Aisthesis

Pre-foreword

Fabrizio Desideri — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Foreword

Alessandro Bertinetto, Mariagrazia Portera — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A Swallow Does Not Make a Summer. Towards a Theory of the Human Aesthetic as a Habitual Disposition

Mariagrazia Portera — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This paper is part of a broader effort to reinterpret the human aesthetic through the lens of the notion of habitus or disposition, considering the recent resurgence of interest, within the field of contemporary aesthetics, in Aristotelian virtues (“aesthetic virtue”) and, within the field of analytic metaphysics, in the concept of power. Assuming that virtues in aesthetics are excellences of the character that enable us to cor-respond appropriately to (active) aesthetic objects, this paper explores how and to what extent an (aesthetic) subject can achieve self-knowledge of having reached that “level of excellence” of their (aesthetic) disposition or power. Additionally, it suggests that experiences of failure might have a role, ex negativo, in this process. The text is organized into paragraphs, each addressing one of the following points: 1. what a disposition (or habitus or capacity or power) is; 2. dispositions in ethics (Aristotelian virtues); 3. why and to what extent the human aesthetic can be understood as a disposition or power, referencing some recent literature on the notion of “aesthetic virtue”; 4. the relationship between aesthetic dispositions and the experience of (aesthetic) failure.

Mechanical Models of Habits and Aesthetic Perception in Descartes and Gassendi

Giuliano Gasparri — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The early modern age saw an increasing use of mechanical models in order to explain sense perception, imagination, emotions, memory, and habit. René Descartes and Pierre Gassendi tried to innovate music theory in the light of such models. Thus, the bodily mechanism of habits accounts for the skill in playing music, singing, and dancing, but also – to a certain extent – for the perception of beauty and the shaping of taste.

Habits of Beauty. Towards a “Hexiologia Aesthetica” in the Early Modern Age

Alessandro Nannini — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper I make a case that the identity of disciplinary aesthetics in its inception is grounded in the habituation of αἴσθησις rather than in αἴσθησις as mere epistemic apprehension. To do so, I examine how disciplinary aesthetics arose within the revival of habitus and intellectual virtues in the early modern age, and argue that its ultimate goal was to develop beauty as a specific set of habitus of sensibility. Accordingly, I interpret Baumgarten’s doctrine of the six perfections of sensible knowledge as guidelines of ascetic pathways aimed at restoring the health of the lower faculties of the soul. While the internalization of habitus gives identity to the aesthetic subject, I conclude, this identity takes life only if «inspired», hence in a fruitful exchange with the environment in which the subject is embedded, and in general with the whole universe. In this sense, nascent aesthetics is both ascetic and environmental.

Habits and Aesthetic Experience

Alessandro Bertinetto — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It is often assumed that habits and aesthetic experiences are fundamentally and irreconcilably opposed. Typically, aesthetic experiences are considered to necessitate non-habitual behavior and to provoke unexpected mental states and extraordinary affective sensations. This article challenges this assumption. Moving beyond potential structural analogies between habitual behavior and aesthetic experience, I focus on two key aspects. Firstly, I argue that the experience of beauty and aesthetic experiences in general actually depend on certain habits, specifically those engaged in aesthetic agency and appreciation, which I term «aesthetic habits». Secondly, I propose that habits have an aesthetic origin, as they virtuously evolve and adapt to their environment. This transformative capacity, along with their ability to resonate with specific situational demands, embodies an improvisational quality that should be encouraged, reflecting the inherently unpredictable and uncontrollable nature of aesthetic experience.

Biophilia Aesthetics. Ungrounding Experience

Gregorio Tenti — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The biophilia hypothesis refers to the idea of an innate human tendency towards life and its manifestations. The article takes its cue from the debate on biophilia to investigate how evolved psychobiological constraints structure human experience. First, the various positions in favor of biophilia are assessed as to their aesthetic connotations, that is, as to the notion of “experience” they convey (par. 1). A post-cognitivist approach, at the intersection of the enactivist, ecopsychological, and pragmatist traditions, is then indicated as the most suitable solution in order to conceptualize the biophilic aspects of human experience (par. 2). It is finally clarified in what sense human experience is expressively reminiscent of the archaic past of our organism and how the notion of habit can be used to conceive of evolutionary constraints (par. 3). A conclusive paragraph elucidates the epistemological status of the naturalizing discourse on experience.

