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Advanced Aesthetics: Aesthetic Creativity

When you'll study it
Semester 1
CATS points
15
ECTS points
7.5
Level
Level 6
Module lead
Giulia Felappi
Academic year
2025-26

Module overview

W.B. Yeats writes 'The Second Coming'. Jean Sibelius composes his seventh symphony. Paul Cezanne paints his tenth picture of Mont Sainte-Victoire. All three are clearly acting in artistically creative ways; but how should we understand what they do, what their creativity consists in? Is it a matter of inspiration? Or is it a matter of rationality? Or perhaps of self-expression? Or even of trial-and-error? Indeed, should we regard these suggestions as alternatives to one another, as if at most one of them might be true?

These are the issues that this module explores. Drawing on writings from Plato to Kant, from Nietzsche to the present day, the aim is to explain and assess some of the most philosophically significant answers to the question: What is artistic creativity?

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A module created by CQA