INQ-120 | Music and Values

Full Title: Music and Values: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Identity

Topic Description:

Can listening to music influence our moral imagination? Do playlist choices reveal values and beliefs about what it means to “live a good life”? Can it inform our shared existence with others different from us? Notions of right and wrong or good and bad often dovetail ideas about music because attitudes towards music can reflect attitudes towards life. In this course, students explore how musical attachments shed light on our capacity for love, friendship, and openness towards others. The central thesis holds that an examination of value in music can inform an examination of life (and vice versa). Students explore the philosophy of music (ethics and aesthetics) in a study of identity-formation. Our approach will combine ethics, aesthetics, and the sociology of music. We cover different musical styles and genres, critique fandom, and apply what sociologist’s call “symbolic exclusion” to unpacking how musical preferences interact with personal identity.

Counts as Global? No

Topic Approved: February 2022