Introduction to the Philosophy of Art: A Short Course

Speaker: Noel Carroll

January 5,6,7,8,11,12,13,14,15, 1999 | 9.30 am
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

Noel Carroll, the Monroe Beardsley Professor of Philosophy of Art at the University of Wisconsin, will be teaching a short course introducing the philosophy of art. Its purpose is to examine theoretically the fundamental concepts that we use in our commerce with artworks. One of the central concepts is the very notion of art itself – What is art? The question will weave through all the meetings again and again as the course explores the different ways in which people have tried to answer it. In addition, the course will examine other central concepts that we presuppose throughout our discussion of artworks, including the concepts of representation, expression, artistic form, and aesthetic quality. The course does not presuppose any prior philosophical training nor any background in the philosophy of art. Frequent examples will be discussed in order to give our abstract theorizing a purchase value in concrete reality.