Aesthetica Preprint

Prefazione

Nicola Perullo — 2023-08-31

Painting, Writing and Voice: The Phaedrus between Levinas and Derrida

Giulia Cervato — 2023-08-31

The relationship between orality and writing, especially with respect to their ability to express otherness, was one of the most debated topics in the colloquium between Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. To address it, both philosophers could not but independently confront the Platonic Phaedrus, the text that founds this problem within Western philosophical tradition. Both authors’ exegeses focus on the connection determined by Socrates with a third expressive language, the artistic-figurative one, and on the relationship that written speech establishes with its author’s signifying intentionality. Nevertheless, their interpretative outcomes are very distant from each other: this essay aims to keep track of this hermeneutical distance in order to (1) evaluate the dialogue that they autonomously developed with the Phaedrus and (2) let emerge the reason why Levinas’ and Derrida’s thoughts, despite being so kindred, choose two antithetical paths when dealing with this fundamental issue.

Somiglianze di famiglie — tra Wittgenstein e la “scuola schellinghiana”

Francesco Di Maio — 2023-08-31

Ludwig Wittgenstein made extensive and explicit use of the concept of ‘Family resemblance’, attributing a technical meaning to this expression. This contribution emphasises an ambiguity in the Viennese philosopher regarding this lemma (§2), sometimes an extension of the concept of γένος, other times an instrument for connecting irreducible multiplicities (§3). Therefore, in order to find a structural reason for this ambivalence, this text returns to Arthur Schopenhauer who accused the so-called “Schellingian school” of overusing this concept (§4). Individuating the referent of the vague formula in Henrik Steffens (§5), this paper finally attempts to point out an actual “family resemblance” between Wittgenstein and F.W.J. Schelling. Indeed, by reading the one with the other, the last part of this contribution (§6) shows how the ambiguity of the former’s use of Familienähnlichkeit can be traced back to the “criticist” and “dogmatist” positions outlined in the latter’s Philosophical Letters.

Pleasure of body, order of mind. Kantian remarks about the contemporary theory of emotions

Ilaria Ferrara — 2023-08-31

This paper aims to focus on a Kantian “emotional consciousness”, connected to the aesthetic and affective subjectivity exposed in the Critique of Judgment and related to some issues concerning contemporary theories of emotions. This essay will try to valorise Kantian anthropological emotions [Affekten], that “prepare” the treatment of the pleasure of beauty as a free game through a homeostatic balance of bodily sensations. The first part will analyse the concept of Kantian animus, seeing how the Kantian perspective on regulative and evaluative emotions offers suggestions on the appraisal theory. The second part will try to connect Kantian sensible pleasure with some theories of emotion embodied in contemporary enactivism. The last part of the paper, starting from the concept of pleasure as a specific mental activity, will deepen the Kantian conception of “emotional causality” as an essential point of interest for the debate in the contemporary philosophy of emotions, between cognitivism and affectivism.

Evocative Words: The Poetic Thinking of Martin Heidegger and Daodejing

Sara Francescato — 2023-08-31

The purpose of this essay is to investigate what kind of connections and similarities can be found between the post-Kehre Heideggerian philosophy and the ideas of the Daodejing. The analysis will focus on how Heidegger’s inclination to the poetic language and his rejection of the language of metaphysics find resonances with the allusive saying and the opposition to the declarative language present in the Daodejing. Furthermore, it will be examined how the Daoist ideas can contribute to Heidegger’s attempt to start a “new beginning” for philosophy, possible only by using a language radically different from the metaphysical one, i.e. the evocative language of poetry. Through the examination of the Heideggerian and Daoist positions, this essay also proposes a further reflection on the relationship between poetry and thinking, and its implications for philosophy.

Max Black on metaphorical language: exploring the line between analysis and aesthetics

Alice Giuliani — 2023-08-31

This paper deals with Black’s philosophical proposal on metaphor as opening a threshold between analysis and aesthetics. Black was willing to show that analysis was adequate in explaining the cognitive and creative value of metaphor. But Black’s analysis also focused on innovation and metaphorical insight as aspects exceeding analytical skills and categories. Therefore, his interaction view is charged with aesthetic interest for two reasons: on the one hand, the method of analysis might have favoured the assimilation of metaphor to the conceptual metaphor of the cognitive approach; on the on the other hand, his studies provide the conditions to approach metaphor using aesthetic categories with greater critical awareness.

