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74105-01 - Seminar: British Aesthetics in the Eighteenth Century (3 CP)
| Semester | spring semester 2025 |
| Course frequency | Once only |
| Lecturers | Golnar Narimani Ghahnavieh (golnar.narimanighahnavieh@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | The sublime is not so much what we’re going back to as where we’re coming from (Jean-Luc Nancy) British authors of 18th century founded what we know nowadays as philosophical aesthetics through their numerous contributions to the field where not only the definition and the question of taste was central but also many other notions of philosophical aesthetics were discussed in a systematic way; question such as the relation between aesthetic experience and ethics, between art and nature, the status of art in society and art and politics. Moreover, the two classical basic notions of the Beautiful and the Sublime came to occupy a central place and establish themselves as the two main concepts of aesthetics through the writings of these authors. The philosophies and aesthetics of these authors however, are often widely reads from a teleological perspective as mere preparatory steps towards the emergence of Kantian subjectivism and the autonomous subject of Enlightenment. Consequently their aesthetics are often also read as preliminary works only to be outweighed and surpassed by Kant’s Critique of the Power of Jusgement (1790). While this is not an erroneous reading, it still does not show the richness of British Aesthetics of 18th century. British authors had their own independent ways of addressing aesthetic, moral, political and epistemological questions without separating these domains neatly necessarily and they coined a wide range of key terms in variety of ways that merit a separate reading. In this seminar, we focus mostly on one key concept of aesthetics: the Sublime. As Jean-Luc Nancy asserts, the sublime is not an issue of the past but of present, since the notion, literally meaning grandeur, height, something overwhelming, frightening, overpowering or transcendent, it marks the limits and the thresholds of modern subjectivity, but it also denotes our capacity and desire for transcendence going beyond fear, defeating fear and ecstasy. It denotes a strangely vast variety of phenomana and experiences: high mountains are sublime and heroes of Greek trajedies have sublime attitudes as well. A thought or the passions of St John are sublime. God’s grandeur is sublime and our attempts to reach it fall due to the unattainable majesty or infinity of God, the failure itself is sublime. The sublime refers to fear and violence and astonishment. To recall Zizek: many were astonished by watching the events of September 11th. The sublime, introduced systematically for the first time by British Authors of 18th century, refers to margins and excesses, heightened passions and emotions and the frictions and limits of our understanding, reason and imagination. The sublime marks the limits of subjectivity’s comfortable dwelling in the world. Coined in this era the notion of sublime provides us with a rich field to explore complex relations between nature and art, aesthetics and ethics, politics, metaphysics and religion. It also provides us with a possibility to reevaluate the century of taste in terms of gender issues hidden between the lines and in fractures between the beautiful and the sublime. Last but not least, it gives us the opportunity to read early feminist authors such as Helen Williams and Mary Wollstonecraft who took the ecstatic, transcendent aspect of the sublime experiences and transformed a masculine field and notion into revolutionary feminist ideas. This seminar aims at reading texts, essays and treatises by 18th century British authors not only in respect to their relation to Kantian aesthetics, but also independently and with a specific focus on the controversial concept of the sublime. The seminar will be held in English, however, discussions and questions can have a multilingual format between English, German and French. |
| Learning objectives | Our aim is not to explore the entirety of Eighteenth century British aesthetics; but first and foremost, to address figures who do not emerge on every book on the history of aesthetics and these, through a certain prism, that of the emergence of the sublime along with the beautiful and their resonances in Kantian aesthetics which will be briefly sketched at the end of this seminar. We will aim for a close reading of the key passages of the above-mentioned texts, conjoined by contemporary secondary literature on them. |
| Bibliography | Texts and authors: • Longinus: Peri Hypsus • Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury: Characteristics of men, manners, opinions, times (1711) • Joseph Addison: The Spectator (1712-1714), A Discourse on Ancient and Modern Learning (1734) • Edmund Burke: Philosophical Enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and the beautiful (1759), Reflections on the revolution in France • Lord Kames: Elements of criticism (1765) • Alexander Gerard: An essay on taste (1759) • Uvedale Price: An Essay on the picturesque (1794) • Sir William Chambers: A dissertation on oriental gardening (1772) • Mary Wollstonecraft : A vindication of the rights of men (1790) • Helen Maria Williams: Letters Written in France (1790), A tour in Switzerland (1798) |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14-täglich | Friday | 10.15-13.00 | Steinengraben 5, Seminarraum gross 302 |
Dates
| Date | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|
| Friday 21.02.2025 | 10.15-13.00 | Steinengraben 5, Seminarraum gross 302 |
| Friday 28.02.2025 | 10.15-13.00 | Steinengraben 5, Seminarraum gross 302 |
| Friday 07.03.2025 | 10.15-13.00 | Steinengraben 5, Seminarraum gross 302 |
| Friday 21.03.2025 | 10.15-13.00 | Steinengraben 5, Seminarraum gross 302 |
| Friday 04.04.2025 | 10.15-13.00 | Steinengraben 5, Seminarraum gross 302 |
| Friday 25.04.2025 | 10.15-13.00 | Steinengraben 5, Seminarraum gross 302 |
| Friday 09.05.2025 | 10.15-13.00 | Steinengraben 5, Seminarraum gross 302 |
| Friday 23.05.2025 | 10.15-13.00 | Steinengraben 5, Seminarraum gross 302 |
| Modules |
Modul: Klassiker der Praktischen Philosophie (Bachelor's degree subject: Philosophy) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | no repetition |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Fachbereich Philosophie |