Aesthesis, the classical term for sensing and perceiving, is at the heart of innumerable problems that plague global society. The purpose of this article is to open a conversation on aesthesis. We survey the roots and relevance of aesthesis as a direct albeit contested relation and engagement with the world and with Others. From its pre-Socratic origins, aesthesis has been both a pragmatic, somatic concept, prompting a re-evaluation of the distinction between experience and abstraction. We trace (...) its ongoing repression from Plato through ‘western’ theories of formal Aesthetics. Drawing on a relational interpretation of Protagoras’ aesthesis, we argue that modern pragmatists and radical empiricists, as well as more contemporary critics of the ‘colonization’ of aesthesis (Mignolo and Vasquez) by formal Aesthetics recognize and develop the relational and ethical aspects of aesthesis. We consider the role of the body, affect, and of the intangible or virtual qualities of aesthesis. The ethics of obligations (Weil) in the polis (Arendt) shows how aesthesis informs politics despite its repression in favour of moral and legal norms. We argue this is relevant to contemporary crises such as xenophobia and ecocidal climate warming. (shrink)

Emphasizing the embodied, physical aspect of María Lugones's decolonial feminism, this article elucidates ways in which the oppressed appears to colonizing gazes and beyond them in order to explore possibilities of resistance. It proposes “stillness” as a sentient physicality that can transgress the hold of racist/colonizing gazes and sense a multiplicity of worlds from a limen. In order to do this, it focuses on the temporality of “stillness” and on modes of appearing of resistant praxis.

A new speculative ontology of aesthetics. In Aesthesis and Perceptronium, Alexander Wilson presents a theory of materialist and posthumanist aesthetics founded on an original speculative ontology that addresses the interconnections of experience, cognition, organism, and matter. Entering the active fields of contemporary thought known as the new materialisms and realisms, Wilson argues for a rigorous redefining of the criteria that allow us to discriminate between those materials and objects where aesthesis (perception, cognition) takes place and those where it (...) doesn't. Aesthesis and Perceptronium negotiates between indiscriminately pluralist views that attribute mentation to all things and eliminative views that deny the existence of mentation even in humans. By recasting aesthetic questions within the framework of "epistemaesthetics," which considers cognition and aesthetics as belonging to a single category that can neither be fully disentangled nor fully reduced to either of its terms, Wilson forges a theory of nonhuman experience that avoids this untenable dilemma. Through a novel consideration of the evolutionary origins of cognition and its extension in technological developments, the investigation culminates in a rigorous reevaluation of the status of matter, information, computation, causality, and time in terms of their logical and causal engagement with the activities of human and nonhuman agents. (shrink)

Following text places in dialogue or applies to a certain conception of aesthetic experience a vast set of experimental evidences extracted from the inquiry of other mental phenomena, in particular the subjective experience of emotions and feelings. Comimg from António Damásio the beam master, the skeleton, the base, the structure of all my argument. My main hypothesis is that certain objects and situations activate cerebral dispositional hyper-spaces associated to the ocurrence of phenomena like sensation of beauty, pleasure and joy. I (...) consider that the emergency of an aesthetic experience must be understood as resulted of a sensible perception that set in motion a somatic-cognitive routine function of the detonation of a pattern of dispositionals neural patterns.O texto a seguir apresenta em diálogo ou aplica a uma certa concepção de experiência estética um amplo conjunto de evidências experimentais retirado da investigação de outros fenômenos mentais, em particular a experiência subjetiva de emoções e sentimentos. Provém de António Damásio a viga mestra, o esqueleto, a base, a estrutura de toda a minha argumentação. Minha principal hipótese é a de que certos objetos e situações ativam hiper-espaços dispositivos cerebrais associados à ocorrência de fenômenos como sensação de beleza, prazer e alegria. Proponho que a emergência de uma experiência estética deve ser compreendida como resultado de uma percepção sensível que aciona uma rotina somático-cognitiva, função do disparo de um padrão de padrões neurais dispositivos. (shrink)

O texto a seguir apresenta em diálogo ou aplica a uma certa concepção de experiência estética um amplo conjunto de evidências experimentais retirado da investigação de outros fenômenos mentais, em particular a experiência subjetiva de emoções e sentimentos. Provém de António Damásio a viga mestra, o esqueleto, a base, a estrutura de toda a minha argumentação. Minha principal hipótese é a de que certos objetos e situações ativam hiper-espaços dispositivos cerebrais associados à ocorrência de fenômenos como sensação de beleza, prazer (...) e alegria. Proponho que a emergência de uma experiência estética deve ser compreendida como resultado de uma percepção sensível que aciona uma rotina somático-cognitiva, função do disparo de um padrão de padrões neurais dispositivos. (shrink)

