The publication of the Aisthesis issue dedicated to "Aesthetic Habits" is postponed to spring 2024 (I/2024)

Nearly 77 years of peace, so long was the truce granted by history to our continent, and, actually: this
is not even true. Suffice it to think of the war in the former Yugoslavia. It is undeniable, however, that
for more than half a century, Europe was lulled into the illusion that armed confrontation had been
relegated to certain areas of the planet, or in any case was to be understood as a sort of “in-vitro
experiment” having been reduced to a circumscribed phenomenon contained within safety cordons.
On the contrary, the conflict erupted again. Even a century ago, moreover, it might have been
reasonable to distinguish between a world war and a strictly local war, while today it does not even
make sense: our degree of interconnection inevitably turns every conflict into a war that involves us
all. The clash of weapons is perhaps the most intense event in light of which a whole series of
elements seem to align differently, and the pieces of our present in an instant take on a new
configuration: what emerges is precisely «the now of a certain knowability», to quote Benjamin.

In recent years habits have been at the center of the international philosophical debate, both in the perspective of historical as well as in theoretical and empirical research. Habits are often understood as dispositions which enable the exercise of individual and social activities: from the most common daily practices to highly qualified and specialized skills such as sports practices, artwork creation, playing musical instruments, and participating in social events. Thereby habits influence the organism/environment interaction and contribute to shaping personal and collective identities. Habits can introduce social change or manifest political views and engagement. Also, the aesthetic life seems to be related to the abandonment and / or the acquisition of habits. Yet, since habits may be thought to involve monotony and lack of creativity, how can habits be reconciled with aesthetics? The present issue of “Aisthesis” aims to discuss this question by focusing on the connection between habits and the aesthetic life. 

In recent times, the thought of Étienne Souriau has acquired a new and unexpected lease of life. A thinker who was in many ways “untimely” with respect to the dominant orientations of his time, since the 2000s he has made a “comeback” on the international philosophical scene, thanks above all to an original reinterpretation of his transmodal ontology, as well as a re-evaluation of his comparative aesthetics.

In recent years, Virtual Reality (a term coined by Jaron Lanier in the late Eighties of the last century) has become widely employed in different fields: from education to healthcare, from the military to professional training, from architecture to urban design, art production and display. First, the spread of this technology has promoted a revival of the notion of “virtuality”.
At the same time, however, it has induced a focus on a specific understanding of this notion (the technology-related one), which does not exhaust the broad historical and semantic spectrum of the virtual itself. What is more, despite such focus, the discourses around the virtual suffer from conceptual vagueness. This has been clearly shown during the Covid-19 pandemic, when “virtual” has become a buzzword for as diverse experiences as webinars, video calls, distance learning, and any sort of online interaction. At the end of the day, the virtual collapses onto the loose, and philosophically less pregnant, notion of “digital”. Given this scenario, it is urgent to shed light on the many “virtualities” underlying the currently widespread yet ambiguous notion of “virtual”.

Spanning across the whole spectrum of art forms, styles and genres, the topic of public art has reached primary importance among the faster-evolving trends in the aesthetic debate.

As the “liquid economy” favours new paths and forms of trading, the demand for the highest levels of technical development, in particular for the web, empowers even further the metropolises, confirming their elective status of propulsive centres of the economic life. Today, however, the expansion of metropolises not only involves a spatial side, but also follows a horizontal path (the so-called “infosphere”) with a continuous reshuffling between center and periphery. Thus, the faster the expansion’s rate, the more various and inclusive the mutual influences between artists and artistic communities arise, paving way to works of art appealing to a number of potential addressees unimaginable decades ago.

This certainly highlights the “public” character of the contemporary work of art, but what is it that makes the artwork public? What functions has public art played in recent years in European and non-European countries? How has it been approached by cultural agents, local policy makers, and experts (critics, art historians, and philosophers)? Also, which appreciative practices related to public art have reached prominence?

The legacy of Hans Blumenberg is constantly providing new writings and materials. By the last years of his life, the philosopher from Lübeck had already accumulated projects of books almost ready for printing, which, published in series after his death, have progressively challenged the critical investigation settled around key-texts such as Paradigms for a Metaphorology, Legitimacy of the Modern Age, Work on Myth, The Legibility of the World, Life-time and world-time, St. Matthew Passion and, lastly, Cave Exits.

Nel giorno mondiale della poesia, 21 marzo, e inizio della Primavera, la Direzione di Aisthesis vuole ricordare l’amico Michel Deguy (23 maggio 1930 – 16 febbraio 2022) e con lui anche Martine Segonds-Bauer (13 marzo 1949 – 19 marzo 2022), compagna di una vita di Deguy recentemente scomparsa che, attachée ai Ministeri della Cultura, dell’Educazione e degli Esteri e presso l’Ambasciata di Francia a Roma con funzioni di coordinamento e direzione degli Istituti di Cultura francese di Napoli e di Madrid, l’Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA) e la Maison des écrivains di Parigi, ha tradotto autori come Moravia, Pasolini e Siti.