AJ24059 From Catharsis to Kitsch: Taste, Judgment, and the Degradation of Beauty

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2002
Extent and Intensity
0/2/0. 4 credit(s). Recommended Type of Completion: zk (examination). Other types of completion: k (colloquium), z (credit).
Teacher(s)
James Soderholm, Ph.D. (lecturer), Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A. (deputy)
Guaranteed by
Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A.
Department of English and American Studies – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: Mgr. Michaela Hrazdílková
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
The capacity limit for the course is 15 student(s).
Current registration and enrolment status: enrolled: 0/15, only registered: 0/15, only registered with preference (fields directly associated with the programme): 0/15
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
All things are a flowing,
Sage Heracleitus says:
But a tawdry cheapness
Shall outlast our days.

Even the Christian beauty
Defects -- after Samothrace;
We see "to kalon"
Decreed in the marketplace.
--Ezra Pound, "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly"

This is a course on Western views of "the beautiful" (to kalon) beginning with Plato and Aristotle and ending with Duchamp and Warhol. At the center of the course is the debate given an explicit philosophical pedigree in 18th-century England, France, and Germany about how one might go about "fixing" a standard of taste so that one can get beyond the subjectivist dilemma posed by the classical "de gustibus non est disputandum" (of taste there is no disputing" or--in the American idiom--"there's no accounting for taste"). Why do we still have arguments about whether Beethoven is superior to rap music, or whether Rembrandt is better than Jackson Pollock? What do disagreements about "the beautiful" signify, and what is their history?
In our era, kitsch parodies art. The commercialization of art has given us authors and artists who laugh all the way to the bank as we late-capitalist expert consumers fetishize even their most insolent attempts to denude art of its complexities, ambiguities, and intensities. Where does the degradation (or "tawdry cheapness") of beauty begin? Are the academic debates about taste and judgment still important, or even interesting, or should we be content to let market forces (or our own whims) decide the fortunes and misfortunes of "the beautiful." Is there a connection between bad art and bad government, or between taste and the state? Our focus will be on literary texts, but we shall also consider architecture, music, painting, and film (including the work of Leni Riefenstahl--Hitler's chief propagandist--and Walt Disney).
We will read works by Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Hume, Burke, Pope, Kant, Hegel, Schiller, Nietzsche, de Tocqueville, Ruskin, Pater, Wilde, Calinescu, Lynes, Nabokov, Greenburg, Sontag, Bourdieu, Kundera, and Klíma.
Assessment methods (in Czech)
Assessment: Students will be asked to keep a journal of responses to the required reading; these entries will often form the basis of class discussion. A long essay will be required at the end of term.
Language of instruction
English
Further Comments
The course is taught only once.
The course is taught: every week.
The course is also listed under the following terms Autumn 2000.
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