This doctoral colloquium will consist of readings in philosophical aesthetics as these relate to architecture and to the visual arts, combined with selected readings in architectural and art history. Most of the material covered will date from the mid-twentieth century onward and will include analytic aesthetics, pragmatism, and other approaches developed largely in the Anglophone context, which we will compare with selections from “continental” thought. We will take up aesthetic questions as they pertain to architecture as a medium of experience, of expression, and of cognition; likewise with respect to the forms of objectivity that these distinct approaches entail. A central concern throughout will be the relation of aesthetics and politics. Readings will include works by Adorno, Ackerman, Dewey, Cassirer, Panofsky, Langer, Scruton, Goodman, Danto, Goehr, and others.
Reinhold Martin