The Flywheel of the Collective. Bruno Latour on Aesthetic Habits and the Practice of Sensibility

Christian Frigerio — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This paper will consider the role that aesthetics, understood as the theory of sensibility, plays in Bruno Latour’s philosophy. Aesthetics is the keystone of Latour’s thought because it connects his peculiar metaphysical theory of effects as coming before their causes, with his view of how we come to accord moral respect to other beings, and finally with his conceptualization of political (and especially ecological) praxis. The paper will argue that the role Latour assigns to art and science depends precisely on their capacity to extend sensibility; that sensibility is the motor for the creation and the maintenance of the «collective»; and that it is always sensibility that provides the ground for political action, making it possible to generate the affects without which any issue would remain ineffective.

Ways of Thinking. Towards a Pluralistic and Inclusive Understanding of Thinking Habitus

Giacomo Pezzano — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The paper outlines a pluralistic and inclusive understanding of thinking as an aesthetic habit. Taking as a starting point Noë’s recent idea that thinking is a graphical practice (§ 0), I propose a general and interdisciplinary interpretation of thinking as a habitus, which offers an articulation of how verbal and visual thinking unfolds and places emphasis on the entanglement between words and images inside the mind and on technologies of the word and the image outside the mind (§ 1). Then, I claim that such an interpretation can help to address two pressing phenomena of our time: the resurgence of technologies of the image, which questions the “mediatic discrimination” linked to the shared mediatic primacy of the alphabet and printing (§ 2); the vindication of subjectivities who were traditionally marginalized from knowledge practices and representations, which raises the issue of “epistemic injustice” and its undesirable consequences (§ 3).

The Arts are Made of (Intelligent) Habits

Roberta Dreon — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Contrary to the traditional picture of “Art” as an autonomous realm separate from artisanal and technical activities, a view dating back to the second part of the eighteenth century, this paper claims that artistic practices are largely scaffolded by habits, understood as more or less flexible channelings of both organic and environmental energies. More precisely, the author suggests developing Dewey’s idea of “intelligent habits” as a conceptual tool that can solve the issue of the peculiar intelligence associated with artistic practices, as well as get rid of the picture of artistic creativity as involving a radical break with one’s habits. On the one hand, assuming that habits’ intelligence consists in their sensibility to the environment, artistic habits would appear to be one entailing an enhanced sensibility to changes in the situation in which they are embedded, and to the interactions that are occurring between doing and perceiving. On the other hand, rejecting the standard view of artistic creation as radically original, innovative, and solitary and assuming a view of it as embedded in a shared form of life, supported by a common sensibility, collective practices, and norms of conduct, allows us to focus on the creative side of intelligent habits, as well as to appreciate how enhanced creativity is grounded in previously established habits and produces new or renewed ones.

Negotiation of Aesthetic Habits, Cultural Symbols, and Identity of Lampung Culture

Dwiyana Habsary, Muchammad Bayu Tejo Sampurno — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This study profoundly analyzes the balance between traditionalism and modernization within the Lampung culture. In most aspects, it dwells on the traditional value system of Pi’il, the philosophical symbolism of traditional dressing in cultures, and the cultural implications, which are synonymous with dance and ornamental art. Lampung’s culture and identity as aesthetic habits are explicitly found in Pi’il as a source of dignity and harmony of the social body amidst contemporary globalization forces. Instead, Pi’il’s adaptation to the present life forms seems to be characterized by young generations. The study also involves the deep-seated philosophical connotations hidden beneath forms or defined in chosen color and shape, and this form is another influence of Indonesian traditional culture; the Siger crown and Ruwi bracelet, which to Lampung’s natives are more than mere aesthetic elements but signs of socio-cultural beliefs; and dance as aesthetic habits from its cultural values and precisely how the Sigeh Penguten traditional dance functions as such is researched. Dance like Jong Simpuh and Ngrujung, containing unique poses, represents three crucial cultural practices and values such as hospitality rights, social hierarchy, and ubiquitous relationships. Then, the significant patterns of visual art forms in the culture Lampung, “Pucuk Rebung” and “jung”, are used as symbols of identity in public places. These motifs and the regional script “Aksara Ka Ga Nga” are vital because they ensure a culture or identity awareness even in an era where modernization efforts threaten to oust older influences.

