the rhapsode and poetry as the result of divine inspiration. The critique of the rhapsode's mimetic orality. The educational value of dialectical orality.

Textbook Information

Paolo D’Angelo, Estetica, Laterza 2011, 244 pp. [ISBN: 9788842096061]

William E. Kennick, Does Traditional Aesthetics Rest on a Mistake?, Mind, New Series, Vol. 67, No. 267 (1958), pp. 317-334 [18 pp.]. [ISSN: 0026-4423]

Remo Bodei, Le forme del bello, Il Mulino 1995, 144 pp. [ISBN: 978-88-15-38657-1]

Plato. III: The Statesman. Philebus. Ion, ed. by Harold North Fowler and W.R.M. Lamb, William Heinemann 1925, pp. 401-405 and (only odd pages) 407-447 [4+21=25 pp.]. [ISBN: 978-0434991648]

Author	Title	Publisher	Year	ISBN
Paolo D’Angelo	Estetica	Laterza	2011	9788842096061
William E. Kennick	Does Traditional Aesthetics Rest on a Mistake?		1958	0026-4423
Remo Bodei	Le forme del bello	Il Mulino	1995	978-88-15-38657-1
Platone, Bruno Centrone	Ippia maggiore – Ippia minore – Ione – Menesseno	Einaudi	2012	9788806212353
Plato, Harold North Fowler, W.R.M. Lamb	Plato. III: The Statesman. Philebus. Ion	William Heinemann	1925	978-0434991648

Course Planning

	Subjects	Text References
1	The definition of aesthetics	1 (cap. 1)
2	Aesthetic predicates	1 (cap. 2)
3	Aesthetic evaluation	1 (cap. 3)
4	The aesthetic experience	1 (cap. 4)
5	Aesthetics as philosophy of experience	1 (cap. 5)
6	The origin of art	1 (cap. 6)
7	Subjectivity, objectivity, intersubjectivity of aesthetic judgment	1 (cap. 7)
8	Aesthetics as a theory of beauty and its modern overcoming	1 (cap. 8)
9	Ontology of art	1 (cap. 9)
10	The classification of the arts	1 (cap. 10)
11	Autonomy and heteronomy of art	1 (cap. 11)
12	The future of art	1 (cap. 12)
13	The mistakes of traditional aesthetics	2
14	The beauty of the world	3 (cap. 1)
15	All the faces of beauty	3 (cap. 2)
16	Beyond the sensible	3 (cap. 3)
17	The shadow of beauty	3 (cap. 4)
18	Plato’s Ion	4 (intro)
19	The genuineness of Ion's skill	4 (530a-533c)
20	The nature of poetic inspiration	4 (533d-536d)
21	The choice between skill and inspiration	4 (536e-542a)

Learning Assessment

Learning Assessment Procedures

Midterm Exam

Midterm tests on the course content are scheduled for attending students, in the form of a multiple-choice questionnaire administered via Microsoft Teams.

Students must pass this test with a score of at least 18/30 to avoid having to take the official oral exam on that section of the program.

The purpose of the midterm tests is summative, and the assessment results in a grade that is averaged into the final grade.

Final exam.

Oral examination, assessed on the basis of the following elements: relevance of the answers to the questions asked (necessary to pass the exam); content quality, ability to connect the various parts of the course, proper philosophical language, overall expressive skills (all these elements contribute to the final evaluation, provided that the answers are relevant).

Examples of frequently asked questions and / or exercises

In what sense is the aesthetic experience always an experience of choice?

In what sense is art autonomous?

What are the errors of traditional aesthetics?

In what sense, according to Kennick, are aesthetic criteria relative?

What was the earliest conception of beauty?

How did the concept of ugliness evolve?

What does it mean, according to Socrates, to be an expert in poetry?

What choice does Socrates face Ion at the end of the dialogue of the same name?

Read this passage from Plato's Ion and explain its meaning, placing it in context within the work.

Degree Course in

Pedagogical sciences and educational planning