Aesthetic Education

The problem of aesthetical education has represented, for a long time, a theme of major importance both in the fields of philosophy and pedagogy. Within the present framework, it has arguably become complex and more difficult to understand and explain what aesthetical education actually means: what characteristics and functions it has, which are its limits and preconditions. In an age characterized by mass media and by a widespread aestheticism, it appears that mostly anything can assume an aesthetical value. Therefore, if on one hand the clear boundaries between cultured and popular and art have disappeared, the role of art as an exemplar convey of certain kind of experiences is not at all obvious. Moreover, the crisis that has been affecting the idea of beauty – already begun in the Romantic period - has raised doubts not only upon the educational model based on the kalokagathìa (an ideal of moral and physical perfection), but also on the links between beauty and harmony (order, form, proportion, internal law, equilibrium): a system extensively assumed by those who recognized an formative value to the aesthetical dimension. Our discomfort in facing such an issue does not relate to an inherent outdatedness of the issue, but it rather depends on the impossibility to continue to define the issue itself in the usual terms. It would be perhaps necessary to rethink the idea of aesthetical education, by integrating the traditional approaches with the insights coming from new research areas. This issue of “Studi di estetica” aims at fathoming some interrogatives over the current state of the research. In particular, the major questions we intend to address in this issue of “Studi di estetica” are: - Given the fact that - as often underlined - the aestheticization can overturn in anesthetization, in a contraction of sensibility, is it still meaningful to propose an ideal or an educational project highlighted by an aesthetical dimension intended as a central element of formative processes? If it still has a sense, what role could Art play in the abovementioned process? - Given the crisis involving beauty intended as an ideal, is it still possible to associate it to an educative value? If it is still possible, on what concept/declination of beauty is it based on? - Is it still possible to affirm that education to art and trough art develops - among other things - a critical approach to the aesthetisation of both reality and the quotidian life? If it is so, through which modalities?