What’s Wrong with Images? Philosophy and Visual Culture from Plato to the Anthropology of Images (PhD)

In recent years, interdisciplinary research programmes such as the Anthropology of Images and the Visual Studies of Science have testified to a growing interest in the epistemic value of images, not only within art history and aesthetics, but also in the history of science and cultural studies. The course explores the status of images through a comparison between classical philosophical perspectives—which, following Plato, have often emphasized their defective character on both ontological and epistemological grounds—and approaches developed within contemporary disciplines and research programmes, which instead highlight the crucial social, cultural, and cognitive functions of images.