Lebenswelt. Aesthetics and philosophy of experience.

Istinti di socievolezza. Estetica e psicologia morale degli affetti altruistici in Leibniz

Miriam Aiello — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The article focuses on Leibniz’s theory of dual access to the innate practical truths developed in the New Essays, on the background of the reconciliation between egoism and altruism he pursues – since his early writings on natural law – through the categories of disinterested love and charity, and the onto-aesthetic implication between harmony and pleasure as well. After reconstructing the meaning and the functions of the argument on the community of brigands that Leibniz addresses against Locke’s conventionalism, the article dwells on the structure of social instincts in human and non-human animals and emphasises the role of the “prick of conscience”, conceived of as a first, affective and pre-rational step in the construction of otherness.

Estetica e significazione. Sul rapporto fra linguaggio ed esperienza sensibile

Felice Cimatti — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Is language an evolutionarily independent faculty from other cognitive capacities? In recent years two opposing views have clashed: the innatist view, of which linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky is the main exponent, which answers in the affirmative; the constructivist-empiricist one according to which, on the other hand, language is but the ultimate evolution-complication of non-linguistic capabilities already present in non-human animals.

This paper presents and comments on the position of the scientist and philosopher Giorgio Prodi (1928-1987) who avoids this contraposition by thematising an original aesthetic area that would be at the origin of both animal and then human cognition as well as properly human language. Unlike the constructivist view, however, for Prodi such an original aesthetic field can only ground language because it is co-extensive with the original space of biosemiosis.

Lastly, the theme of co-evolution is analysed, the only evolutionary mechanism capable, according to Prodi, to account for both the similarities and differences of human language compared to the forms of communication of non-human animals and plants.

La coscienza è tempo. "Esperienza e giudizio": eredità e sfida dell'ultimo Husserl

Matteo Gamba — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Time and time consciousness have always been for Edmund Husserl a kind of torment, a stimulus, an enigma, an 'ultimate and true absolute', as he wrote in the Ideen. This paper aims to show that Husserl addressed this topic, after the Vorlesungen, especially in his last published book Erfahrung und Urteil, presenting a solution that introduces a possible new perspective on thought. The conceptual core of this solution is found in the complex and fascinating analysis of passive temporal synthesis. Consciousness, temporality and perception become the terms of multiple equations in their fundamental, mobile and unguaranteed basis, in a way that challenges the centuries-old concept of the central unity of the constant ego. In the middle of dark times, aware of his 'discoveries' of the 1930s such as pre-predictivity, Lebenswelt, anonymous and functioning intentionality, and always on behalf of the new rationalism, this also seems to be one of the most important final responses given by Husserl to Heidegger, as well as one of his most fruitful legacies and challenges to further thinking.

Panofsky e Florenskij: un incontro mancato. Fenomenologia del simbolico nella rappresentazione prospettica

Florjer Gjepali — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This paper focuses on the theme of perspective representation starting from Panofsky and Florenskij’s works. Aim of this study is to approach this topic not only from an historical, scientific or artistic development, but also including these profiles into a wider framework offered by the philosophical concept of perspective as a symbolic form. I will try to argue that Florenskij’s Reverse perspective “reverses” Panofsky’s The perspective as symbolic form, without neglecting assumptions but rather delving in deeper analyses and integrating it with a phenomenological point of view.

Atmospheric habitualities: aesthesiology of the silent body

Tonino Griffero — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The paper examines the notion of habits from the perspective of a pathic aesthetics based on the neo-phenomenological theory of Leib (felt body) and its ubiquitous communication. By questioning whether experience should be considered as a confirmation or a failure of expectation, it shows the inextricable intertwining of the unexpected and routine in our involuntary life experience and delves into a well known phenomenological crux: is the lived or felt body what is subject to self-affection and proprioception or rather the “absent” body, which is always transcended in its being-for-other (transitivity)? The assumption then that felt-bodily habits are formed through a motor scheme depending on its being a perfect pre-reflective resonance (especially thanks to its more or less stable “felt-bodily islands”) of outside atmospheric feelings and affordances that also becomes a true “style”, is finally examined by showing the points of both contact and discrepancy between a New Phenomenology (Hermann Schmitz) focused above all on the rediscovery (in a critical function) of the archaic dimension of the Leib and a melioristic Somaesthetics (Richard Shusterman) pragmatically interested in a more creative individual self-stylisation.

Memoria e preformazione: analogia tra processo cognitivo e metamorfosi del vivente nel pensiero di Leibniz

Leonardo Lenner — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

It is well known how Leibniz turned his attention to a large number of domains in an attempt to demonstrate the universal interconnectedness of things. This essay aims to show the relationship between two areas of knowledge studied by Leibniz: gnoseology and biology. In particular, there is a close correspondence between the doctrine of innate ideas and that of the organism. The former are in fact understood as the constitutive elements of a layered mind and can be brought to consciousness through reminiscence. In contrast to the Platonic tradition, innate ideas are not the trace of notions acquired in previous lives, but are the result of a metamorphosis of living organisms. This consideration leads precisely to the Leibniz’s conception of the organism, influenced by the contemporary microscopic observation of van Leeuwenhoek and Malpighi and by the discovery of ‘spermatic animals'. In this sense, the idea of a pre-formed organism, subject to growth and contraction, is analogous to the peculiar conception of memory as a constitutive pre-configuration of the mind.

Emozioni estetiche: una critica delle quasi-emozioni di K. Walton

Teresa Schillaci — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Kendall Walton’s Mimesis as make believe (1990) is a pivotal text in understanding the receiver’s role during aesthetic experience. Within his theory, aesthetic emotions have a specific importance, and they are considered as quasi-emotions. In this essay, Walton’s account, will be criticised, as it is based on the inappropriate and inconsistent concept of quasi-emotions. Firstly, quasi-emotions entail a mimetic and dualistic perspective on real and fictional words. Moreover, quasi-emotions make Walton’s theory relevant to understand only artistic fruition, and not aesthetic experience.

FORUM on M.M. Merritt, Cambridge Elements: The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The Sublime

ed. by Giulia Milli — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

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