A New Cultural Theory of Aesthetics

Roberto Terrosi

doi:10.5771/9781793626684

Summary

Traditional aesthetics has tried to locate the reasons for aesthetic value in the transcendental subject while neglecting the importance of culture, even though it is obvious that artistic styles vary from culture to culture in both a geographical and historical sense. However, after recognizing importance of a cultural approach, one is faced with the problem of how to do so without dissolving aesthetics into art history or visual culture, the risk faced in both continental and analytic philosophical aesthetics. Scientific theories of aesthetics inspired by evolutionary psychology and cognitive science show promise, but they seek explanations without considering the importance of the cultural variations, offering reductive and superficial interpretations. Science has to consider the role of culture, and the only way to do so is through Neo-Darwinist theories of culture, like the memetic theory. In A New Cultural Theory of Aesthetics: Genes, Memes, Symbols, and Simulacra, Roberto Terrosi combines cultural research in the continental sphere with Neo-Darwinist theories to arrive at a new approach to aesthetics that is as sensitive to the problems posed by critical theory as it is to those posed by scientific research.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2023
ISBN-Print: 978-1-7936-2667-7
ISBN-Online: 978-1-7936-2668-4
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 272
Product type: Book Titles

1. Introduction No access
1. Discursive Formations No access
2. Roots No access
3. The Visual Turn of the Renaissance No access
4. The Perspective No access
5. After the Pictorial Model No access
6. The Rhetorical-Poetic Paradigm No access
7. The Two Ways of the Seventeenth Century No access
8. The Turn toward Modern Aesthetics No access
9. Intermediate Stages and Readjustments No access
10. 1. Italy No access
  2. France No access
  3. Great Britain No access
  4. Germany No access
11. The Reduction of Art to a Purely Sensitive Surface No access
12. The Crisis of Modern Aesthetics and the Postmodern No access
13. Autonomy and Heteronomy of Art No access
14. Notes No access
1. The Birth of Philosophy No access
2. The Two Worlds of Classical Tradition and Modern Tradition No access
3. The Three Worlds No access
4. Critiques of the Critiques of Transcendental Intersubjectivity in Apel and Habermas No access
5. Culture as a Derivative Element in the Modern Tradition No access
6. Truth and Communication No access
7. The Cultural Approach No access
8. The Cultural Way to Aesthetics No access
9. The Intrinsic Sociality of Being No access
10. Notes No access
1. Genes and Evolution No access
2. Cultural Anthropology and Anthropopoiesis No access
3. Neo-Darwinist Trends: Evolutionary Psychology and Sociobiology No access
4. Philosophical Anthropology No access
5. Human Species and Human Being No access
6. Reductionism No access
7. Emergentism No access
8. 1. The Microhabitat and Dual Fitness No access
  2. Communication as Connection No access
  3. From Group Selection to Cultural Unit Selection No access
  4. The Autonomous Drift of Memes and the Emergence of an Evolutionary Cultural System with Descending Causality No access
9. Technique, the Arts, and the Sacred No access
10. Cultural Kenosis No access
11. Kenosis and the Birth of Beauty and Aesthetics No access
12. Notes No access
1. The Meme No access
2. The Aesthetics of Memi-Simulacra No access
3. Critique of the Meme as an Analogue of the Gene No access
4. Memes and Simulacra Between Repetition and Difference No access
5. The Simulacra No access
6. Simulacra and Representation Functions No access
7. Ontology of the Simulacrum-Meme Today No access
8. Memes and symbols No access
9. Selfish Genes and Culture No access
10. Notes No access
1. The Crisis of Theoretical Aesthetics No access
2. Evolutionary Aesthetics: Pre-Human Aesthetics or Pre-Aesthetics? No access
3. Aesthetics between Genetics and Cognitive Science No access
4. OOO and AI No access
5. Aesthetics and Artificial Intelligence No access
6. Pre-Aesthetics and the Animal and Plant World No access
7. The Beautiful and the Pleasant No access
8. The Upward Motion of the Beautiful No access
9. Aesthetics and Commonplace No access
10. Social Thinking and Beauty No access
11. The Life of the Artwork: Identification and Articulation No access
12. The Beautiful and the Pleasant: Selective Reversal and Aesthetics. No access
13. The Functions of Memes and Aesthetics No access
14. The Drifts of Beauty No access
15. Notes No access
1. 1. Multilevel Value and Selection No access
  2. The Quantitative Route to Value No access
  3. The Qualitative Way to Aesthetic Value No access
  4. Conclusions on Aesthetic Value No access
2. 1. Art, Instrument of Power? No access
  2. Power and Beauty No access
  3. Power and Modern Art No access
  4. Creativity and Widespread Aesthetics No access
  5. Cultural Theory and Restoration No access
3. 1. The Early Memetic Regime: The Age of the Gods. Orality and the Sacred No access
  2. The Second Memetic Regime: The Age of Heroes. The Epos and the Alphabet No access
  3. The Third Memetic Regime: The Age of Humans No access
  4. The Crisis of the Classical World in the West No access
  5. The Fourth Memetic Regime: The Age of Money. Toward the Posthuman No access
  6. The Fifth Memetic Regime: The Self-Determined Machine or the Realized Posthuman No access
4. Notes No access
Conclusion No access Pages 253 - 256
Bibliography No access Pages 257 - 264
Index No access Pages 265 - 270
About the Author No access Pages 271 - 272