Abstract:How do we think aesthetically with the gendered and fleshly life of blackness, which cannot be represented within modernity’s aesthetic regime, yet is everywhere “bound to appear”? How do we begin to approach the splayed corpus of blackness without recourse to a conceptual grammar for and from which blackness is the ultimate declension? These questions compel us to rethink the relationship between blackness and the aesthetic, and to consider the metaphysical violence which is given in and through a racial regime (...) of aesthetics that is indispensable to the reproduction of the modern world. Emphasizing the ways this aesthetic regime, and the antiblack metaphysics it endeavors to sustain, are predicated upon and imperiled by blackness, I argue that blackness is a problem of and for “the body.” This paper enters this problem through the quotidian operations of the visual and proceeds to interrogate the elliptical deconstruction of the body in the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, stressing the commonalities between Nancy’s philosophical gesture and the guiding tendencies of the recent “bodily turn” within the theoretical humanities. Reading Nancy and the bodily turn through Denise Ferreira da Silva and Calvin Warren’s critiques of the modern human subject and its genesis, I argue that philosophical and aesthetic inquiries which begin with the departure from the ontology of the proper body risk reinscribing that very same figuration by eliding the ontologically negated improper body, which bears the racial and gendered violence of the former’s displacements. Turning to Hortense Spillers, I contend that to speak of the impropriety of black enfleshment is to approach the limits of phenomenology, for which, I maintain, the “black body” can only appear as a dissimulation. Taking seriously Warren’s question — “How does one think with the improper?” — I engage in a strategic corruption of Jacques Rancière’s concept of “aisthesis.” I propose a theory of black aesthesis as that which emerges in the cut between the violent dissimulation of the “black body” and a black enfleshment that has always been both more and less than the phenomenological body. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine Arthur C. Danto s highly influential thesis that Andy Warhols Brillo Box ends art by obviating the need for art object to differ sensually from ordinary object. Coining the term Co-aesthesis, I demonstrate that it is only by improperly applying Extensionalism that anyone is able to make the claim that the Brillo Box is substantively equivalent to a Brillo Box in the first place: if we just work harder to coordinate the various visual, tactile (...) and contextual data striking our sensorium, we can arrive at a very different spot than the place from which we witness art ending — especially when we consider the revelations about multi-dimensionality in the realm of physics. To help make my point, I use Italian philosopher Tiziana Andina’s recent book Arthur Danto: Philosopher of Pop and her interpretation that, after Danto, a sensual Aesthetics parts company from a conceptual and sensually inert Philosophy of Art. (shrink)

We are living in a time of polarization. Cultural and educational institutions are confronted with the responsibility to provide tools and spaces for critical reflection, for engagement, and, more fundamentally, for meeting and recognizing each other in our differences. In this decolonial essay Rolando Vázquez introduces his critique which offers an option for thinking and doing beyond the dominant paradigms. It provides a critical analysis of modernity understood broadly as the western project of civilization, while it seeks to overcome the (...) dominion of western epistemology and aesthetics and their embedded eurocentrism and anthropocentrism. Importantly for decolonial thought we are all located in relation to the colonial difference that structures our modern/colonial order. It is only from an awareness of our positioned realities that we can enter in relation with each-other, that we can listen to each-other and learn each-other. 'Vistas of Modernity' is a new title in a series of essays commissioned by the Mondriaan Fund, concerning actual topics about visual arts and cultural heritage. Eelco van der Lingen (director Mondriaan Fund): Rolando Vázquez is cautious in presenting his analysis. He does not look for quick conclusions, but slowly guides the reader through the context of our history and the contemporary labyrinth of text, language, symbols and images which (often without being properly noticed) give great meaning to our existence. His decolonial aesthesis lifts us above the labyrinth and offers us a new panorama. (shrink)

