Authors:Stefano Velotti Pages: 5 - 15 Abstract: If it is true that at the core of the Enlightenment project was an attempt to discover a new definition of human nature itself, there is no doubt that for a long time, and today more than ever, there is a similar urgency to find a different vision of humanity, since the prevailing one – heir of the Enlightenment – is perceived from many sides as in need of a profound revision, if not catastrophic. if we are living in the ruins of modernity, we should neither attempt to embalm them, nor to raze them to the ground. This article maintains that Kant’s work on the reflecting judgment (along with a productive reinterpretation of notions such as «finality», «exemplarity», «heautonomy») can offer precious resources to reshape that image of humanity that we feel is now inadequate in the face of the complexity of our forms of life, without the need to abandon ourselves to old and new longings for the absolute. PubDate: 2022-01-24 DOI: 10.36253/Aisthesis-13204 Issue No:Vol. 14, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Francesco Vitale Pages: 17 - 28 Abstract: Teleology is still a source of embarrassment for the natural sciences and in particular for biology that seems unable to describe and explain the genesis and structure of life without it. How is it possible for something not yet existing to determine the occurrence of what is temporally prior to it' How can the future cause the present and the past' In what follows we intend to examine the elaboration of the biological notion of «teleonomy» through the writings of Ernst Mayr, in order to verify its rigor and strenght with respect to the criteria of scientificity adopted by Mayr himself, in particular with respect to the adoption of the cybernetic model. On the one hand, to show the consistency of the debt that the so-called scientific discourse owes to the philosophical tradition, where it elaborates notions that claim to be emancipated. On the other hand, to detect, within the scientific discourse itself, the limits that a certain position that claims to be scientifically founded can impose on research, becoming a dogmatic assumption. PubDate: 2022-01-24 DOI: 10.36253/Aisthesis-12754 Issue No:Vol. 14, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Luigi Filieri Pages: 29 - 40 Abstract: In this paper I argue that 1) Kant’s power of judgment is constitutively always reflecting, as its lawful employments involve a preliminary self-reference of the faculties the power of judgment itself is required to connect and let them match with each other. Accordingly, I claim that 2) the principle of purposiveness is the principle of the power of judgment as such, and not just of an allegedly self-standing reflecting branch of this faculty. I criticize the view that Kant draws a dichotomy between reflecting and determining judgments and argue that 3) Kant’s point in the third Critique is to rule out the amphiboly between the reflecting and the determining employment of the principle of purposiveness. The power of judgment is, as such, always reflecting: while in the case of cognition it also works in a determining way, in the case of both aesthetics and teleology it is only reflecting, i.e., self-purposive – as it sets its function as its own end. PubDate: 2022-01-24 DOI: 10.36253/Aisthesis-12786 Issue No:Vol. 14, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Lorenzo Sala Pages: 41 - 53 Abstract: In this paper I argue for a strong continuity between the transcendental deduction of the principle of purposiveness of nature and the transcendental deduction of the ideas from the first critique. On these grounds, I provide an interpretation of the transcendental deduction of the principle of purposiveness of nature in which I argue that: 1) the necessity of the principle of purposiveness of nature does not derive from its role in solving some specific philosophical problem (e.g. that of induction) but from its relation to a cognitive goal; 2) the representation of nature as conforming to the maxims of judgement is a direct, immediate consequence of a certain cognitive goal (in particular, of what is researched in the empirical investigation of nature; 3) that the necessity of the empirical laws mentioned by Kant in the transcendental deduction of the principle of purposiveness of nature is not so much their nomic necessity, but their necessity as consequences of higher laws. PubDate: 2022-01-24 DOI: 10.36253/Aisthesis-12755 Issue No:Vol. 14, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Antonio Branca Pages: 55 - 64 Abstract: Starting from Lyotard’s definition of Kantian reflection as “judgment repercussion”, my contribution aims to describe the logical side of this repercussion. To do this, I will focus on Kant’s concept of “judgment”, explaining it as the logical act of constitution of experience. I will then point out how judgment