What Is Beauty Good For?

Catalog description

What role does beauty play in a happy human life? To answer this question, we will need to answer another: namely, what is beauty in the first place? In this class, we will try to get a handle on beauty's value by considering a long-standing debate about its nature. According to one side of this debate, beauty is intimately bound up with desire and love. According to the other, beauty helps us break free from desire and throw off practical concerns. Do either of these views of beauty succeed, and what does each one suggest about beauty's significance? Readings will draw on a range of historical and contemporary philosophers including Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Iris Murdoch, Arthur Danto, and Alexander Nehamas.