Syllabus
Week I: General Introduction, Discussion on art, ethics, and society.
Week II: Kant, “First Section: Analytic of Aesthetic Judgment,” in Critique of Judgment, pp. 35
- 74.
Week III: Nietzsche, “The Birth of Tragedy,” in The Nietzsche Reader, pp. 42 - 73.
Week IV: Marx, “Estranged Labor,” in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, pp. 28 - 35.
Week V: Horkheimer & Adorno, “The Concept of Enlightenment,” in Dialectic of
Enlightenment, pp. 1 - 34.
Week VI: Horkheimer & Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in
Dialectic of Enlightenment, pp. 94 - 136.
Week VII: Horkeheimer, “Materialism and Metaphysics,” in Critical Theory, pp. 10 - 46.
Week VIII: Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, pp. 3 - 39.
Week IX: Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in
Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, pp. 217 - 251.
Week X: Benjamin, Selected Writings, pp. 78 - 81, 217 - 219, 297 - 320.
Week XI: Fromm, To Have or To Be, pp. 13 - 54.
Week XII: Fromm, Man for Himself, pp. 8 -37.
Week XIII: Analysis of a work of art
Annotation
Critique, in the most general sense, is a mode of investigation meant to challenge ideas and discover how they stand up to scrutiny. In a narrower sense, the ‘critical tradition’ is a specific modality that descends to us formally from the 18th century, beginning with figures in the
Enlightenment, most notably Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804), continuing through to modern and post-modern thought exemplified in movements like Critical Theory, semiotics, and literary theory. In this course, we will survey this tradition with a specific focus on ethics and aesthetics.
What is the role of art, and what can it disclose to us about the human condition, society, and our ethical commitments? How does society structure our moral and aesthetic sensibilities? How are value systems related to faculties like reason and sentiment? What normative implications follow from our understanding thereof?