On this course we will examine philosophers' fascinating attempts to understand art and explore the multiple roles that it can play in our lives. We will consider such issues as what 'art', 'beauty', 'creativity', 'expression', and 'imagination' can mean, whether our judgments about them can ever be objective, how art relates to our feelings and to our understanding of the external world, how it reflects society, religion, and politics, and the radical differences between contemporary, modern, and classical kinds of art.