involves sensibility for its self-affection and restriction to sensibility. Finally, I’ll give a nominal explication of Kant’s concept of Zweckmäßigkeit, returning to Lyotard’s interpretation. The purpose, in so doing, is to offer to Lyotard’s key concept a logical validation, finding its foundation in the Critique of pure Reason itself. And thus to gain an aesthetical definition of Judgment principle, to read the third Critique. PubDate: 2022-01-24 DOI: 10.36253/Aisthesis-13083 Issue No:Vol. 14, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Andrea Lanza Pages: 65 - 78 Abstract: The paper inquires Husserl’s immanent teleology of conscious life, conceived as a Teleologie der «tiefen» Assoziationen. The associative genesis entails synthetical processes in the primordial-associative field, driven by the general concept of interest. The resulting syntheses ground the various forms of judgments, both judgments on experience and predicative ones in general. Since the theory’s foundation relies on pre-predicative experience, then it must encompass its teleological dimension and, in this sense, the concept of evidence – pivotal in the theory – mirrors the result of the synthesis of fulfilment. This latter, in turn, is driven in an asymptotic path towards a teleological idea of adequacy. This account expresses the complementary mirroring that characterizes the relationship between judging and teleology, without the need to separate teleology from reason. In order to highlight the significance of this framing, the paper is closed by a brief comparison with R. Millikan’s teleosemantic theory, whose concept of teleology is shown as flawed by the general concerns proper to naturalism. PubDate: 2022-01-24 DOI: 10.36253/Aisthesis-13152 Issue No:Vol. 14, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Onerva Kiianlinna Pages: 79 - 91 Abstract: Coevolutionary aesthetics has been forming since the early 2010s. Its contribution of great value has been the inclusion of cultural evolution into Darwinian theories on the origins of art and aesthetic judgement. Coevolutionary aesthetics – or non-modular evolutionary aesthetics as it is sometimes called – emphasizes that aesthetic behavior develops in a specific social environment. Coevolutionary aesthetics suggests that traditional evolutionary aesthetics, drawing from evolutionary psychology, has ignored this. The critical position stems from the widely accepted notions that humans adapt plastically to changing conditions and that there is no «innate» aesthetic module in the mind. What has not been examined is that modularity itself is often considered a condition for plasticity of mind. My main argument is that aesthetic inference is a metarepresentational module without direct fitness-increasing functions. Coevolutionary and evolutionary psychological aesthetics are thus more complementary than contradictory. Combining modular and coevolutionary thinking is the most consilient way forward in evolutionary aesthetics. PubDate: 2022-01-24 DOI: 10.36253/Aisthesis-13054 Issue No:Vol. 14, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Barbara Santini Pages: 93 - 100 Abstract: The paper discusses Hölderlin’s reading of the Kantian antinomy of the faculty of judgement from a letter to Hegel in January 1795. Its meaning is first explored in relation to a kind of distinctiveness that Hölderlin recognizes to the solution of the antinomy, to the point of considering it the place where the entire spirit of the Kantian system comes to the fore. Secondly, the prototypical role of the antinomy of the faculty of judgement for the other antinomies is shown according to a feature they share in the way in which they are solved. The aim of the paper is to bring out the distinctive feature of Hölderlin’s theoretical confrontation with the Critique of teleological judgement as a task and orientation of Hölderlin’s philosophical commitment itself, which understands Kant’s efforts from a different perspective than the one of his contemporaries. PubDate: 2022-01-24 DOI: 10.36253/Aisthesis-13214 Issue No:Vol. 14, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Fabrizio Desideri Pages: 101 - 109 Abstract: The theoretical presupposition of the discourse developed here is Benjamin’s conception of a dialectical image applied to the experience of the modern and contemporary city. The starting point is that of the radical strangeness between the inner life of the individual and the time of the modern metropolis. In this regard, we compare some verses taken from the third book of the Stundenbuch by Rainer Maria Rilke and Georg Simmel’s essay, Die Großstädte und das geistiges Leben, at the center of which is the Nervenleben as an intensification of the perceptive life typical of the experience of the modern city. We then move on to focus on the theme of the labyrinth analyzed by Benjamin in some passages of the