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Definition:
A work of art is labeled "didactic" when it is designed to inform or instruct people in important
moral, social, political or aesthetic concepts. Some argue that the basic function of art is to
be didactic in ways which regular instruction cannot achieve - thus, the aesthetic experience is
one of learning, and art which fails to teach anything is worthless. Most of the very earliest
literary works we have are didactic in nature, teaching people about morals, ethics and virtues.
Many others argue that art is self-sufficient and reject the idea that art need have anything to do with instruction - this pespective is labeled aestheticism.
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Related Resources:
What is Aesthetics?
In philosophy, aesthetics is the study of beauty and taste, whether in the form of the comic, the tragic or the sublime. Aesthetics has traditionally been part of other philosophical pursuits like the investigation of epistemology or ethics. However, it started to come into its own and become a more independent pursuit under Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher who saw aesthetics as a unitary and self-sufficient type of human experience.What is Philosophy?
What is philosophy? Is there any point in studying philosophy, or is it a useless subject? What are the different branches of philosophy - what's the difference between aestheitcs and ethics? What's the difference between metaphysics and epistemology?
