CMLT C647: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Ideology
TR 11:15-12:30; Instructor: Oscar Kenshur

The course will examine aesthetic theories both in the context of
their relationship to the evolution of literary forms and tastes,
and, especially, in the context of larger debates over moral,
political, and epistemological authority.  Our focus will be on
British thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During
this period, ethical thought, by demonstrating the universal
availability of moral knowledge and the universal capacity for moral
action, reflected an impulse to avoid the political and social
disorders that arise from religious sectarianism. But this
universalizing impulse, with its democratic implications, often runs
up against  the deeply held conviction that a social  hierarchy
marked by subordination and deference is natural and necessary. The
course will examine the tensions between these conflicting
ideological pressures, and will treat the emergence of aesthetics as
a byproduct of the attempts to use ethical theory as a way to
preserve the social order. A short preliminary paper and a longer
term paper will be required. Students taking the course to meet
proseminar requirements will do an in class presentation instead of
a preliminary paper.


Tentative Reading List:

Hobbes, "Leviathan" and “Answer to Davenant”
Cudworth, "Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality"
Addison, “Pleasures of the Imagination” (Spectator Nos. 409-421)
Mandeville, "Fable of the Bees" (selections)
Shaftesbury, "Inquiry concerning Virtue, or Merit"
Hutcheson, "Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and
Virtue"
Jean-Baptiste Dubos,  "Reflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la
peinture" (excerpts); will also be available in translation.
Hume, "A Treastise of Human Nature" (excerpts); “The Standard of
Taste” and other essays
Johnson, "Rasselas"
Burke, "Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and
Beautiful"
Price, "Review of Morals"
Adam Smith, "Theory of Moral Sentiments"
Burke, "Reflections on the Revolution in France"