Francesco Erspamer (Department of Romance Languages & Literatures)
First-Year Seminar 35E | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Monday, 12:00 PM–02:00 PM
Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder but neither is it a property of things; it is a device for realizing that there are not just individuality and objectivity, and that more important than either is the social and uniquely human capacity to develop a shared subjectivity. Beauty trains to sociality and founds communities and for this reason has been a vital concept in every human civilization.In the first part of the seminar we will analyze Immanuel Kants aesthetics; then we will study the evolution of beauty through Western history, with examples mostly taken from the culture of a country, Italy, that has successfully self-fashioned itself as the land of beauty.
Note: There will be two required trips to the Bauhaus-related collection at the Harvard Art Museums and to the ICA, Boston.