This graduate seminar will examine the writings of Jacques Ranciere with a focus on the politics of aesthetics as radically challenged and redefined through equality and democracy. It will go through Ranciere’s major writings with two critical attempts: one is to trace them back to the history of aesthetics from Plato, Aristotle, Kant to Hegel; the other is to con-textualize them in contemporary Continental philosophy, especially in light of Deleuze, Badiou and Nancy.