World Philosophy Day
Friday 16 November, 1.30pm
What do we mean when we say Beautiful? Public lecture by philosophy teacher Dr Connell Vaughan (DIT).
"Perhaps the most common term we have to describe the art we admire and value as worthwhile is the term beautiful. Furthermore, we are inclined to explain our ideas of beauty in terms of true imitation (of nature), though this is increasingly less the case. Such changes point to the fact that this term has a rich and ancient history in the philosophy of art. For example, the question of where to locate beauty have been central to philosophy for millennia. Is it a property of the artwork, in the eye of the beholder or somewhere else?"
In this talk, Connell Vaughan will outline some of the ways that Western Philosophy has understood beauty, from ancient Greek ideas of mimicry, through classical ideas of reasoned judgements of beauty, to what could be called the contemporary abandoning of the idea of beauty. For good or ill, beauty is no longer the undisputed highest value of art and this is an opportunity to reflect on our contemporary approaches to thinking about art.