Course Content and Outcomes Guides (CCOG)

CCOG for PHL 222 Winter 2025


Course Number:
PHL 222
Course Title:
The Philosophy of Art and Beauty
Credit Hours:
4
Lecture Hours:
40
Lecture/Lab Hours:
0
Lab Hours:
0

Course Description

Explores individual and cultural assumptions about the nature of art and aesthetic expression. Applies a philosophical approach to the study of art forms from many world cultures. Prerequisites: WR 115, RD 115 and MTH 20 or equivalent placement test scores. Audit available.

Intended Outcomes for the course

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

  • Articulate key philosophical arguments in the field of aesthetics.
  • Identify the influence of culturally based perspectives, values and beliefs to examine how diverse philosophical perspectives affect human experience.
  • Construct arguments on issues dealing with aesthetics using critical reasoning to identify and investigate philosophical theses and evaluate information and its sources.
  • Respond to arguments on issues dealing with aesthetics using critical reasoning to identify and investigate philosophical theses and evaluate information and its sources.

Integrative Learning

Students completing an associate degree at Portland Community College will be able to reflect on one’s work or competencies to make connections between course content and lived experience.

General education philosophy statement

Philosophy courses ask students to use critical thinking and reasoning skills in multiple ways: to identify the content, structure, and influence of beliefs, to examine how diverse philosophical perspectives affect human experience, and to construct and respond to arguments on a variety of philosophical issues. They encourage students to both create and understand their and others’ frameworks of meaning, and to use this new understanding in their own lived experience.

Course Activities and Design

The course will be conducted in both the standard classroom and distance learning settings.  It will involve lectures, discussions, and other assignments such as exams and papers.

Outcome Assessment Strategies

Assessment strategies will include some of the following:             

  • Essays in the form of in-class exams, short papers, or term papers
  • Short-answer exams
  • Reading and field trip journals
  • Attendance and participation in class discussions and student presentations

Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)

Course Content

Themes, Concepts, Issues

The course will focus on some or all of the following themes: 

  • The nature of art, works of art, and aesthetic contemplation
  • Art as an archetypal response to human experience
  • Habitat, geography, and culture as determiners of artistic media
  • The functions art has fulfilled in human culture for millennia: Art for Intervention, Art for Affiliation, Art for Documentation, Art for Aesthetic Contemplation
  • Major theories in Western Aesthetics: Mimetic, Pragmatic, Emotionalist, and Formalist
  • Standards of taste, interpretation, and the arts.
  • The role of the critic, consumer, and gallery in shaping aesthetic experience
  • The social and political context of art

Competencies and Skills:

 Students will learn to:

  • Read, analyze, and discuss philosophical writings on aesthetics
  • Critique and challenge philosophpical and cultural perspectives in aesthetic judgment
  • Write in a style which is original, coherent, and convincing about works of art and issues in aesthetic theory