The Philosophy of Art and Beauty

What is art? Why do we human beings make it? What is its connection to beauty? These are the simple yet profound questions that will drive the inquiry of this course. In pursuing answers to these questions we will discover that art has not always been understood as it is understood today, and that indeed, even granting the many treasures of modern art, much that is valuable has been lost in the transition from the pre-modern conception of art to the modern one. In order to retrieve what has been lost, a reimagining of the arts is needed according to the Catholic Imagination. To be clear about what this course is not: this is not a course in art appreciation or the history of art, as such things are commonly understood. We will not be considering Da Vinci’s development of perspective or Caravaggio’s use of chiaroscuro. This is a course in the philosophical principles undergirding the conception of art in the Catholic intellectual tradition. It is not, therefore, a survey course in which a variety of philosophical approaches to art will be examined. Moreover, we will be considering all the fine arts. When we hear the word “art” in modern English we typically think first, and perhaps only, of the art of painting. But this course will consider the full panoply of what we commonly call the “fine arts,” though we will also consider why it is best to prefer the term “mimetic arts” to “fine arts.”