Winckelmann on Taste: A Somaesthetic Perspective - Richard Shusterman
The opening lecture of ART (Aesthetics Research Torino) Philosophical Seminar will be delivered by Prof. Richard Shusterman on March 9th at 3 p.m.
Location: Università di Torino - Aula Guzzo - Via Po 18 - Torino
Three centuries after his birth, Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) is still celebrated as the founder of archaeology and art history. His continued fame rests chiefly on his pioneer role in these fields and on his influence on such past masters as Goethe, Herder, Schiller, and Hegel. This lecture uses the approach of somaesthetics to argue for his more-than-historical relevance for contemporary aesthetic theory, despite the fact that his archaeological and art historical judgments have been largely discredited. Winckelmann's theoretical value today lies in his distinctively embodied approach to the cultivation of taste and the understanding of art, exemplifying central themes of contemporary somaesthetic theory.
Richard Shusterman is the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities at the Florida Atlantic University. Educated at Jerusalem and Oxford, he was chair of the Temple University Philosophy Department before coming to FAU in 2005. He has held academic appointments in Paris, Berlin, and Hiroshima and was awarded senior research Fulbright and NEH fellowships. His widely translated research covers many topics in the human and social sciences with particular emphasis on questions of philosophy, aesthetics, culture, language, identity, and embodiment. Authored books include T.S. Eliot and the Philosophy of Criticism (Columbia), Practicing Philosophy (Routledge), Performing Live (Cornell), Surface and Depth (Cornell), Pragmatist Aesthetics (Blackwell, 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefield, and translated into 12 languages), and most recently Body Consciousness (Cambridge). His non-technical essays have been published in the Nation and the Chronicle of Higher Education and in various art reviews and catalogues, such as artpress and Dokumenta. He directs the FAU Center for Body, Mind, and Culture ; his FAU webpage
ART (Aesthetic Research Torino) is a periodic philosophical seminar organized by the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences of the University of Turin and the PhD Program FINO and coordinated by Prof. Alessandro Bertinetto.
ART addresses the different topics of the contemporary debate in Aesthetics: philosophy of beauty, philosophy of the arts, theory of sensory experience, and history of aesthetics.
ART is a discussion forum that fosters the dialogue forum between different tendencies of the contemporary international research in the aesthetic field.
ART is sponsored by the Italian Society for Aesthetics (SIE) and the European Society for Aesthetics (ESA)