Research Research UnitsPTS

Aesthetic practices, anthropological transformations, contemporary scenarios (PTS): aesthetics, philosophical anthropology, genealogy of concepts

The Research Unit was born out of the aim to create an interdisciplinary platform capable of making historical-critical research, dissemination of knowledge at the local level and wide-ranging collaborations with national and international institutions interact.

The interdisciplinary profile of the Research Unit is marked by the involvement of several different disciplines within the Department:

• the aesthetic knowledge investigated both from the evolutionary point of view (in its link, for example, with neurosciences) and from the standpoint of the artistic languages of contemporaneity and its operative declinations (design, fashion design, visual communication);
• philosophical anthropology in its implications with the transformations determined by technological processes as well as with the impact of technologies in the definition of a new idea of subjectivity;
• the historical-philosophical reflection as a genealogical reconnaissance of the metamorphoses of corporeity.

The general aim of the Unit is the elaboration and verification of a plausible and unifying heuristic theory (the new paradigm of the "aesthetic mind" and its relationship with human theatricality) able to embrace the vast horizon of contemporary artistic languages and to explain their emergencies, cultural genealogies and anthropological implications.

In close connection with the in-progress character of this general theoretical framework are also the researches aimed at exploring the multiple scenarios of the contemporary: the aesthetic practices of everyday life, the processes of aestheticization, the symbolic-expressive dynamics and the anthropological meaning of images, the rethinking of the concept of mimesis through an accurate reflection on the concepts of intermediality, interactivity and performativity.

The operational goals of the Unit are:

• the dissemination of knowledge at the local level by the coordination of seminars, workshops, international conferences;
• to promote and valorize the results of the research through interdisciplinary collaborations;
• to support higher education courses (degree theses, doctorates, masters, advanced courses, etc.).

The disciplinary sectors of the Department involved are:

• M-FIL/03 Moral Philosophy
• M-FIL/04 Aesthetics
• M-FIL/06 History of Philosophy

 

Scientific coordinator: Andrea Mecacci

 

Research unit members:

• Ubaldo Fadini
• Chiara Cantelli
• Mariagrazia Portera
• Vincenzo Zingaro

PhD students and grant holders of the Department:

• Marina Montanelli (contract lecturer)
• Bruno Giancarli (PhD student)
• Ruben Marzà (PhD student)
• Anna Migliorini (PhD student)
• Marta Rosa (PhD)

External staff members:

• Maria Teresa Costa (Wissenschaftliche Assistentin – Kunsthistorisches Institut Firenze)
• Fabrizio Desideri

Ongoing research program:

• Sensus communis aestheticus, Human Theatricality and Grammars of Contemporary Artistic Languages
• Sensus communis aestheticus, teatralità umana e grammatiche dei linguaggi artistici contemporanei

 

The Open Access magazine "Aisthesis. Practices, languages and knowledge of aesthetics" is available on the Firenze University Press’ website (website)