Habits Changing Habits. Aesthetic Technologies between Discipline and Experiment in Theater and Performance Art

Francesca Raimondi — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The paper gives an account of a peculiar connection between art and habits that started emerging with the historical avant-gardes. Especially in avant-garde theater, artistic practices began developing genuinely aesthetic technologies to transform social habits. By examining three case studies – the biomechanics of Vsevolod Meyerhold, the poor theater of Jerzy Grotowski, and the constructed situations of Tino Sehgal – this paper traces the development of these aesthetic technologies up to contemporary art. Unlike the avant-gardes who sought to eliminate the boundary between art and life or contemporary participatory art, aesthetic technologies maintain the character of artifice. This contribution argues that it is precisely through this artifice that these aesthetic technologies provide the experience of a form of habits different from the one installed by the disciplinary modern regime that Michel Foucault described and its continuation into new forms of self-optimization. By differentiating the functioning of aesthetic technologies from Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetics, the paper outlines their aesthetic as well as critical importance within contemporary neoliberal societies.

Attempt at Doubt. The Abandonment of Aesthetic Automatisms Through Collective Exercises in the Performative Practice by Didymos

Yulia S. Tikhomirova — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The research examines how contemporary performance art challenges aesthetic habits, which often manifest as disruptive and constraining elements within imaginative faculties. The Italian duo Didymos focuses its oeuvre on deconstructing routine and unintentional behaviors. The artists employ a series of performative practices involving the audience in a political experience by implementing the category of doubt. Together, they engage in the execution of the most mundane actions, with the overarching objective of dismantling layers of conventional knowledge. This process entails a deliberate departure from sensible automatism, ultimately facilitating an escape from arguably apolitical modes of engaging with the world. The essay explores Didymos’s recent artistic practice, A Social Gym, confronts the category of doubt used by the duo with Jacques Rancière’s concept of dissensus, and attempts at tracing the bind between aesthetic norms and artistic expressiveness from the perspective of the aesthetics-politics relationship.

Habits in the Kitchen: On the Application of Recipes for the Good Life

Robert T. Valgenti — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

What does it mean to apply a recipe? In this essay I examine how habit and improvisation contribute to the application of recipes. Application entails more than following technical instructions; it involves strategies for critically reading, understanding, and performing recipes in a manner that contributes to their transmission and transformation. Application draws upon our habits and prior knowledge to respond to the contingencies of new situations and highlights future possibilities that require adaptation and transformation. I thus argue that one should view recipes as ethical texts, which in this context of application means that they are something more than rigid technical guides for cooking, and more than mere recordings of cultural and historical knowledge to be reproduced: as an essential element of human gastronomy, the application of a recipe involves habit and improvisation working together in the pursuit of the good life.

The Role of Habits in Documentary Filmmaking and in the Recognition of Documentary Works

Claudia Tosi — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It is generally agreed that documentary refers to reality. I argue that documentary is the cinematic form that elevates human beings’ experience with reality to an artistic level, and that the documentary work may be conceived as a proxy of the perceiver’s existential experience. Habitual practices related to recognizing authentic reality and its constraints underlie the filmmaker’s commitment to not violating it, and behaviors exhibited accordingly inform practices. Habits, such as seeing the past through pictures and asking questions to understand other people’s thought, have creatively evolved into cinematic techniques such as the use of filmic or photographic archives and interviews. The habit of deferring to experts for genre categorization determines that, due to their authority, the acceptance of challenging works facilitates genre transformation. A better understanding of processes that engage human beings with existence may help to comprehend documentary filmmaking practices, and vice versa.

Habits, Aesthetics and Normativity

Alessandro Bertinetto — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article explores the role of habits in shaping aesthetic normativity. It asserts that standards of value within aesthetic agency are not immutable, objective criteria detached from personal engagement in appreciation and creation, nor should they be reduced to mere individual subjective pleasure. The former stance fails to consider the essential expressivity and creativity at the heart of aesthetic practices, while the latter overlooks the normative framework that underpins the significance, validity, and quality of aesthetic agency. This framework is represented in the established rules of taste, the need for aesthetic education, and the dynamics of aesthetic disagreements.

Consequently, effective aesthetic normativity requires a balance: practices must be organized structurally around values that are, to a certain degree, communally shared, yet flexible enough to incorporate the expressive creativity of individual appreciation. This article contributes a nuanced explanation of aesthetic normativity by elucidating the impact of habits on aesthetic practices.

