Deadline: September 01, 2025

SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORS: Prof. Daniele Guastini (Sapienza University of Rome), Prof. Filippo Fimiani (University of Salerno)

TITLE: Aesthetics and Therapeia: On the Therapeutic Value of Representation

 

In modern Western tradition, art and aesthetics have often been considered as having no pragmatic and practical effect. However, this was not the case in ancient times, as evidenced, for example, by the Platonic concept of pharmakon, the Aristotelian theory of katharsis, and the significance attributed to agalma within Christian culture.

For centuries, people have undoubtedly believed in the therapeutic value of representations, as exemplified by a multitude of cultural phenomena and practices of the pagan and Christian civilizations, including archaic apotropaic images, healing dreams rituals, tragic and comic theatre, epic narrations, and corybantic music. In particular, the cult of images, and to a lesser extent the incubation rituals, played a pivotal role in the Christian tradition.

These beliefs are rooted in a distinctive approach to the fields of representation and, more generally, visual culture that diverges from the prevailing paradigms in modern episteme and dispositive. The modern distinction between art and religion, coupled with the separation between the humanities (especially aesthetics) and the natural sciences, has led to the idea that representation lacks any capacity to act concretely on life and real world, but instead serves merely to realize an aesthetic and disinterested contemplation.

The consequence of this radical separation between reality, or ontology, and fiction, between facta and ficta, is that representations serve, at best, to unify and justify the diverse elements of an otherwise inaccessible experience.

However, recent critical and interdisciplinary perspectives on representations and agencies facilitated the retrieval of the therapeutic potentialities and practical implications of images and image-making, thereby enabling us to re-discover and re-invent the link between aesthetics and therapy. Today – even in the radical eccentricity of our post-/non-human and hyper-technological condition, within new forms of pharmakon, katharsis and agalma – we need to re-understand how, when and why, images and representations, particularly produced and consumed by new digital technologies and devices, can – or not – re-activate and re-invigorate our cognitive and imaginative processes and abilities, as well as emotional and relational capacities – not only with ourselves and our fellow human beings.

The long history of the (Western) idea of aesthetic therapy, in conjunction with the fields of the visual and performing arts, ritual agencies, and technological mediations, deserves a new and different examination.

This issue of Aisthesis invites contributions exploring the therapeutic value of representations across various discourses, contexts, and historical periods.

We particularly welcome submissions on, but not limited to, the following topics:

 

• The therapeutic value of representation in philosophy, literature and other discursive forms in antiquity and the Middle Ages.
• Applied modalities of the therapeutic value of symbolic forms in ancient and early Christian contexts.
• The relationship between philosophy and medicine before the scientific revolution.
• Key or symptomatic moments in modern culture and society that have preserved traces, legacies or equivalents of the ancient, classical or archaic, operational logic of therapeia, pharmakon, katharsis and agalma.
• The idea of therapy in contemporary aesthetics and philosophy.
• Current trends, practices and concrete productions contributing to the revival of the therapeutic virtuality of images.
• The performative and cognitive potential of digital audiovisual technologies (including video, VR and AI) in therapeutic practices.

 

 

Contributions must be submitted in Italian, English or French and must strictly adhere to the Aisthesis

Guidelines.

 

Only contributions compliant with Author Guidelines will be admitted to peer review.

 

 

SUBMISSIONS MUST CONFORM TO THE INSTRUCTIONS SET OUT BELOW. PLEASE READ CAREFULLY.

All editorial inquiries should be addressed to:

Fabrizio Desideri (Editor): fabrizio.desideri@unifi.it

Marina Montanelli (Editorial Secretariat): marina.montanelli@unifi.it

 

Aisthesis publishes academic articles in Italian, English and French, current research articles, symposia, special issues, and timely book reviews. It publishes two issues per year and contains a thematic section, a miscellany, notices and reviews. Each issue contains invited papers and contributed papers.

 

Articles should be submitted using the online submission system. They should be in .doc or .docx format, A4, paginated, double spaced throughout (i.e. including references and quotations), with ample margins. They should be formatted for blind review, not normally exceed 7,500 words and should include an abstract of no more than 150 words and five keywords (in English).

Tables and illustrations should be submitted to the online submission system in separate files to the main manuscript. Please be aware that you may have to secure figure permissions upon acceptance.