Brno, Czech Republic

Aesthetics and Culture Studies

Table of contents

Aesthetics and Culture Studies at MU

Language: English Studies in English
Subject area: humanities
University website: www.muni.cz/
Years of study: 4

Definitions and quotes

Aesthetics
Aesthetics (; also spelled esthetics) is a branch of philosophy that explores the nature of art, beauty, and taste, with the creation and appreciation of beauty.
Culture
Culture () is the social behavior and norms found in human societies. Culture is considered a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies. Some aspects of human behavior, social practices such as culture, expressive forms such as art, music, dance, ritual, religion, and technologies such as tool usage, cooking, shelter, and clothing are said to be cultural universals, found in all human societies. The concept of material culture covers the physical expressions of culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas the immaterial aspects of culture such as principles of social organization (including practices of political organization and social institutions), mythology, philosophy, literature (both written and oral), and science comprise the intangible cultural heritage of a society.
Aesthetics
This is precisely what is decisive in Nietzsche’s conception of art, that he sees it in its essential entirety in terms of the artist; this he does consciously and in explicit opposition to that conception of art which represents it in terms of those who “enjoy” and “experience” it. That is a guiding principle of Nietzsche’s teaching on art: art must be grasped in terms of creators and producers, not recipients. Nietzsche expresses it unequivocally in the following words (WM, 811): “Our aesthetics heretofore has been a woman’s aesthetics, inasmuch as only the recipients of art have formulated their experiences of ‘what is beautiful.’ In all philosophy to date the artist is missing.” Philosophy of art means “aesthetics” for Nietzsche too — but masculine aesthetics, not feminine aesthetics. The question of art is the question of the artist as the productive, creative one; his experiences of what is beautiful must provide the standard.
Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche (1961), p. 70.
Aesthetics
The taste of the more recent accessions to the leisure class proper and of the middle and lower classes still requires a pecuniary beauty to supplement the aesthetic beauty, even in those objects which are primarily admired for the beauty that belongs to them as natural growths.
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899).
Aesthetics
The story of English literature, viewed aesthetically, is one thing; the story of English writers is quite another. The price of contributing to the greatest literature the world has ever seen is often struggle and penury: art is still too often its own reward.
Anthony Burgess, English Literature : A Survey for Students (1958, revised 1974).
An EU study developed new methods for assessing the ecological effects of Europe's food and drink production. The team showed that most methods cannot cope with regional variation, then recommended database changes and developed a software tool.
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