Area of Research: Aesthetics and Social Philosophy

This area of research addresses and problematizes the multilateral relations, established by Philosophy, among Art and society. The concept of mimesis, in Greek antiquity, since Plato, is linked to paideia and to an ideal of society, extended to Aristotle, who, despite valuing mimesis as art, does not completely disassociate it from moral, political, and cognitive pretensions.  Understood as rational production of the spirit, but also as irrational manifestation, the fundamental concepts of aesthetics (mimesis, material intuition, expression, rational production of the spirit,) reflect social and political values. The dissolution of the classical triumvirate, pulchrum, verum et bonum, in modern aesthetics, which gave autonomy to the judgment of taste, did not spare philosophy the role of rediscussing, in the phenomenologies of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, the question of the engaged work of art and the artist’s social responsibility, and the Hegelian-Marxist philosophical currents to rediscover, following the example of the Frankfurt School, the eminently political place of art.  So this Research Field studies Aesthetics not only as a philosophy of art or artistic beauty, but also as a sphere of sensitivity and culture, whether from the point of view of moral and political education, or as justification or criticism of the social order, or as elevation of the human spirit.  Artistic creation and political action constitute a privileged sphere of discussion of questions concerning freedom and rationality, and are especially dealt with, for example, within the Enlightenment project of rational organization of the world.  Phenomenology questions this project, especially the dominant form of instrumental reason at the expense of bodily and linguistic experiences.  For critical theory, the Enlightenment has become a myth and has not fulfilled its promise of emancipating man. In this context, culture and society are also examined from a historical point of view, either to relativize an ideal of a perfect society or, on the contrary, to justify cultural and social forms under a perspective of progress. Ideology has an aesthetic and a political aspect, as in the display of totalitarian regimes, and is examined in light of discussions such as the technification of art, reification, and the critique of capitalist and communist societies. Within the critique of culture comes the recent debate about multiculturalism, in which various marginalized cultures claim recognition. In the wake of these discussions, the political dimension comes to the fore, and it is vital to mobilize the classic notions of political thought that deal with forms of government, political participation, and the ordering of institutions.