Aesthetics, Art and Design Theory

At the end of the course, students should be able to: 1. understand the relationship between philosophy of art and aesthetics; 2. the origin of the aesthetic discourses in the Philosophy of art; 3. define aesthetics and understand its workings around perception; 4. understand how aesthetic theory through time shape the epochs Discuss scholars; and their contribution to the development of aesthetics; and 5. contemporary global aesthetics and the postcolonial ferment and African art and aesthetics.

The course is a survey history of the notions that govern art as an idea and its response as a product of culture regarding taste in the philosophy of art and aesthetics. The focus will be on the thoughts of Plato on art as false imitation, to the theory of imitation of Aristotle, the idealism of the medieval thoughts and the speculative idealism of Immanuel Kant and the formalist ethic, the new art and crafts movement rooted in the Western traditions of scholarship and contemporary aesthetic realities and reception and the concept and an idea in African cultures especially its conceptual foundations in idealism.