Based on the understanding of aesthetics as the study of all processes and activities related to aesthesis in his original etymological sense as «sensibility», this paper argues that an evolutionary approach must follow the evolution of aesthesis from its inception. A degree of sensibility may perhaps be traced already at molecules sensing borders in DNA replication. The next stage, which may be defined as “cyto-aesthesis”, refers to evidence of cells’ actions to antigens, virus, enzymes or bacteria and (...) other significant elements in the intercellular fluid by their receptors’ sensibility to ligands. Darwin explored plants’ irritability specifically at their tendrils and petioles and there are studies on their sensibility to surface, nutrients, touch, water, temperature, seasonal cycles, color, gravity, and light. All animal species, including human beings, have evolved a keen sensitivity to predators and mates upon which their survival depends following evolutionary priorities and conditions. There is consequently no particular experience that we may call «aesthetic experience», a redundant term, since the whole spectrum of activities and effects of various species’ sensibility involves experiencing the world, namely, aesthesis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Decolonial Movidas: María Lugones’s Notion of Decolonial Aesthesis through CosmologiesDenise Meda CalderonIntroductionMaría Lugones advances a decolonial feminist methodology that allows one to see both dehumanizing social reductions of colonized peoples and the resistant relations operating within non-dominant socialities. By exploring this double “seeing,” I articulate the relationship between resistant socialities and Lugones’s notion of decolonial aesthesis. In her only published text on decolonial aesthesis, Lugones states: (...) “Thinking about aesthesis, I think about the body and permeability and all that permeability allows us to reconceive about the world we live in” (qtd. in Ortega 275). Lugones promotes a notion of decolonial aesthesis that engages a resistant permeable sensing and, I argue, is exposed by her distinct approach to cosmology.1My analysis begins with Lugones’s decolonial methodology to articulate a “seeing” of coloniality that I contend leads to her development of decolonial aesthesis. In particular, I show that Lugones sketches a view of decolonial aesthesis as a sensing that grounds resistance to dehumanizing social reductions and reveals a non-dominant social relationality expressed through concrete sensuous movements. I suggest that Lugones theorizes a communal interconnected dimension of resistance as decolonial aesthesis through cosmologic relation. To flesh out this point, I turn to two interlocutors central to Lugones’s intellectual genealogy: Gloria Anzaldúa and Rodolfo Kusch. I conclude by interpreting Lugones’s reading of Anzaldúa as a coalitional movida performing decolonial aesthesis.Moving to “Seeing” ColonialityLugones’s 2010 essay “Toward a Decolonial Feminism” constitutes a methodological intervention or movida in gender scholarship. Referring to the [End Page 22] expansive global power system, Lugones argues that gender is historically implicated as part of the colonial/modern project and sustains a dominative closure that marks alternative socialities as unintelligible. The colonial/modern system established norms that did not previously inform social communities. A gender binary was imposed onto colonized peoples, erasing the existing socialities that informed the everyday of those peoples. Lugones’s analysis of gender exposes the deep social fissures that emerge from coloniality, and the tremendous harm sustained by reading gender across all social arrangements and onto all knowledge systems.According to Lugones, the colonial/modern category of gender shows a pervasive subjugation to non-humanity of peoples whose sex status does not conform to binary logics. Regarding these reductive processes, Lugones writes: “This dehumanization and bestialization occurred precisely because these people were not understood by the colonizers and enslavers as social agents, and thus their sexual difference [was] not socializable. Thus, one does not find gender; animals do not have gender” (“Gender and Universality” 44). Since gender is assigned to humans, reading gender onto colonized peoples covers up dehumanization, even in calls for gender-based liberation.It is precisely through seeing coloniality that we can track the concealed social arrangements and see the worlds of sense that do not conform to the colonial/modern system. Lugones suggests this point in the following quote:To see the coloniality is to see both jaqi, the persona, the being that is in a world of being without dichotomies, and the beast, both real, both vying under different powers for survival. Thus to see the coloniality is to reveal the very degradation that gives us two renditions of life and a being rendered by them.(“Toward a Decolonial Feminism” 751–52)As Lugones’s words indicate, seeing coloniality involves a complex sensing that goes beyond seeing from dominant social norms and gender roles.Lugones’s methodological movida of seeing coloniality reveals the dichotomous categorization as part of the immense violence committed against peoples as colonized subjects with non-human status. This move urges a recognition of the superimposed categories that continue to harm and separate colonized peoples from their fluid relations with cosmologies (Lugones, “Toward a Decolonial Feminism” 746). Seeing the coloniality of gender elicits a transition to the possibilities of sensing from the positionalities deemed animal, in search of socialities that are not mediated by modern/colonial categories. Subsequently, seeing coloniality is a pivotal methodological movida to theorizing resistance in non-dominative socialities, or what Lugones calls decolonial aesthesis.2 [End Page 23]Decolonial AesthesisLugones’s decolonial aesthesis is not concerned... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Decolonial Movidas: María Lugones’s Notion of Decolonial Aesthesis through CosmologiesDenise Meda CalderonIntroductionMaría Lugones advances a decolonial feminist methodology that allows one to see both dehumanizing social reductions of colonized peoples and the resistant relations operating within non-dominant socialities. By exploring this double “seeing,” I articulate the relationship between resistant socialities and Lugones’s notion of decolonial aesthesis. In her only published text on decolonial aesthesis, Lugones states: (...) “Thinking about aesthesis, I think about the body and permeability and all that permeability allows us to reconceive about the world we live in” (qtd. in Ortega 275). Lugones promotes a notion of decolonial aesthesis that engages a resistant permeable sensing and, I argue, is exposed by her distinct approach to cosmology.1My analysis begins with Lugones’s decolonial methodology to articulate a “seeing” of coloniality that I contend leads to her development of decolonial aesthesis. In particular, I show that Lugones sketches a view of decolonial aesthesis as a sensing that grounds resistance to dehumanizing social reductions and reveals a non-dominant social relationality expressed through concrete sensuous movements. I suggest that Lugones theorizes a communal interconnected dimension of resistance as decolonial aesthesis through cosmologic relation. To flesh out this point, I turn to two interlocutors central to Lugones’s intellectual genealogy: Gloria Anzaldúa and Rodolfo Kusch. I conclude by interpreting Lugones’s reading of Anzaldúa as a coalitional movida performing decolonial aesthesis.Moving to “Seeing” ColonialityLugones’s 2010 essay “Toward a Decolonial Feminism” constitutes a methodological intervention or movida in gender scholarship. Referring to the [End Page 22] expansive global power system, Lugones argues that gender is historically implicated as part of the colonial/modern project and sustains a dominative closure that marks alternative socialities as unintelligible. The colonial/modern system established norms that did not previously inform social communities. A gender binary was imposed onto colonized peoples, erasing the existing socialities that informed the everyday of those peoples. Lugones’s analysis of gender exposes the deep social fissures that emerge from coloniality, and the tremendous harm sustained by reading gender across all social arrangements and onto all knowledge systems.According to Lugones, the colonial/modern category of gender shows a pervasive subjugation to non-humanity of peoples whose sex status does not conform to binary logics. Regarding these reductive processes, Lugones writes: “This dehumanization and bestialization occurred precisely because these people were not understood by the colonizers and enslavers as social agents, and thus their sexual difference [was] not socializable. Thus, one does not find gender; animals do not have gender” (“Gender and Universality” 44). Since gender is assigned to humans, reading gender onto colonized peoples covers up dehumanization, even in calls for gender-based liberation.It is precisely through seeing coloniality that we can track the concealed social arrangements and see the worlds of sense that do not conform to the colonial/modern system. Lugones suggests this point in the following quote:To see the coloniality is to see both jaqi, the persona, the being that is in a world of being without dichotomies, and the beast, both real, both vying under different powers for survival. Thus to see the coloniality is to reveal the very degradation that gives us two renditions of life and a being rendered by them.(“Toward a Decolonial Feminism” 751–52)As Lugones’s words indicate, seeing coloniality involves a complex sensing that goes beyond seeing from dominant social norms and gender roles.Lugones’s methodological movida of seeing coloniality reveals the dichotomous categorization as part of the immense violence committed against peoples as colonized subjects with non-human status. This move urges a recognition of the superimposed categories that continue to harm and separate colonized peoples from their fluid relations with cosmologies (Lugones, “Toward a Decolonial Feminism” 746). Seeing the coloniality of gender elicits a transition to the possibilities of sensing from the positionalities deemed animal, in search of socialities that are not mediated by modern/colonial categories. Subsequently, seeing coloniality is a pivotal methodological movida to theorizing resistance in non-dominative socialities, or what Lugones calls decolonial aesthesis.2 [End Page 23]Decolonial AesthesisLugones’s decolonial aesthesis is not concerned... (shrink)

