What is an Image? Philosophical Reflections - ASZFS0075

• Title: What is an Image? Philosophical Reflections
• Guaranteed by: Institute of Philosophy and Religious Studies (21-UFAR)
• Faculty: Faculty of Arts
• Actual: from 2024
• Semester: summer
• Points: 0
• E-Credits: 3
• Examination process: summer s.:
• Hours per week, examination: summer s.:2/0, C [HT]
• Capacity: unlimited / unknown (180)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Additional information: https://dl1.cuni.cz/course/view.php?id=17288
• Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment
• Guarantor: doc. Daniele De Santis, Dott. Ric.
• Teacher(s): doc. Daniele De Santis, Dott. Ric.

Annotation

LS/SS 2025
Charles University
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
(Note bene: if you are an Erasmus student, you have to enrol in the code AFSV00442)

Daniele De Santis, Ph. D.



Office hours: Wednesday 11:00-12:00
Email: [e-mail]


What is an Image? Philosophical Reflections
(Wednesday 12:30-14:05)

Room: P131


1. General Description and Aims of the Module

There is no doubt that the ontological status of what we refer to as “image” has been haunting philosophy for centuries, if not even since the very beginning of Western thought. By the same token, the structure of a “painting,” of the way in which it is supposed to reveal and disclose something to the observer testifies to a quite specific form of experience of the world. The present module’s aim is to analyze these two questions from the standpoint of a quite specific 20th century philosophical tradition, namely, phenomenology. The course will pursue a double ambition. On the one had, it will try to shed light of what it means to experience an email, or, better: it will try to clarify what an image is based upon our conscious experience of it. On the other hand, and based on the central concept of phenomenology, namely, “phenomenon,” our goal will to be verify in what sense and to what extent phenomenology’s stance on what a painting is can shed light on the notion itself of phenomenon, and vice versa (as is the case, for example, with Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Michel Henry).

Last update: De Santis Daniele, doc., Dott. Ric. (07.02.2025)

Course completion requirements

2. Requirements

 

Students will be evaluated based upon the following two distinct parameters:

 

(1) Participation (which includes, yet is not limited to: attendance, in-class active participation). If you are absent, please ask your classmates for any assignments or key discussion materials missed.

(2) A Final Written Exam (deadlines and modality of the exam to be established in due time by the teacher)

Last update: De Santis Daniele, doc., Dott. Ric. (06.02.2025)

Literature

3. Essential Bibliography

 

3.1. Original Editions

 

E. Husserl, Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung (Den Haag 1980)

M. Heidegger, Holzwege (Frankfurt a.M. 1977)

M. Schapiro, “The Still Life as a Personal Object. A Note on Heidegger and Van Gogh” (from: The Bloomsbury Anthology of Aesthetics (London 2015))

J. Derrida, La vérité en peinture (Paris 1978)

M. Merleau-Ponty, Sens et non-sens (Paris 1966)

M. Henry, Voir l’invisible (Paris 1988)

G. Deleuze, Francis Bacon. Logique de la sensation (Paris 2002)

 

3.2. English Translations

 

 

E. Husserl, Phantasy, Image-Consciousness and Memory (Dordrecht 2005)

M. Heidegger, Off the Beaten Tracks (Cambridge 2001)

J. Derrida, The Truth in Painting (Chicago 1987)

M. Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense (Evanston 1991)

M. Henry, Seeing the Invisible (London 2009)

G. Deleuze, Logic of Sensation (London 2003)

Last update: De Santis Daniele, doc., Dott. Ric. (06.02.2025)