My Thoughts on Sections to Read or Skip from the Book

As I do not maintain this blog for credit, I will editorialize and input my thoughts on which sections we should read from the book, as Professor Johnson did note that he was uncertain about the readings we would undertake for this course.

To begin, I would like to propose skipping the Rock Music section, and possibly the section on the "Authentic" Performance of Music. This in no way reflects disdain for music (I am a musician myself). It is merely a reflection of the fact that the philosophy department does, at times, offer a course specifically on the Philosophy of Music, which could, in theory, address the question of music much more in-depth than this general course could.

I feel that the Fakes and Forgeries section is a must for this course. Just thinking back to a few discussion in Art & Philosophy, the idea of forgeries is indeed quite contentious, and we would be remiss to skip out on discussing this particular aspect of aesthetics.

Appreciation, Understanding, and Nature, I believe, would address another contentious aspect of aesthetics, specifically, the role of nature as art, or if indeed nature is art.

I feel that we should skip the sections on photography and horror. While these could most certainly be interesting areas to explore, they feel to me too specific for a more general course like this one, particularly with the limited amount of time we have (one semester is quite short).

A discussion of art is nothing without emotion. Thus, the sections on Feelings and Fictions and Sentimentality seem to be vital to our discussions of art, for how can one discuss art while overlooking the emotional impact of a piece, particularly those that are meant to specifically draw out certain emotions from the viewer?

The pornography and erotica section strikes me as, again, one of those too specialized fields to explore in this short, more general course. As it would be impossible to explore this topic without getting in to the muddy waters of ethics and morality (or, as some claim, the innate immorality of the production and consumption of pornography), it could derail the discussion of the purely aesthetic properties of the work with an unrelated (and likely hotly contentious) discussion of morals and ethics that would be quite separate from any value such works may have.

The last two sections give me some pause. They both seem equally valid, considering such topics as the public endowment for the arts, and debates over whether, for example, tribal masks could count as art when that tribe has no concept of art. Time constraints lead me to believe that one or the other should not be included, though I am unsure which. As there are more articles in Public Art, I would suggest waiting to see how much time we have once we finish with the above sections, and depending on time constraints, select a last section then.

Of course, a simple fix to the question of which chapters to address could be the creation of PHIL 385, Aesthetics II, in the same vein as PHIL 385, Logic and Critical Reasoning II, and procede through the chapters as the book lays them out (or perhaps using the other section for the sections skipped from this course as I have laid out above).

All of the above is merely my suggestion for an equitable distribution of sections discussed to maximize the depth we can achieve in this course over the semester. This is solely my opinion.

To end off with a discussion question (in light of the lack of bloggers who appear to be active): What sections do you believe we should cover in this course and why?