00345 - Aesthetics

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course the student acquires the basic knowledge regarding the birth of aesthetics, its development and its multiple current tendencies. S/he also gets an idea of its connections with other disciplines, both the theoretical ones (such as poetics, hermeneutics and rhetorics) and those related to arts. The student’s use of the correct terminology and her/his ability in applying the main conceptual and methodological instruments put her/him in the position to critically understand the fundamental notions of aesthetics and to deal with the study of an aesthetical classic.

Course contents

Art and experience. The artistic experience of Aleksandr Sokurov in light of some fundamental aesthetic concepts.

The lesson course will start with an introduction to aesthetics. My aim will be to outline its history, its concepts e its main questions. We will take advantage of the studies of Władisław Tatarkiewicz, by means of which we will discuss six fundamental problems of aesthetics (art, beauty, form, creativity, imitation, aesthetic experience).

Afterwards we are going to take into consideration one of the XIXth Century’s main philosophical perspectives on art, i.e. that expressed by Martin Heidegger in his essay The Origin of the Work of Art. Through Heidegger we will try and understand the meaning and the importance of art, dwelling on some key-questions, such as:

1. In which way does the artwork sets truth to work?
2. Why does truth need to be set to work? What kind of truth is in play, if it must be creatively preserved in the work of art?
   
3. In what sense is the artwork a “thing”?
   
4. Why is it that philosophy is essentially driven to a dialogue with art? And what is at stake in this dialogue?

If, as has been said, fundamental philosophical questions do not have an answer but have a history, then it becomes extremely important to place certain cardinal concepts of aesthetics within a particular cinematic experience, which will allow us to productively explore these concepts in relation to time and sensibility.

The chosen cinematic experience is that of Aleksandr Sokurov. All of Sokurov's works raise questions and constitute a journey rather than a destination. “By creating a work, I express a doubt”. In Russian Ark and Francofonia, the questions multiply: What is art? What are museums? And in addition: who are we? These are philosophical questions, questions that point to the “ti estin”, to the “what”, to the essence, and which, in doing so, risk being misleading with respect to the concreteness of the cinematic experience we are dealing with. So perhaps it is more productive to ask: how does Sokurov stage art? And museums? And, in addition: how does he stage us grappling with the question of who we are? In Sokurov, the question of power, of the relationship between art and power, is also central. Power needs to be all here, all present, peremptory, imposing, certain, firm, a “fundamentum inconcussum”; it needs to coincide with itself. But to what extent is this habitus humanly sustainable? This is the central question of the phenomenology of totalitarian power developed by Sokurov – a phenomenology that focuses primarily on the impotence that creeps into power. The Hirohito of The Sun, the Hitler of Moloch, the Lenin of Taurus: all spectral portraits in which, in some way, human vulnerability and fragility take over, and are destructive only in relation to a conception of power that had entirely removed them. What if, instead, vulnerability and fragility, in a word, finitude, were the hallmark of humanity?

 

An integral part of the course will be a meeting with Aleksandr Sokurov, which will take place on the 19th and 20th November 2025 at the Department of the Arts. There will be other preparatory events leading up to this meeting, which will be announced at a later date.

Readings/Bibliography

Władisław Tatarkiewicz, Storia di sei idee, presentazione e cura di K. Jaworska, tr. it. di O. Burba e K. Jaworska, consulenza scientifica e postfazione di L. Russo, Aesthetica Edizioni, Palermo 2017 (chapters 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).

Martin Heidegger, L’origine dell’opera d’arte, in Id., Sentieri interrotti, a cura di P. Chiodi, La Nuova Italia, Scandicci (Firenze) 1968.

Aleksandr Sokurov, Nel centro dell’oceano, tr. it. di Aliona Shumakova, con una nota di Enrico Ghezzi, Bompiani, Milano 2009.

Gemma Bianca Adesso, Annalisa Caputo (a cura di), Filosofia e cinema in Aleksandr Sokurov, Mimesis, Milano – Udine 2025.

   

Students that haven't attended the course must also study: 

Richard Capobianco, La Via dell’Essere di Heidegger, a cura di F. Cattaneo, Orthotes, Salerno 2023.

Mario Pezzella, Antonio Tricomi (a cura di), I corpi del potere. Il cinema di Aleksandr Sokurov, Jaca Book, Milano 2012.

 

As far as the exam is concerned, students are required to choose five Sokurov movies and to be ready to discuss them thoroughly. Students that have attended the lesson course are invited to choose among the movies  discussed during the lessons. Students that have not attended the lesson course can choose freely on the basis of the texts mentioned in the bibliography.  

 

N.B. The bibliography may be subject to changes until the beginning of the lesson course.

Teaching methods

The course will consist of frontal lessons; sources will be commented and discussed and the problems and their historical context synthetically reconstructed. Teacher-led discussions will be encouraged.

Assessment methods

The final proof will take place in the form of an oral examination. During the examination the teacher will assess whether the student has achieved or not some basic educational goals: knowledge of the texts and capacity to contextualize authors and works; comprehension of the fundamental concepts and capacity to provide a correct interpretation of them; clarity in the explanation of concepts and accuracy in the use of philosophical terminology; capacity to establish connections between the various authors and themes from both a historical and a strictly speaking conceptual point of view. During the oral examination the teacher will assess if the student possesses the abovementioned knowledge and skills in a (more or less) complete, precise and adequate way, or vice-versa in a (more or less) incomplete, vague and superficial way. The final grade will correspondently vary from excellent (30 and honors) to very good (30) to good (27-29) to fairly good (24-26) to more than enough (21-23) to merely enough (18-21) to unsatisfactory (<18).

 

Exam sessions are scheduled for the following months of the academic year:

- January (for all students)

- March (for all students)

- June (for all students)

- July (for all students)

- September (for students in debt of exam)

- December (for students in debt of exam)

Teaching tools

All the aforementioned texts (in the specified editions) are an essential tool in order to actively participate in the classes. It is recommended to get hold of the texts before classe because specific parts will be read and commented. Equally important for the students will be to see the films discussed during the lessons.

Some other texts will be distributed through the channels offered by the Unibo portal.

Students who require specific services and adaptations to teaching activities due to a disability or specific learning disorders (SLD), must first contact the appropriate office: https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en/for-students .

Office hours

See the website of Francesco Cattaneo