Philosophy of Art in an Intercultural Perspective

The blended course is part of a PhD-network that we are about to establish amongst CIVIS-Universities in the broader field of "Intercultural Philosophy and Global Epistemologies". The course brings together some 24 PhD-students from all CIVIS-universities. This year, participants have the chance to work with lecturers of 6 different CIVIS-universities (plus one African partner university) on the topic of "Philosophy of Art in an Intercultural Perspective" during the year. During the workshop each participant presents a paper on parts of her/his dissertation project related to the topic.

The program is structured interdisciplinary. PhD-students are accepted from a broad range of subjects. Course elements will comprise lectures as well as plenary discussions and student's work in small groups of fellow students.

Is it possible to argue about taste? According to the beginnings of philosophical aesthetics in Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, taste is a (lower) faculty of cognition, and according to Kant, aesthetic judgment explicitly refers to an a priori structure. Such a faculty of judgment must be ready to be trained and practiced. But how is it then that the taste for art changes historically and that each artistic epoch develops its own style? Doesn't aesthetics always say something about how the world is experienced? The phenomenology of the 20th century therefore prefers to speak of aesthetic experience rather than of aesthetic judgments. With this, it draws attention to the fact that aesthetics does not make judgments, but continually discovers new spaces of perception and meaning. Works of art then may be interpreted as being expressions of such perceptual experiences. While in everyday life we move, as it were, on the surface of the perceptible, artists explore the "deep life" (Husserl) of everyday life worlds. Their discoveries in turn have an effect on the concrete form of the respective lifeworld and help to animate it anew.

Insofar as artists try in their work to put their deeper digging/reaching perceptual experiences into practice, the recipients of works of art are also offered the possibility of immersing themselves in a multitude of such perceptual experiences and, with their help, of discovering the various layers of meaning that interact in a lifeworld. This is why intercultural comparison of art and aesthetics becomes as necessary as exciting in current times. First, today we need to decolonize aesthetics, i.e., we have to become aware of a plurality of ways to perceive and to form meaning. Second, there may be a chance to more easily encounter non-Western life-worlds on an aesthetic level than on the conceptual level. Can we succeed in gaining a more vivid understanding of the various spaces of perceptual experience and the different layers of meaning connected to other cultural life-worlds by re-enacting aesthetic experiences?

In the seminar, various texts on philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of art from both European and non-Western traditions will be read. Also, images of different cultural provenance will be consulted. In addition to a critical appraisal of European philosophies of art, the focus will be laid on art and aesthetics in the Arabic-Islamic region, in Sub-Saharan Africa and in East Asia (Japan, China).

The program aims at providing PhD-students the opportunity to discuss topics related to their own dissertation projects with fellow students as well as faculty from different departments and even different subjects. This should help PhD-students to (1) gain a better overview of their area of research and (2) to network in an internationally appealing environment. Since at most universities there is not that many faculty-people in the field of the course’s topic the international exchange will foster the student’s dissertation projects.

In addition, we intend to connect participants with the alumni of three earlier editions of a blended CIVIS-course we pursued in 2020/21, 2021/22, and 2022/23. Since we intend to further develop the program in the years to come this will establish an alumni-network of more than one-hundred PhD-students amongst CIVIS-universities within the next few years.

Main topics addressed

• Recent developments and perspectives in the philosophy of art
• Different concepts related to aesthetics, experience of art, and its relations to the philosophy of perception as well as the philosophy of action
• Intercultural critique of Western philosophy of art and aesthetics
• Intercultural philosophies of art
• The political dimension of art with particular respect to its intercultural aspects

Learning outcomes

• Results with regard to at least some of the research questions students formulated in the beginning
• Ability to work in an interdisciplinary group and to exchange cross-disciplinary
• Ability to present own research
• In addition, the course is meant to provide opportunities to network amongst different CIVIS-universities
• Therefore, one expected outcome is the establishment of a PhD-network amongst participants (and alumni of earlier classes)