Aesthetics and Experimental Aesthetics: Summer School Courses

This course explores some aesthetic concepts through the analysis of some of the most important philosophical and scientific texts in the history of Western thought. Students will develop adequate critical and analytical skills by reading philosophical and interdisciplinary texts on topics such as aisthesis, taste, beauty, judgement, imagination, empathy, aura, the beholder’s share, and embodied simulation. Furthermore, students will learn to orient themselves in thinking, addressing the following questions: What is aesthetics? What is the difference between speculative aesthetics and empirical aesthetics? What is the difference between an aesthetic judgment and an aesthetic experience? What is the role of biology in perception? This course explores these and other questions by focusing on the works of leading philosophers and scientists.