formerly M-FIL/04 Aesthetics

This field centres on philosophical reflection on the sensory, imaginative, evaluative, and creative dimensions of experience, as well as on expressive and symbolic forms of production—particularly in the arts, technologies, and media—examined also in light of their cognitive, ethical, educational, religious, political, psychological, and social significance.Main research areas include: aesthetic experience in nature, communication, and everyday life; phenomenology of corporeality and perception, including their emotional and cognitive aspects; theories of the image—including art-historical approaches—and related aesthetic categories and conceptual frameworks; cultural and especially artistic production, also in relation to anthropological dimensions and its effects on political and social structures, with attention to the formation and transformation of symbolic systems and cultural traditions; poetics, rhetoric, and literary and artistic criticism; and the experiential structures that underpin creativity, technique, expression, communication, interactivity, and environmental engagement.These areas may be interwoven and/or explored in dialogue with disciplines such as biology, anthropology, political theory, pedagogy, philosophies of perception and mind, and scientific or experimental research in neuroscience and artificial intelligence.
Research is carried out from theoretical, historical, and/or technical-pragmatic perspectives. The field also examines the disciplinary content and methodologies specific to philosophy education, in connection with the topics it addresses.