We are capable of engaging in different kinds of relations with objects and situations we meet. Any relation is, in principle singular and thus einmalig, unique. Still, certain general types of relationality do exist. Relations may be established with focus (“attention”) on usability, truth, ethics, power, authenticity—and of course, on “beauty,” on aesthetic value. This differentiation is an invention of the Modern world and in itself subject to historical change. In terms of “discursive areas” it has been theorized in varying (...) keys—including quite many universalist ones. We are free to choose our modes of attention. Still, institutionalized discourses in practice pre-configure these modes. Especially when it comes to art and Modernity’s “great divide” between poiesis and aesthesis, the conditions for attentional approaches appear largely pre-figured. The article discusses this pre-configuration and the institutionalized “freedoms” of art and its audience, respectively—including current calls to abolish such differentiations and to transgress the discursive boundaries of art. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

The positive revaluation of aesthesis and the emergence of aesthetics in the 18th century - from Bodmer and Breitinger to Baumgarten, Meier and ultimately Herder - established an aesthetic discourse centred on the sensual component of art and literature. In literature, this component is to be found in its visual imagery, its rhythms and also in its appreciation as a meaningful structure. The volume contains studies on Gryphius, Klopstock, Lessing, Wieland, Herder and Schiller. It systematizes the insights gained from (...) these studies to demonstrate how, in the 17th and 18th centuries, aesthetic experience was enriched by a theoretical concern for its sensual aspects and conceptualized in a manner that is of essential importance for approaches to the interpretation of art and for hermeneutics. (shrink)

