Advanced Topics in Aesthetics

This course unit will cover a selection of topics in contemporary philosophical aesthetics, as well as exploring some of the points of contact between aesthetics, ethics and the philosophy of language. We will consider how to understand some distinctive aesthetic experiences, such as awe, amusement, horror, and the experience of the uncanny. We will discuss the nature of fictional representation and, in particular, examine some of the ways in which a fiction's representational content relies on far more than, e.g., the words on the page or the images on screen. This will enable us to consider some questions about the ethics of representation, such as: What is an offensive joke? If I like to make my character do terrible things when I play a video game, does my behaviour deserve criticism? How secure is the distinction between an extremely violent film that trivialises violence and an extremely violent film that implicitly critiques the representation of violence? And when, if ever, does the choice to perform a role amount to an endorsement of the actions we are representing?

The unit aims to:

• Introduce students to a range of topics in philosophical aesthetics, including some cutting-edge contemporary research in the area;
• Give students an opportunity to reflect analytically on some of the ways in which people can engage with and respond to artworks.

One two-hour lecture and one one-hour tutorial per week.

Students should be able to:

• Identify and explain in detail some of the questions and ideas within philosophical aesthetics;
• Clearly articulate some of the arguments covered in the unit.

Students should be able to:

• Evaluate claims and arguments in philosophical aesthetics;
• Analyse and criticise some of the questions and ideas covered in the unit;
• Form a justified position and argue for it in writing;
• Select, adapt, and organise philosophical ideas in response to the particular emphases of a specific question.

Students should be able to:

• Use research tools and technology to gather information and create well-organised written assignments in aesthetics.

Essay (2000 words) 33%

Online Exam (6 hours) 67%

The School of Social Sciences (SoSS) is committed to providing timely and appropriate feedback to students on their academic progress and achievement, thereby enabling students to reflect on their progress and plan their academic and skills development effectively. Students are reminded that feedback is necessarily responsive: only when a student has done a certain amount of work and approaches us with it at the appropriate time is it possible for us to feed back on the student's work. The main forms of feedback on this course are written feedback responses to assessed essays and exam answers.

We also draw your attention to the variety of generic forms of feedback available to you on this as on all SoSS courses. These include: meeting the lecturer/tutor during their office hours; e-mailing questions to the lecturer/tutor; asking questions from the lecturer (before and after lecture); presenting a question on the discussion board on Canvas; and obtaining feedback from your peers during tutorials.

• Craig Bourne & Emily Caddick Bourne (2022) ‘Elusive Fictional Truth’, British Journal of Aesthetics 62: 15-31. 
• Edmund Burke (1958 [1757]), A Philosophical Discourse into the Origin of Our Ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful, e.d. J.T. Boulton, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 
• John Dyck & Matt Johnson (2017) ‘Appreciating Bad Art’, Journal of Value Inquiry 51: 279-292. 
• Kathleen Marie Higgins (2009) ‘Kitsch’ in Stephen Davies, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Robert Hopkins, Robert Stecker & David E. Cooper (eds.) A Companion to Aesthetics (second edition), Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, pp.393-396. 
• Tsin Yen Koh (2021) ‘Bad Jokes and Good Taste: An Essay on Bentham’s “Auto-Icon”’, Revue D’Études Benthamiennes 20. 
• Morgan Luck (2009) ‘The Gamer’s Dilemma: An Analysis of the Arguments for the Moral Distinction between Virtual Murder and Virtual Paedophilia’, Ethics and Information Technology 11: 31-36. 
• Mark Windsor (2019) ‘What is the Uncanny?’, British Journal of Aesthetics 59: 51-65.