The Concept of the Symbol

There is widespread agreement that symbols are crucial for our understanding of ourselves as humans and as humanists, but there is little agreement about what symbols actually are. This question has acquired new urgency with the development of technologies that allow computers to freely yet mechanically generate symbolic strings. The course provides an introduction to the various concepts of the symbol—from the Eucharist to French and Russian symbolism, from German and English Romanticism to the invention of semiotics, from symbolic logic to the Lacanian symbolic order—that have historically underpinned our western relationships to aesthetic practice and technological innovation.