Philosophers seldom ask questions regarding how certain phenomena occur, because such questions tend to be the province of the sciences or of technology. However, the question how pictures have depth requires philosophical reflection because it takes place on the surface of pictorial objects and involves both physical and phenomenal, i.e. aesthetic, features of those surfaces. This essay examines how pictures have depth by first separating the aesthetic question from interpretive considerations, and thereby refining the question how pictures have depth. Next (...) it explicates two sorts of conceptual tools required to understand the question: several complex concepts needed to understand surfaces, and the concept of intensity. These are then used to understand how pictures can have depth by showing how intensities produce both an aesthetic surface and depth within it. (shrink)

This article calls for an examination of the spectral operations of the perceptual architecture of colonization in conjunction with the enactment of a decolonial feminism as proposed by María Lugones. The first section discusses both the notion of ghostly subjectivity from Lugones's early work as well as the echoes of this notion in her recent work on the coloniality of gender that emphasizes the gender/race/sex nexus. Subsequently, through a photographic example, the article presents an analysis of the perceptual operations of (...) specter‐making in practices of colonization in light of Lugones's understanding of the “light” and “dark” sides of the coloniality of gender. This analysis highlights not only the intricate nexus between racialization and gender and sex norms both in the past and in the present context, but it also points to the necessity for of a decolonial feminism attuned to perceptual practices or a decolonial aesthesis. (shrink)

Contemporary art was born out of the radicalization of a crisis begun by modern art , concerning the twofold sensible identity of art, which involves both its image-form and its aesthetic-form. This crisis led Matisse and Duchamp to « undo the image » inasmuch as it is defined by Form, in a kind of phenomenology of the visible and the invisible . Matisse responds to this with a vitalist energeticism which brings about an expansive constructivism of color-forces which replaces aesthetics (...) with an aesthesis. Duchamp enacts a constructivism of the signifier, in which nominalism and bachelor machinism abolish all effects of being of the sign-image and thus all aesthetic sign-making of the world. (shrink)

In this essay Laura Bazzicalupo surveys the contemporary biopolitical landscape from the war on terror to biotechnology to migration. Characterizing the biopolitical chiefly as a move from the juridical toward the normalizing, Bazzicalupo both critiques recent neomaterialist theorizations of biopower as vitalist and singles out some currents of feminist thought for their modern, anticommunitarian bias. A discussion of Arendt's analysis of depoliticization is then taken up from the perspective of immunity, one indebted to the thought of Roberto Esposito. She concludes (...) with a spirited defense of aesthesis, which she defines as the creative assimilation of the other and an active reactivity, and an argument in favor of a non-normative ethics capable of resolving some of the most glaring ambivalences of biopolitics. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the differend between the body and the law, without conceiving the body as a material or natural object external to the rules of discourse. To do this I use Jean-François Lyotard's reflections on Franz Kafka's short story `In the Penal Colony' to reflect on the bodily mode of exposure to sensibility: that is, aesthesis. This exposure comes `before' the law and is radically heterogeneous to the binary organizations of discourse, and not simply its other. (...) This exposure to sensibility is a bodily mode that offers an other freedom to that prescribed by the law, and consequently it is this first `touch' of sensibility which the law must eradicate. By inscribing itself on to the body through body modificatory practices, it brings the body within its normative structures. I draw out the parallels between kafka's story and the simulated human currently on display on the Internet - the Visible Human Project. In this project, we can witness the materialization of a techno-scientific ideal of the body. As a form of inscription, it reproduces a `complete' body according to the rules laid down within the discursive practice of techno-science. It can do this only by actively forgetting this vital exposure to sensibility which precedes and disrupts it. The aim of this article is to think the violence of the law over this bodily mode of aesthesis and to bear witness to the wrong it institutes. (shrink)

For philosophical hermeneutics as Hans‐Georg Gadamer conceived it, art plays an essential role. If hermeneutics and aesthetics are as strictly opposed as Gadamer suggests, the “abstraction” performed by aesthetic consciousness must be an abstraction from the truth of art. As the result of such an abstraction, the aesthetic view of art is secondary; it must be conceived of as nonoriginal experience of art, which, derivative as it is supposed to be, is only possible on the basis of original experience, as (...) an abstraction from it. Aesthetic objects are essentially correlated to perception, the word for which in Ancient Greek is ‘aesthesis’. But aesthetic objects cannot be coextensive with everything perceptible; otherwise, the term “aesthetic” could not be used significantly in respect to artworks. Being perceptibly present, artworks present phenomenal structures of meaning, texts in textures, which must not be directly applied to the factual world or identified with its “essence”. (shrink)