Passagenwerk. In this regard, it is emphasized how the modern city realizes the ancient dream of the labyrinth elevating it to the sphere of language. The experience of the city as a labyrinth is interpreted as a «monotonous wandering», which is not delayed in a senseless roaming. In conclusion, the image of the Generic City and of the Junkspace theorized by Rem Koolhaas is compared, as an image that describes our present in the interweaving of the virtual city of cyberspace with the real city, as an alternative image to that of monad. As a monad, the image of the city still reserves the possibility of experiencing the truth, in a paradoxical gaze that captures the original idea of the city from the inside. This confirms that in the connection between city and monad already underlined by Leibniz “the true has no windows”, according to one of the most esoteric passages of the Passagenwerk. PubDate: 2022-01-24 DOI: 10.36253/Aisthesis-13213 Issue No:Vol. 14, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Francesca Perotto Pages: 111 - 121 Abstract: Our experience is marked by the constant, and often imperceptible, presence of technological actors that, with their operational mechanisms, greatly influence the processes of construction of the worlds – both physical and imaginary – in which we live and, consequently, of ourselves. In the last decade, internet-based media have introduced a further level of mediation, constituted by the activity of profiling and the construction of filter bubbles, whose power reverberates offline. The context of the pandemic contagion we are experiencing has drastically expanded the space for these actors, whose filtering mechanisms are often as pervasive as they are opaque. To overcome this problem, artistic practices and aesthetics can play a fundamental role. In this text we aim to see how, thanks to the works of some Italian artists who have built their careers by reflecting on the aesthetic aspects of the information society. PubDate: 2022-01-25 DOI: 10.36253/Aisthesis-12474 Issue No:Vol. 14, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Caterina Zaira Laskaris Pages: 123 - 133 Abstract: The situation caused by the coronavirus pandemic has not qualitatively changed our aesthetic experience, but rather intensified certain perceptual habits that had already been in place for quite a long time, highlighting their characteristics. In particular, the relationship between movement and framing and our close familiarity with digital media in the visual aesthetic experience. This aspect has been acknowledged in the museum context, but we are still at the beginning of a path leading to a more conscious implementation of the potential and creative value of an approach to art not only «in presence», but also «at a distance» through electronic devices. The pandemic has shown how radical and unavoidable is the need for beauty and the multiplicity of possible ways to respond to it. PubDate: 2022-01-25 DOI: 10.36253/Aisthesis-12404 Issue No:Vol. 14, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Ricardo Ibarlucía Pages: 135 - 145 Abstract: It is a commonplace in certain areas of art theory and contemporary art practices to consider Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades as ordinary objects, which have an artistic value that depends more on a theoretical or institutional framework than on an aesthetic experience. The aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to show the historical emergence of these artifacts on the light of the impact of the industrial production in avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century. Discussing Walter Benjamin’ s and Jean Brun’s, it argues that Duchamp’s practice has an explanatory principle, both in the mechanical reproduction of the work of art and in the aestheticization of the machine. On the other hand, it brings forward some observations regarding Duchamp’s insight on the “total lack of good or bad taste” and the perceptual dimension of a sculptural object as the Large Glass, coming back to Arthur Danto’s interpretation of ready-mades and to the notion of “implementation” introduced by Nelson Goodman to define “the process of bringing about the aesthetic functioning that provides the basis for the notion of a work of art”. PubDate: 2022-01-25 DOI: 10.36253/Aisthesis-13216 Issue No:Vol. 14, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Mariya Veleva Pages: 147 - 158 Abstract: Environmental pollution is a global problem today, and together with urbanization closely intertwined with the current pandemic and the challenges facing humanity. This text, based on Robert Smithson’s aesthetic theory and production, intends to show that Earth Art could provide a critical comprehension of industrial culture, could oppose its Gestell (the city may also be seen as Gestell), and sensitize society to the current environmental problems. I