Double Gaze. Time, Trace, and Excess in Photography as Document

Agnese Ghezzi — 2023-08-31

Starting from the analysis of some photographic objects and practices from the late nineteenth century selected from the archives of Italian anthropological museums, the contribution aims on the one hand to analyse how these are the product of a culturally and historically determined gaze, born in the intertwining of positivism, ethnocentrism, nationalism and colonialism. On the other hand, it aims to highlight the shifts in meaning, the presence of subjectivities that escape the hierarchical structure of the photographic device, and the impossibility of operating a control over the image. To do so, the contribution proposes a theoretical passage between the model of stereoscopic view, which can be associated with the dominant vision, and that of diplopic vision, understood as the possibility of bringing to the surface a meaning that escapes the cultural, theoretical and aesthetic framework within which the image was conceived.

La lingua del possibile: il Metaverso

Sara Matetich — 2023-08-31

The possibility of embodying social connectivity in a new world-form is being announced: it is called the Metaverse. The technology that promises the creation of this mixed world (opp. cross-world) is still being perfected, but the project that determines it has already been established: to increase the involvement of internet users, in order to give them the most satisfying immersiveness possible to fully enjoy the onlife experience, where “what is real is informational and what is informational is real” – as Luciano Floridi wrote, paraphrasing Hegel.
Therefore, in addition to the continuous adaptation of a digital re-ontologization of the world, it is urgent to identify the peculiarities of the language, and of the relevant structure, on which the Metaverse envisages its own foundations. The following essay will deal with this, starting from Mark Zuckerberg’s recent promise of wanting to create a unique language, developed exclusively for the citizens of the Metaverse, thus realizing that ‘superpower’ that has always been coveted at all latitudes: universal communication! A promise of this kind is imbued with implications of an aesthetic nature: from the creation of a new linguistic community, which includes all the differences linked to the cultural context of reference, up to the literacy techniques that it will be necessary to initiate and investigate, in order to allow participants of the Metaverse experience to know how to use the new language to build – and settle in – their new world.

Di corpi permeabili e sguardi mimetici. Costruire il sé in utero

Nicole Miglio — 2023-08-31

Contemporary debates dealing with visualization technologies in the reproductive process tend to view ultrasound outcomes as a way of reducing the maternal self to a mere container. The focus of this body of studies is mostly on the representation of the fetus – whose ‘independence’ from the maternal body is discussed – and the ways in which biomedical technologies have eliminated the pregnant subject, omitting its presence from fetal iconography. In this paper, I argue for broadening the field of analysis, decentering it somewhat from the mere representation of the conceptus, to investigate instead the conditions of possibility of the construction “in images” of the fetus. The hypothesis in the background of the present reflection is that the imaginative and technological production of the fetus has, in the Western history of ideas and knowledge-power practices that shape human reproduction, an exemplifying role in the mutual movement between visualization and subjectification.
In the first section of my paper, I discuss the most prominent features of maternal imagination, by highlighting its biopolitical dimension and aesthetic meaning; in the second, I address the relationship between imagination, imaginary and image through Christoph Wulf’s theory of mimesis.
The maternal imagination can be understood within a socially shared imaginary of beliefs that afford women an active role in the process of pregnancy— especially, in the outcomes of gestation. This interpretive paradigm has little to do with the contemporary overemphasis on the iconicity of the fetus, but much to offer to my working hypotheses: the complex and equivocal relationship between the agency of image, imaginary, and technology (in the sense of technê and technological device) is not exclusive to contemporary visualization but innervates the history of the maternal body and human reproduction.

Utopia e catastrofe. Pensieri al bivio tra le configurazioni originali del XIX secolo

Marina Montanelli — 2023-08-31

The article returns to the upheaval introduced into the relationship between human beings, nature and technique by modernity through Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project. The starting point is the formulation of the dialectical image of the 1935 exposé as a dream image. From here, the links between the collective imaginary and the transformations that affected 19th century society are analysed. The oscillation between “golden age” and “hell” turns out to be the fundamental phantasmagoria as a result of the lack of critical elaboration of technical development. Hence, some of the questions posed by the Arts and Crafts Movement, the dispute between the École Polytechnique and the École des Beaux-Arts, the reactive or compensatory responses of the art pour l’art, neoclassicism and Jugendstil to technical reproducibility and the engineering principle, the emergence of Kitsch as an aesthetic, anthropological and political category are re-examined. This clarifies Benjamin’s methodological proposal: immersion, yes, in the dreams of an epoch, but in order to grasp their internal dialectical and emancipatory force, beyond the oscillation between utopia and catastrophe.

