From SingularTaste toMass-Duplication

Philosophical Theories of Aesthetics

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Live online seminar
Seven weeks
Starting October 14

With Pia Schneider

$350

Join the seminar

New in January

Starting January 10

Reason and its Limits

An Introduction to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

Duration: Four weeks
When: Sundays, 10am PT
Format: Live online
Led by: Pia Schneider

Hear when sign-up opens

Starting January 17

From Beauty and Sublimity to the Cute and Interesting

An Introduction to Aesthetics

Duration: Six weeks
When: Sundays, 12:30pm PT
Format: Live online
Led by: Pia Schneider

Hear when sign-up opens

The seminar

Where in the past a judgment of taste was treated as a singular experience — a subjective appreciation of a unique object — today the most common form that our taste takes is sharing and liking something through social media. As with the development of film and photography, art has become something reproducible on a large scale. Taste has become a mass phenomenon. In this seminar, we trace the development of this change. Starting in the Enlightenment period with the writings of David Hume and Immanuel Kant, we move through the view of one of the most impactful philosophers of all time — G.W.F. Hegel — to the writings of three 20th-century figures: Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, and Walter Benjamin.

Who it’s for

Artists, designers, photographers, creatives, thinkers—anyone interested in philosophical questions centered around art and society.

No previous engagement with philosophy is required. Bring a serious interest in the questions and a willingness to engage with difficult texts.

The questions

Taste & beauty · Hume, Kant

What is taste? What is a judgment of taste? Can there be a standard of taste?

We begin with two philosophers from the Enlightenment period, David Hume and Immanuel Kant, and their discussions of our faculty of taste and aesthetic judgments.

Art & society · Hegel

What is the relationship between art and society? Is there an end to art?

From the individual judgment, we turn to art and society: how art expresses something about a society and whether art has come to an end.

Art & technology · Arendt, Heidegger, Benjamin

What changes when art is reproduced?

Film, photography, and mass society change how we encounter works of art. We ask what happens to art when a singular encounter becomes an experience shared by millions.

Your teacher

Pia Schneider

Pia is a philosopher based in the Bay Area, California. She has recently finished her PhD at UC Berkeley with a dissertation on Immanuel Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Before coming to California in 2016, she got a BA in German Studies and Philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, and an MA in Logic and Philosophy of Science at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. Pia has presented her academic work at various conferences, including the 2025 Biennial of the North American Kant Society, the 2026 Pacific Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, and the 2026 meeting of the International Simone de Beauvoir Society.

With a one-year hiatus during which she was a visiting student scholar at Harvard, Pia has taught for the last nine years at UC Berkeley both as a Primary Instructor and as a Graduate Student Instructor on a number of topics, including Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Heidegger’s Being and Time, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Aesthetics, Ethics, and Logic. In 2021, she received the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award.