Aesthetics - 1st semester
Code
711031054
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
Filosofia
Credits
6
Teacher in charge
Maria João Mayer Branco
Weekly hours
4
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
1. To understand the specificity of Aesthetics within the realm of philosophical reflection, as well as the specificity of its subject-matter and the concepts it uses.
2. To acquire knowledge of the fundamental problems of Aesthetics by reading and analyzing texts that belong either to the tradition or to contemporary authors, including poets and artists in general.
3. To develop a critical method of understanding and analyzing works of art, both literary and non-literary, and either from an historical or a non-historical perspective.
Prerequisites
Not applicable
Subject matter
By means of a close reading and analysis of Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, the course will try to interrogate the problematisation of what the author calls there “the aesthetic science”, so as to identify and explore the questions that the text raises about the situation of Art in modernity.
Bibliography
LORAUX, Nicole, La voix endeuillée. Essai sur la tragédie grecque, Gallimard, Paris, 1999
NIETZSCHE, F., O nascimento da tragédia, Círculo de Leitores, Lisboa, 1996 (tradução, comentário e notas de Teresa R. Cadete)
PORTER, James I., The Invention of Dionysus. An Essay on the Birth of Tragedy, Stanford University Press, Stanford / California, 2000
SCHMIDT, Dennis J., On Germans and Other Greeks. Tragedy and Ethical Life, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2001
Teaching method
(a) Most classes are dialogued lectures.
(b) Several of them work as a \"seminar\" (with reading, commentary, and analyses of texts projected in pdf format).
(c) Other classes (so-called \"practical\" classes) consist in critical discussions — with the students — of previously presented themes and problems.
(d) Examples from the arts (e.g. paintings projected in pdf or other similar formar) are constantly used.
Evaluation method
(e) Students are firstly evaluated by an exam that takes place after the first half of the course, which weighs 20% in the final mark;
(f) The crucial element is an exam at the end of the semester (70%);
(g) A positive participation in the classes is valued (10%).