A Taste for Habits: On Preference Self-Construction

Emanuele Arielli — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This paper explores the tensions and potential contradictions in the “self-construction” of habits and preferences, arguing that preferences and tastes not only arise from habit formation but also contribute to the development of new habits. Changing tastes necessitates self-reflection on our current preferences and habits, which then become subjects of evaluation, transformation, and alteration from a higher-order perspective. It will be argued that modifying the structure of one’s habits and preferences requires various forms of (self)-distancing: these include the impossibility of immediate transformation, recognizing the gradual nature of change, and acknowledging the limits of direct intentionality and control in the transformative process. These points ultimately reveal the inherent indeterminacy and openness of any self-cultivation endeavor involving preference-based habits, highlighting its balance between controllability and the potential for its loss.

The Aesthetic Value in Social Education. Eric R. Kandel and the Habit of Looking

Alberto Simonetti — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This paper intends to deepen Eric R. Kandel’s thought on the theme of the aesthetic gaze and the artistic habit. Through neurology Kandel demonstrates that the brain is enriched thanks to the aesthetic habit and can create new logical connectors. The implication is also social because this habit of looking aesthetically can produce new and supportive forms of coexistence. Aesthetics can influence everyone’s ethical practices, and this is why, according to Kandel, the possibility of using them should be widened.

Drammatica della voce. Voice drama

Fabrizio Desideri — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The aim is to show that the “dramatic” character of the voice is not merely about its expressive quality but is intrinsic to its very nature. The voice is “dramatic” because it inherently takes the form of action: it manifests an action. As an expression of an original “theatrum,” the voice is inherently plural, containing “multitudes” (to quote Bob Dylan).

On this basis, we will analyze the tension-filled autonomy of the voice with respect to language, and of the vox with respect to the verbum (as per Augustine). Finally, by discussing Derrida, we will address the crucial issue of the relationship between “voice” and “consciousness.”

Wölfflin and Wiesing. Style as a Principle of Anthropological Thinking

Michael Jenewein — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The question of this paper is: Does the concept of style represent a principle of anthropological thinking? The first step is to establish a typology of traditional theories of style that assert a connection between man and style. The purpose is to identify a common paradigm to stand out from it in a second step. The thesis is namely that in the traditional approaches, no primary interest is taken in the question What is man? but rather the question What is style? Instead, following Heinrich Wölfflin and Lambert Wiesing, a formal aesthetic concept of style will be discussed. In his work, Wiesing adapts the stylistic concepts of Painterly and Linear (Wölfflin) to be able to phenomenologically describe the plurality of human-world relations. This approach should be made explicit as a systematic contribution to the discussions at the crossroads of aesthetic and anthropological questions.

Three Distances in Linquan Gaozhi

Kelin Li — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Linquan Gaozhi (《주홋멕鈴》) was completed during the North Song period, a period of full development in Chinese landscape painting. As a comprehensive work, this book encompasses various aspects of painting techniques, appreciation criteria, and artistic concepts. The concept of the “Three Distances” proposed in this book not only became an important resource in the history of painting and art criticism but also continues to play a significant role in reshaping theoretical interpretation and inspiring artistic creation among contemporary scholars and artists. By historically tracing and reconstructing the spatial arrangement of the “Three Distances (힛陶),” the interconnections and operational environment of these distances are revealed. In the visual language of landscape painting, we seek to understand the motivation of Guo Xi as a painter and his self-recognition as a literatus. Guo Xi’s dual identity brings out the complex personality of Song literati, which maintains a balance between responsibility within the world and the pursuit of essential Dao in a typical articulation.

Il fenomenologo e il Guardador de Rebanhos. Husserl eteronimo di Pessoa

Emanuele Mariani — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

There has been no shortage of attempts to bring Fernando Pessoa and Edmund Husserl together by interpreting the poetics of the one in the light of the philosophy of the other, albeit with due caution given the total lack of contact between the two and the obvious diversity of intentions. However, the results have been mostly negative, and the interpreters have essentially opted to highlight the limits of Husserlian phenomenology in comparison with the «absolute objectivism» of the verses of Alberto Caeiro, the «neo-pagan» poet whom Fernando Pessoa calls the «master» of his heteronyms. However, we believe that a different reading is possible, without denying the unbridgeable gap that separates Edmund Husserl and Fernando Pessoa alias Alberto Caeiro, because of the principle that underlies both the poetic and the phenomenological attitude: «pure vision».