General provisions

The department of Philosophy is responsible for this course.

Entry requirements

Students admitted to any one or two year master program in the humanities or with a Bachelor's degree in the humanities

Learning outcomes

At the completion of the course, the students are expected to have acquired a good understanding of the themes and questions discussed. The student is expected to be able to:

• use the concepts and distinctions necessary for critical discussion and be able to position him/herself in relation to the theories and arguments studied
• read and understand texts containing historical analysis and philosophical argumentation
• account for and be able to give a systematic treatment of central contemporary questions within philsophical aesthetics
• have good knowledge of the relevant fields in philosophical aesthetics
• analyse strengths and weaknesses in the theories studied
• lead a critical discussion concerning the relation between different aesthetic theories and a selection of artworks challenging these theories
• use theoretical tools and resources to argue for and against central theories about aesthetic value, art and artistic experience

Content

Philosophers have long distinguished between 'singular' and 'multiple' art forms. The former are art forms where a work can, as a matter of necessity, have only one instance such as painting and sculpture. But film, music, literature and film tend to be multiple art forms whose works admit of more than one instance. For example, you may be watching Citizen Kane in Uppsala at the same moment that I am watching the same cinematic work in London. In this seminar, we shall raise questions about the standard understanding of the singular-multiple distinction - as a matter of how many 'instances' a work can have - and examine both the most developed versions of the 'abstract object' theory of multiple artworks and various alternatives to this view in the literature.

Instruction

Teaching consists of lectures and seminars.

Assessment

The examination consists of home assignment(s).