Preview:
“The study of aesthetics proceeds along many lines, containing both the theory of beauty and the theory of art, and investigating both aesthetic objects and aesthetic experiences, employing description, prescription, analysis, and explanation.” Thus begins Władysław Tatarkiewicz’s seminal work on the history of aesthetics from antiquity to the mid-eighteenth century, the period in which aesthetics emerged as a coherent field of philosophy, thanks to thinkers such as Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. Tatarkiewicz invariably followed these “many lines” in his works without favoring any of them. There is little doubt that this approach yielded notable results, improving our understanding of Western aesthetics. It can undoubtedly be equally effective when applied to the period from the 1750s onwards, during which time philosophical aesthetics flourished. In fact, there are good reasons to believe that it could be particularly productive today. While Baumgarten, Hegel, and many others identified aesthetics with the philosophy of fine arts, another tendency has gained importance since the turn of the twenty-first century. This new tendency transcends the art-centered tradition, both by “sublating” the tensions that define this tradition – they are conserved, but also negated, and thus function differently – and by crossing the limits of the field. Not only has aesthetics been “rethought,” it has also been practiced “beyond aesthetics.” Consequently, innumerable categories and phenomena that Tatarkiewicz did not find interesting because they were located too far from the “many lines of the study of aesthetics” have been included in the aesthetic agenda. The two vectors that are currently redefining the study of aesthetics reinforce each other, but at the same time encourage us to look to the past to rediscover ideas and perspectives that were either forgotten or marginalized, or even excluded by the aesthetic tradition. Beauty versus utility, contemplation versus engagement, rationality versus corporeality, immutability versus transience, ideas versus matter, the extraordinary versus the ordinary: these and many other dichotomies known from antiquity are still useful frameworks for analyzing what can be termed “the aesthetic field” and everything that can be included in it.
How to cite:
Favara-Kurkowski, Monika, and Mateusz Salwa. “Design and Aesthetics: New Ontological and Epistemic Perspectives” Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture 9, no. 3 (2025): 1-12. https://doi.org/10.14394/eidos.jpc.2025.0022.
Author:
Monika Favara-Kurkowski
Faculty of Philosophy, University of Warsaw
Krakowskie Przedmieście 3, 00-927 Warsaw, Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6731-6454
m.favara@uw.edu.pl
Mateusz Salwa
Faculty of Philosophy, University of Warsaw
Krakowskie Przedmieście 3, 00-927 Warsaw, Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4988-8912
mateusz.salwa@uw.edu.pl
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