L'origine animale dell'estetica

Wolfgang Welsch

pp. 181-206

in: Aesthetic experience in the evolutionary perspective, Rivista di estetica 54, 2013.

Abstract

Maybe human aesthetics developed from animal aesthetics. I am not, of course, suggesting that sophisticated aesthetics as practiced by humans already exists among animals. Yet the aesthetic attitude as such might have originated in the animal kingdom. Drawing on this animal resource, human aesthetics might have evolved and, when cultural evolution emerged, it had reached results very different from animal aesthetics. With this perspective in mind, I show that the evolutionary aesthetics, as commonly pursued today, falls prey to serious shortcomings.