Grzegorz Dziamski

Many aesthetic lecturers feel that the subject of their lectures is not so much aesthetics as the history of aesthetics, the aesthetic views of Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, Hume and Burke, British philosophers of taste and German romantics. Does this mean that aesthetics is nourished by its own past, nourished by reinterpretations of its classics, defends concepts and categories that no longer inspire anyone? Don’t they open up new cognitive perspectives? Does this mean that aesthetics is dead today, like Latin or Sanskrit, and that its vision of art and beauty is outdated, out of date and completely useless?

Stefan Morawski in the introduction to the anthology Twilight of Aesthetics – Alleged or Authentic? he wrote that he did not know the history of aesthetic thought that would begin in the eighteenth century with Baumgarten. Today we can meet with such an approach more and more often. Many authors assume that in the second half of the 18th century, modern aesthetics was born as a science of senses, how our higher (sight, hearing) and lower senses (taste, smell, touch) contribute to our knowledge of the world.

In the introduction to the anthology cited here, Stefan Morawski divides the history of aesthetics into four periods of unequal length. The Morawski diagram seems to be a convenient starting point for defining the changing object of aesthetics. The first of the periods distinguished by Morawski is the longest one, lasting from Ancient Greece to Enlightenment, can be called the history of aesthetic thought, the second is philosophical aesthetics, the third is a time of emancipation and institutionalization of aesthetics as autonomous discipline, and the fourth period leads beyond the limits of classical aesthetics.

We have no problems with using the term ‘culture’ in such phrases as ‘Polish culture’,
‘German,  French,  British, Japanese  culture’. In  the  sense assigned to the  concept  of culture  by Johann  Gotffried  Herder  at the end of the 18th century – culture  is a way of life developed by some community (people,  nation).  But already in the case of the European  culture,  problem  emerges.  This is fully justified as for Herder  the  major element of culture, making it distinctive against other cultures, was language. Is the traditional  Herder’s  concept  of culture  (can  be called sociological one)  still useful in the contemporary  world where the dominant  figures are emigrants,  refugees, tourists, urban wonderers, players?   Should not we look for some other concept of culture assuming, as a starting  point,  that  the  concept  of culture  is not  merely a descriptive concept but also an operational  one and therefore  has a significant impact upon our perception  of the world and our activity in the world? In each culture we can identify three  levels of enculturation:  the deep level which naturalizes  certain ways of thinking and behaving; social level – when the culture is experienced by individuals as symbolic violence; and  finally the  level which depends  on individual choices, sometimes called a taste. This third level can be called art in opposition to culture. Art stands for whatever unique and original; culture – whatever collective and traditional.  Art is the engine of culture. This dynamic aspect of culture was not reflected in Herder’s concept of culture, while this is the  most important  feature  of today’s  global culture  prevailing in large cities where languages, habits and religions mix, where all, including native inhabitants, feel somewhat  deprived  of their  roots  and  forced  to search  for new roots,  and  who become radicant  people – artists who teach us how to live in today’s culture.