When we take the term literally, “aesthetic education” refers to the senses. The etymological root of “aesthetic” is, aesthesis (ai[sqhsi"), the Greek word signifying “perception by the senses.” The corresponding verb is aisthanomai (aijsqanovmai), which means “to apprehend by the senses,” i.e., to see, hear, touch, etc.1 What does it mean to educate the senses? The senses, as Aristotle noted, are what we share with animals.2 The question of their education, thus, involves the notion of our “animal” nature. We (...) see the animals about us. We note our similarities. We assert that that part of them is within us. Doing so, we draw a line between our animal and human nature. The question of aesthetic education concerns this line, both the line and its trespass. The line is between the educator and the educated, the human and the animal. The human, in educating the senses, we could say, educates the animal within it. It humanizes it. It extends its territory. The human, however, includes the animal. Could we not also see this education as the advance of the animal to the human, the extension of its territory? To answer such questions we must come to terms not just with the animal but also the human. Without this, we cannot know the role of humanistic education, understood literally as the” education of the human.” What I propose in this paper is suggest some answers to the question of the relation of the animal to the human. The claim I will be making is that aesthetic education, the education of our sensibility, is humanistic education in the etymological sense of the word, “e-ducate.” It is what first “leads or draws out” the human. It is the condition of the possibility of the being of.. (shrink)

Living together peacefully in a world of differences asks for a practice of respecting the irreducible difference of the other. Acknowledging this `not-me' of the other subject generates an in-between: a space/time between subjects that cannot be transgressed other than by violence. Following Irigaray, I argue that this `in-between' comes about through the passion of wonder, a being touched in the flesh in the encounter with the other, which opens the subject to him/herself and to the other. To perceive this (...) touch asks for a life-style directed at keeping open and sensitizing the sensibilities of the senses, so that the subject's aesthesis or awareness for the perceptions of the sensible flesh and of its reactions to the other is heightened. Key-element in this aesthetics is the practice of breathing. It enables the subject to remain rooted in him/or herself and open to the other: generating and respecting the in-between between them. (shrink)

The essays in this book depart from Fanon's prayer to understand decolonial aestheSis as Black Consciousness.

In the report phenomenological ideas of the dialogue between philosophy and pedagogics of today are being considered. The status-modes and types of linking between phenomenology and practice of education and up-bringing, socio-cultural and axiological problems of modern education. Its philosophical and anthropological essence, cognition and gnosiological aspects of the process of education and up-bringing are shown. Fundamental concepts of phenomenology such as “experience”, “intentionality”, “horizons of mentality”, “emotion”, “phenomenological reduction”, “intersubjectivity”, “the world of vitality” and others are interpreted from the (...) pedagogical point of view. Category-conceptional system including “methodology of education”, “paideutics”, ”aesthesis”, “ideatics”, “locus of reflection” as well as the principles of the phenomenology of education – “unity of all living”, “individual genesis of life”, “self-individualization” and “cognition creativity” – get their formulation. Innovatory methods of teaching sociohumanities and art-aesthetical disciplines are set forth in the report. (shrink)

This paper provides an analysis of the key term aidagara ('betweenness') in the philosophical ethics of Watsuji Tetsurō (1889-1960), in response to and in light of the recent movement in Japanese Buddhist studies known as 'Critical Buddhism'. The Critical Buddhist call for a turn away from 'topical' or intuitionist thinking and towards (properly Buddhist) 'critical' thinking, while problematic in its bipolarity, raises the important issue of the place of 'reason' vs 'intuition' in Japanese Buddhist ethics. In this paper, a comparison (...) of Watsuji's 'ontological quest' with that of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Watsuji's primary Western source and foil, is followed by an evaluation of a corresponding search for an 'ontology of social existence' undertaken by Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962). Ultimately, the philosophico-religious writings of Watsuji Tetsurō allow for the 'return' of aesthesis as a modality of social being that is truly dimensionalized, and thus falls prey neither to the verticality of topicalism nor the limiting objectivity of criticalism. (shrink)