also discuss Smithson’s multi-stratified art works, his preference for processes over objects and his critical reflection on museums and galleries as closed and traditional spaces. I suggest that Earth Art has the potential to redefine the relationship between outside and inside, optic and haptic, as well between a «distal, disembodied approach» on one hand and «immediate body experience» on the other. It could be developed more intensively in the future, inasmuch it attracts public to open spaces, thus avoiding possible contagion. PubDate: 2022-01-25 DOI: 10.36253/Aisthesis-12477 Issue No:Vol. 14, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:David Alvarogonzàlez Pages: 159 - 168 Abstract: In this paper, I discuss certain criteria for classifying the substantive arts. In the first section, I explain the idea of substantive arts and then put forward sociological, historical, thematic and metaphysical criteria for classifying the arts that I deem to be external to the classified materials. I subsequently outline five classification criteria internal to works of art, themselves understood as techniques. Such criteria take into account the materials used in the works, the degree of destruction exercised therein, the degree of disconnection between the artist and the artwork, the sense organs involved in perceiving these works and the scope of the analogies between them and the other parts of reality. To end, I draw final corollaries in line with the discussion. PubDate: 2022-01-25 DOI: 10.36253/Aisthesis-12470 Issue No:Vol. 14, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Carmelo Colangelo Pages: 169 - 179 Abstract: In the frame of an in-depth analysis on the fundamental motifs and main intentions of the works of Henry Maldiney, the essay focuses on the relationship between the dimensions of «limitation» and «unlimited» – the latter understood as the emergence of the «unlimited» within the very heart of a «limited» living body –, crucial for understanding Maldiney’s anti-objectivist attitude and his conception of reality as a surprise. More specifically, the author brings to the fore the concepts of «crisis», «rhythm» and «form», also with regard to the aesthetic-artistic experience, and how the rhythmic nature of a living form can ensure an approach to reality which does not overlook its nature of surprise. PubDate: 2022-01-25 DOI: 10.36253/Aisthesis-12677 Issue No:Vol. 14, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Fabrizio Desideri, Mariagrazia Portera Pages: 3 - 3 Abstract: What does it mean to “judge” something' What are the preconditions and the necessary prerequisites for the formulation of a judgement (be it a cognitive judgement, a moral judgement, or an aesthetic judgement)' Is there a special relationship between finalism and judgement and, if yes, in what sense' The relationship between finalism and judgment has been typically understood along two main lines of interpretation: on the one hand, as the finalism attributed by judging to certain objects or phenomena; on the other hand, from the point of view of the finality of judging itself, i.e., the teleological orientation of judging in the global dimension of life. This issue of Aisthesis includes a selection of highly relevant contributions to the topic “Judgement and finalism”, with the aim of bringing to the fore the circular movement that seems to characterize every judgement in itself – from nature, and from the nature of our mind, to the objects, structures, natural kinds etc. that populate the world, and reversely from the world to the mind. Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgement plays, in this respect, a very fundamental role, as the papers by Stefano Velotti, Luigi Filieri, Lorenzo Sala, and Antonio Branca show brilliantly. Andrea Lanza and Barbara Santini discuss the interconnections between teleology and judgement in the frame, respectively, of Husserl’s phenomenology and Friedrich Hölderlin’s poetic philosophy. The idea that finalism and the dynamics of judgement have much to do with each other opens new links to disciplines other than philosophy and to an interdisciplinary approach to the activity of judging in research fields such as psychology, cognitive sciences, biology. This is the perspective adopted by Francesco Vitale, in his paper on Ernst Mayr’s teleonomy, and by Onerva Kiianlinna, in her a paper on epigenesis and modularity in Evolutionary Aesthetics. This present issue is further enriched by a substantial focus on images and the aesthetic experience in the digital age (Fabrizio Desideri, Francesca Perotto, Caterina Zaira) and by a multifaceted and intriguing “Varia” section, with contributions by Ricardo Ibarlucia, Mariya Veleva, David Alvaro Gonzàlez, Carmelo Colangelo. PubDate: 2021-12-30 DOI: 10.36253/Aisthesis-13336 Issue No:Vol. 14, No. 2 (2021)
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