PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE AND THE ARTS

As part of the Master's Degree in Economics and Management of Arts and Cultural Activities, this course aims to develop a critical awareness of notions such as taste, interest, and habits in aesthetic experience, their conceptual history and their role in current aesthetic practices. The course aims to allow a critical appropriation and use of these conceptual tools by future operators in the management of arts and cultural activities.

Knowledge and understanding: knowledge of the topics covered in the course, independent self-orientation within the bibliography, critical awareness in using the fundamental concepts introduced in the course.
Applied knowledge and understanding: to recognize and use the notions of "taste", "aesthetic interest", and "aesthetic habits".
Making judgments: The course aims to provide the tools for a critical consideration of the relationships and dynamics between artistic practices and socio-economic reality. Students should be able to make discriminations between different ways of intertwining artistic aspirations and cultural fruition, on the one hand, and socio-economic interests, on the other hand.
At the end of the course, students should acquire adequate communication skills to discuss investigated topics, as well as to formulate independent assessments providing sustainable reasons.

Students should have passed the exam of Aesthetics I during their Bachelor Degree and/or they have to know the most basic elements characterizing Immanuel Kant's aesthetics.

Taste, interest, and habits of aesthetic fruition.
The course will provide an overview of the history of the concept of aesthetic taste, problematizing its formulation in Kant's "Critique of Judgement" in terms of pure, i.e. disinterested taste. The characteristic features of the Renaissance conception of taste will then be considered, through Hans-Georg Gadamer's reconstruction, as well as considering the problem of taste universality in Hume's "The Standard of Taste" and Burke's claim about a "logic of taste". A second part of the course will be devoted to a criticism of the Kantian approach in Bourdieu's work, through the reinterpretation of taste in social terms, in the light of the notion of "habitus" and "interest in disinterest". Finally, Peterson's recent thesis on contemporary aesthetic taste as 'omnivorous' will be critically considered.

Bibliographical references:

- Kant, Critique of Taste (selected chapters)
- Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (selected chapters)
- Hume, The Standard of Taste
- Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Beautiful and the Sublime
- Bourdieu, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (selected chapters)
- Peterson, Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore

The written examination will be composed of a short list of open questions (4/6) focusing the main subjects of the requested texts. The exam will take 2 hours.
The exam will evaluate if the students have acquired the knowledge delivered in the course, their capacity to give reasons, their ability in communicating the different positions with critical awareness as well as their capacity to apply them to current cultural contexts.

written

In evaluating the written exam, each of the 5 questions is worth a score from 0 to 6 points, plus a maximum of 4 bonus points for the overall evaluation of the paper.
The evaluation criteria concern the ability to answer the questions with accuracy, clarity, relevance, and with appropriate arguments and independent judgment, according to the following scale:
A: 18-22: sufficient adherence to the criteria
B: 23-26: fair adherence to the criteria
C: 27-30: good or very good adherence to the criteria
Honors are awarded when the adherence to the criteria is excellent.

Frontal lessons and reading of the texts. Discussions in class on specific topics.

Italian

Students who cannot attend the course are requested to contact the teacher (robdre@unive.it).
Students are requested to subscribe to the Moodle space of the course as well as to regularly consult materials and information they can find there.

Ca' Foscari abides by Italian Law (Law 17/1999; Law 170/2010) regarding support services and accommodation available to students with disabilities. This includes students with mobility, visual, hearing and other disabilities (Law 17/1999), and specific learning impairments (Law 170/2010). If you have a disability or impairment that requires accommodations (i.e., alternate testing, readers, note takers or interpreters) please contact the Disability and Accessibility Offices in Student Services: disabilita@unive.it.

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development