Ellissi, catastrofi, quanti. Forme del Neobarocco tra estetica e pensiero scientifico

Alessandro Montefameglio — 2023-08-31

This article examines specific aesthetic and philosophical aspects of the Neobaroque category, with particular emphasis on its development in the late 20th century. In this sense, Neobaroque is conceived as a category that does not designate the repetition of the characteristics of historical Baroque, but that instead identifies an underlying logic of form in contemporary aesthetic phenomena. Specifically, we focus on the paradigms presented by Severo Sarduy and Omar Calabrese, with special attention to the interplay between aesthetics and science in their works. After an introductive paragraph (1), providing a brief overview of the essential historical and philosophical coordinates of Neobaroque, we analyse (2) Sarduy’s concept of retombée and its implications. Moving to Calabrese’s paradigm (3), we examine how the semiotician conceptually and methodologically expands the architecture of the previous model, establishing it as an authentic logic of form. The last paragraph (4) briefly explores the potential application and adaptability of the Neobaroque category in contemporary times.

Forme evanescenti di estetica urbana. William Kentridge a Roma

Giuseppe Patella — 2023-08-31

The paper aims at discussing the topic of urban aesthetics through the case study of a particular contemporary artwork, by analysing from an aesthetic point of view the exemplary case of a huge site-specific artwork realized in Rome by the south African artist William Kentridge. Created in 2016 along the banks of the Tiber River in Rome, Triumphs and Laments is an artwork destined to disappear over time, and already almost disappeared. In the fragility and transiency of its forms, this kind of public art plays not only on the fragile nature of its materials, organic, alive, and therefore destined to perish, but also on the precariousness of the sense of historical memory and the need for its continuous activation. The extraordinary strength of this example of public art is then connected to the awareness of its impermanence and the activation of visual memory processes shared by all of us.

How Does Aesthetics Express Itself? Deleuze, from the Imperceptible to the Affects

Francesca Perotto — 2023-08-31

To overcome the traditional representative conception of aesthetics, inhibiting the creative and disruptive power of the sensible, while relegating its creativity to artistic activity, Deleuze proposes an expressive account of sensibility, conceived as an intensive field of individuation that expresses itself through affectivity. The article will retrace the essential passages of this operation, from the establishment of an intensive domain of individuation in early transcendental empiricism to the radical short-circuit of anthropocentrism in his late constructivism. Moving from the paradox of the imperceptible, particular attention will be paid to the Deleuzian conception of the affects, the peak of the radicalization of his aesthetic proposal. It will be argued how it offers a fundamental link to an ethics of power, making the limits of the discipline implode.

Morphology as a Language for Aesthetics. From J.W. von Goethe to Olaf Breidbach

Ivan Quartesan — 2023-08-31

The paper aims to understand whether morphology can be framed as a language for aesthetics. In particular, whether Olaf Breidbach’s contribution can determine its fundamental terms. These are related to the notion of forms and images. Hence, the paper is structured into three parts: i) framing of research on morphology in Germany; ii) analysis of Goethe’s method and vocabulary from an aesthetic standpoint; iii) presentation of Breidbach’s proposal in relation to Goethe.

Heidegger on Poetry and Thought. From Metaphor to Dialogue

Nicola Ramazzotto — 2023-08-31

The purpose of this paper is to analyze Heidegger’s critique for which the metaphysical conception of art is necessarily “metaphorical”, meaning a view that separates the spiritual and truthful content of art from the sensible and linguistic level in which it is expressed. The first part of this paper will analyse Heidegger’s critique of aesthetics with a particular focus on its metaphorical consideration of language. I will show how Heidegger considers Hegel to be the ultimate example of this view of art and language, I will try to trace the reasons for it, and I will emphasize the connection between metaphor and the end of art. In the second part, I will instead show Heidegger’s contrasting view of the relationship between poetry and language, which will be seen as two autonomous and equal responses to the event of the truth of being.