Study programmes

The proposed two-year Master’s degree programme in aesthetics is grounded in the tradition of teaching aesthetics at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts, which has been fostered without interruption since the eighteenth century. The proposal reflects the vital role aesthetics plays in the structure of humanities in both the regional and the international context as well as its key contribution to understanding all branches of cultural and social life. Current international trends in the humanities, natural sciences, political science, and art theory show that the role of aesthetics is gaining in importance in today’s era of multimedia, advertising and ethnic art; aesthetics has been perceived as a ‘strategic’ discipline situated at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, anthropology, sociology, cognitive sciences, axiology, and philosophy of science. The proposed study programme is designed as a two-year single-major Master’s degree programme in aesthetics. The study plan aims not only at deepening the grounding in the discipline students bring from the BA programme, but also at developing individual study and critical skills (required courses), cultivating students’ writing and presentation skills (master thesis seminars, methodology of aesthetic research, optional courses) and developing students’ self-education skills (required elective courses). The teaching staff of the Department of Aesthetics has had a long-term experience with teaching a five-year Master’s degree programme prior to successfully turning this scheme to two separate study programmes (Bachelor’s and Master’s), which also means that they already have been teaching the two-year Master’s programme for some time. The scope of research interests of the academic staff – covering not only historical and conceptual topics of the discipline, but also both of the leading contemporary traditions of aesthetic thinking, the Continental and the Anglo-American – is well suited to guarantee the proposed study programme.