To explore the realm of creativity, we will make use of the concept of instauration as articulated in the work of Étienne Souriau. Although infrequently used, the word remains extant in English, with agreement among dictionaries that the primary definition is the action of restoring or renewing, with a secondary meaning of instituting or founding. While both senses are at play in Souriau’s thought, it is perhaps the tension between the two that is predominantly in question, akin to what we (...) describe as open containment. We think instauration, as institutive renewal, in dialogue with Merleau-Ponty’s late use of the term aesthesiology to further elaborate the process of creating as a return to the wonder that is aesthesis, the affectively and sensually apprehended opening onto and entanglement with what is. Merleau-Ponty extends aesthesiology as the science of the sense organs themselves into a philosophical organology for ontology. His use of aesthesiology and Souriau’s use of instauration constitute efforts to offer sufficient conceptual containment to be able to say the contingent and ambiguous open of ongoing originating, even while both thinkers strive not to institute any final closure by this very act of naming. This is the inevitable tension of writing philosophic creation.Pour explorer le royaume de la créativité, nous utilisons ici le concept d’instauration tel qu’il a été articulé dans l’oeuvre d’Étienne Souriau. Quoique utilisé rarement, ce terme est attesté dans la langue anglaise. Les dictionnaires anglais accordent que sa définition principale désigne une action de rétablissement ou de renouvellement, avec un sens secondaire d’institution ou fondation. Si les deux sens sont à l’oeuvre chez Souriau, c’est peut-être la tension entre eux qui y est surtout patente. Nous pensons ici l’instauration, entendue comme renouvellement instituant, en dialogue avec l’idée d’esthésiologie telle que Merleau-Ponty la comprend à la fin de son oeuvre. Il utilise cette notion pour développer sa conception du processus de création comme retour à l’étonnement que produit l’áisthesis. L’áisthesis est en effet l’ouverture, affective et sensible, et l’entrelacs, affectif et sensible, à ce qui est. Merleau-Ponty prolonge ainsi l’esthésiologie entendue comme science des organes sensibles, vers une organologie philosophique à visée ontologique. L’usage de l’esthésiologie chez Merleau-Ponty et l’usage de l’instauration chez Souriau constituent des efforts vers une maîtrise conceptuelle suffisante pour pouvoir dire l’ouverture continue, contingente et ambiguë de l’originaire – bien que les deux penseurs ne visent pas à instaurer une clôture finale à partir de l’acte nominatif. Telle est la tension inévitable qu’on rencontre lorsqu’on cherche à écrire la création philosophique.Utilizzeremo in queste pagine per esplorare il regno della creatività il concetto di “instaurazione” così come si trova articolato nell’opera di Étienne Souriau. Benché impiegato raramente, questo termine è attestato anche nella lingua inglese. I dizionari inglesi danno come significato principale quello di un’azione di ristabilimento o rinnovamento, a cui si aggiunge un significato secondario di istituzione o fondazione. Se è vero che entrambi i significati sono all’opera in Souriau, è d’altra parte ancor più evidente la loro tensione. Proporremo qui di pensare l’instaurazione, intesa come rinnovamento istituente, in dialogo con l’idea di estesiologia così come la intende Merleau-Ponty alla fine del suo percorso. Egli usa questa nozione per sviluppare la sua concezione del processo creativo come ritorno allo stupore dell’áisthesis, cioè dell’apertura affettiva e sensibile, e dell’intreccio affettivo e sensibile, a ciò che è. Merleau-Ponty prolunga così l’estesiologia come scienza degli organi di senso in direzione di un’organologia filosofica orientata ontologicamente. L’indagine sull’estesiologia condotta da Merleau-Ponty e l’uso del concetto di instaurazione in Souriau costituiscono così altrettanti sforzi di dire concettualmente l’apertura continua, contingente e ambigua dell’originario – benché sia chiaro che i due pensatori non intendono raggiungere in alcun modo, con questo dire concettuale e con questa scelta lessicale, una qualsiasi “chiusura” della questione. Tale è infatti la tensione inevitabile cui ci si ritrova esposti quando si tenta di scrivere la creazione. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Search of the Sense and the Senses:Aesthetic Education in Germany and the United StatesAlexandra Kertz-Welzel (bio)The dream that art is able to humanize human beings is very old. One person fascinated by this idea claimed:The creative artist educates and perfects through his work the nation's capacity for appreciation, just as conversely the general feeling for art thus developed and sustained creates the fruitful soil which is the condition (...) for the birth, the growth, and the activity of creative forces.1The author asserted that art has educational power and is able to improve appreciation as well as activate creative energy. Art is a way to transform the individual through its aesthetic power.Although these ideas sound similar to some approaches in arts education, this quotation does not represent the ideas of an art educator or a music educator. It is a quotation from one of the most powerful and most dangerous believers in the transforming power of art and music, in particular—Adolf Hitler (1889-1945). His ideology matched perfectly with the ideas of German music education in the 1930s, and therefore music education was a significant part of the school curriculum during the Third Reich. One of the most tempting ideas for music educators is the claim that music is capable of transforming human beings and their society.The idea of the educational power of music starts at least with Plato. Since the 1950s, aesthetic education has emphasized the aesthetic value and educational power of music. The German and the American concepts of aesthetic education are significantly different, but as a result of historical developments, they also share some similarities.The main intent of this paper is to analyze crucial issues of aesthetic education that exist in Germany and the United States. By comparing the two approaches, some core issues of music education will also be revealed in terms of idealistic dreams that are intent on making the world a better place [End Page 102] through music. This leads to some interesting