Charles Baudelaire discusses the flaneur as an individual, onewho is searching, “for that quality which you must allow me to call ‘modernity’…”, searching by roaming the ‘desert of human life’, of fashion, of anything that will help in finding meaning.

Georg Simmel describes in The Metropolis and Mental Life, the individual must distinguish himself in metropolitan society in order to survive. “This leads ultimately to the strangest eccentricities, to specifically metropolitan extravagances of self-distanciation, of caprice, etc., the meaning of which is no longer found in the content of such activity itself but rather in its being a form of being different.‟

Considering our Modules on Beauty, how might we contrast and compare these two writers and their impressions of the individual and the city?How is beauty understood/processed in each case?

Respond in a short essay (introduction, body, conclusion). Your answer should be succinct and relevant to the question, being approximately 500 words in length. Reference notation will not count towards the total word count (bibliography/footnotes).

Journal Entry (25 points)

• Timely Submission (1 point)
• Strong and well organized thesis statement (2 points)
• Presence of critical thinking and analysis – Correctly interpreting lecture material and integrating it into essay (10 points)
• Use of at least two external citations from books, book chapters, or academic journals (5 points)
• Use of first source material – original writing of the theorist/philosopher (2 points)
• Quality of writing and organizational structure, grammar and spelling (5 points)

References will be in either MLA or Chicago style. The journal entry should build from the course material and is the major mechanism for determining the student’s retention and comprehension of the material.  References to the lecture material and a return to first source writings is necessary.  Relating the theme’s content to contemporary concerns is also required.

Module 8: Beauty Continued

Kant and judgement – taste, interest and disinterest, aesthetics as the basis of cognition