Aesthetics and analysis of artistic languages

The course is designed to be a systematic introduction to aesthetics, and to the various transformations it has undergone since its founding in the 18th century. We begin by moving from Baumgartner to Kant, then Hegel, Nietzsche, Croce and Heidegger, until arriving at contemporary aesthetics, addressed from the point of view both of continental philosophy (contemporary phenomenology in particular) and of analytical philosophy. Through assigned texts and course lectures we examine the issues that have underpinned aesthetic discourse since its origins in ancient thought, such as beauty, the sublime, the nature of the arts, the relationship between art and truth, the relationship between sensory knowledge and intellectual knowledge.