insights concerning the significance but also the ambiguity of art for societies.The Roots: Ancient Greece, Schiller, and Holistic DreamsThe origin of the term aesthetics can be found in the Greek word aisthesis, which means perception through the senses.2 This meaning of aisthesis is originally not related to art. It concerns all kinds of sensations through seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting. In Greek philosophy, aisthesis as a way of experiencing the world through the senses is opposite to cognition in terms of an intellectual way of realization, the theoria. But given that art is something one can perceive through the various senses, aisthesis also concerns art.Most theories of aesthetic education refer to the ancient Greek idea of music, the musiké, which is a unity of music, dance, and literature. Plato emphasized the educational power of music and its effects on character development: "Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.... "3 Since music is so powerful, the correct use and the correct kind of music are important. According to Plato, art is a way to learn about truth and ideas through beauty. But art is also dangerous, because the senses "lie" and art is only an imitation of truth. For Plato, the senses are not as clear as the intellect.Plato's concerns about the ambivalence of sensorial perception are typical for the way aisthesis and aesthetics have been understood throughout the history of philosophy. The tension between a "true" intellectual approach to knowledge and an inferior approach through the senses is one aspect of the well-known mind-body dichotomy.During the eighteenth century, the era of enlightenment, Alexander Baumgarten (1714-62) introduced the term aesthesis into the philosophical discussion.4 In his book Aesthetica (published in 1750), he attempted to justify sensorial perception and emotions as a unique way of understanding the world. Baumgarten was not interested in the arts at all and tried to establish aesthetics as the science of sensuous cognition in order to improve the sensuous capacity for cognition. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Tony Palmer, “Music Education and Spirituality: A Philosophical Exploration II”Lenia SerghiMy response to Anthony Palmer's paper on "Music Education and Spirituality" consists of certain thoughts and relevant literature aiming to support the ideas presented in the paper from a different perspective.Exploring spirituality and music education Palmer examines (a) the Santiago Theory of Cognition, which acts as a connection between cognition and the process of life, (b) why (...) music education can benefit from ideas of spirituality, and (c) music education and the paths that might be traveled to bring a higher level of consciousness to students, including special attention to process and product.My comments and thoughts derive from ancient Greek Philosophy and mainly the ideas of Aristotle on organic nature and the living being, as well as the ideas of more recent philosophers and educationists like Robert Ulich on self-transcendence. These ideas, I believe, support Palmer's paper in relation to music education processes.The Structure of the Living BeingAccording to Huberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, the theoretical biologists who originated the Santiago Theory of Cognition,The perturbation of the environment does not determine what happens to the living being; rather it is the structure of the living being that determines what change occurs in it. This interaction is not instructive, for it does not determine what its effects are going to be.... The changes that result from the interaction between the living being and its environment are brought about by the disturbing agent but determined by the structure of the disturbed system.1The structure of the living being, Soul, Mind, Emotions, and Body are terms that have occupied philosophical thought for centuries.Soul, psyche in philosophical writings of the Greeks such as Aristotle, is a [End Page 216] general term for all those powers which plants and animals possess, but lifeless elements do not. Psyche is therefore of wider range than life (zoe), which is the power of self-maintenance common to plant and animal and is merely the foundation upon which higher physical capacities can be imposed.2Plato in Phaedrus relates soul, Psyche-anima, with motion, kineses. Inanimate objects only move if motion is imparted to them by an outside force. Anything that can move itself on its own initiative we regard it as animate, that is having psyche. This power of moving itself is, indeed, in Plato's words "the essence and definition (ousia kai logos) of soul."3Mind in Greek vocabulary is the word Nous which had been variously used. Anaxagoras and Empedokles had used it to cover all conscious processes. Later philosophers restricted Nous to that intellectual power which, as far as our certain knowledge extends, men alone display.4In the course of time two problems were bound to arise for philosophers: the relation between the soul (psyche) and the body (soma) and the relation between nous in rational beings and psyche. Aristotle's central proposition is that soul and body are aspects of a single substance, standing to one another in relation of form to matter.5Basic matters of Aristotle's psychology are (a) his account of sense- perception, (b) his account of the initiation of movement, and (c) his theory of the operation of Nous in human knowledge.6Aristotle outlines a general theory for the functioning of the senses. Aesthesis (sense) is what we perceive through the senses and these could be images, sounds, flavors, or things touched. Aesthesis consists of the imprints on the mind of the particulars of the world in a variety of ways, whereas Noesis grasps the world of universals.7Emotions and feelings and their relation to the mind were also problems that concerned philosophers. The Greek mystical philosopher, Plotinos, considers feelings of happiness or unhappiness reactions of the soul to its own states of perfection and imperfection. Herbart, one of the founders of modern learning, believes that our emotions and desires result from modifications occurring in our conceptual representations. In other words, feeling is a kind of pre-intellectual or post-intellectual state of mental life. Kant too considers emotion to be related to cognition, although he recognizes the sensuous origin of the... (shrink)