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Department of Philosophy - FILO

almæsthetics – Research center for aesthetic studies

“almæsthetics” aims to promote the research carried out in the field of aesthetics through international and national scientific activities and the production of scientific publications.

Areas: Aesthetics

Coordinator - Giovanni Matteucci

In the wake of Bologna’s phenomenological tradition, almæsthetics aims to promote a plural conception of aesthetics as knowledge of human reality, understood in its various forms also in the light of contemporary cultural phenomena.

In this broad framework, the lines of research that will be developed can be categorized into two main areas.

One of these concerns the critical analysis of some of the most relevant perspectives of the aesthetic-philosophical tradition, such as dialectical thought, critical-hermeneutical thought, phenomenology, critical theory, pragmatism, philosophical anthropology.

The other area concerns the investigation of contemporary transformations taking place in relation to artistic-literary languages, phenomena of widespread aestheticity and philosophical research in the context of the most up-to-date theories of culture and mind.

The more specific lines of research, yet also in dialogue with each other, referring to these two areas, will be the following.

Analysis of modern and contemporary tradition

  • aesthetic thought between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries;
  • the end of art between Hegel and contemporary aesthetics;
  • art and beauty starting from Nietzsche's thought;
  • aesthetics as a material analytics (pragmatism, phenomenology, critical theory);
  • aesthetics and practical philosophy;
  • aesthetics between anthropology, cognitive and social sciences.

Current problems of aesthetics:

  • aesthetic experience according to the new models of mind theory;
  • myth and language in the aesthetic-anthropological perspective;
  • philosophy of tragedy and tragic thought;
  • relationships between philosophy and literature;
  • cinema, popular music and other current forms of artistic experience;
  • aesthetics and design culture (city, design, fashion);
  • phenomena of widespread aestheticity in the digital age;
  • philosophy of landscape and nature.

Steering Committee

Eleonora Caramelli

Associate Professor

Gioia Laura Iannilli

Senior assistant professor (fixed-term)

Giovanni Matteucci

Full Professor

ERC

  • SH5_11  Metaphysics, philosophical anthropology; aesthetics

International board

  • Damir Barbarić (University of Zagreb)
  • Maria João Mayer Branco (Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
  • Andrew Benjamin (Monash University, Melbourne; Kingston University, London)
  • Richard Eldridge (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg i.Br.)
  • Günter Figal (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg i.Br.)
  • Carolyn Korsmeyer (University of Buffalo, New York)
  • Ossi Naukkarinen (Aalto University, Helsinki)
  • Akihiro Ozaki (Tohoku University)
  • Richard Shusterman (Florida Atlantic University)
  • Gilles Tiberghien (Université Paris-I Panthéon Sorbonne)
  • Patrick Wotling (Université der Reims Champagne-Ardenne)
  • Christoph Wulf (Freie Universität, Berlin)

The research supported by almæsthetics will be promoted through the scientific journals indexed by ANVUR in the "A category" and the series of publications in which the members of the Scientific Committee are directly involved.