Course Objectives: The coursesupplements the winter semester course ‘Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics (I): From Antiquity to the Renaissance’. Its objective is to familiarise the students with the main developments in aesthetics from the Enlightenment and German idealism to the beginning of the 20^th century. The students will become acquainted with the way in which certain philosophers, from early modernity onwards, interpret specific issues in aesthetics and the arts. The course aims to encourage the students realise the degree to which the philosophical construal of the arts, since the Enlightenment, must or must not have ethics and politics as a point of reference.

Learning Outcomes: After the successful completion of the course, the students:

• will have an overall picture of the most significant developments in aesthetics from early modernity to the 20^th century.

• will be able to understand, to analyse and to present the aesthetic theories of the main thinkers of that period.

• will be able to compare and evaluate the arguments and the philosophical theses of those thinkers with respect to the relation of art to ethics and politics.

• will be in a position to understand and assess contemporary aesthetic theories.

• having come into contact with specific philosophical texts, they will be capable of consulting them, of understanding and of analysing them autonomously.