Intercultural aesthetics

An introduction

Heinz Kimmerle

Nicole Note

Antoon van den Braembussche

pp. 1-9

in: Antoon van den Braembussche, Heinz Kimmerle, Nicole Note (eds), Intercultural aesthetics, Berlin, Springer, 2009

Abstract

This volume is part of a new series called Einstein Meets Magritte Again, edited by the Center Leo Apostel of the Free University of Brussels. A very specific incentive to include this volume in a series dedicated mainly to the interdisciplinary study of worldviews was our conviction that a field such as intercultural aesthetics (formerly called comparative aesthetics) is indispensable to enrich the nature and scope of current concepts of worldview. According to Leo Apostel, one of Belgium's most prolific philosophers in the twentieth century, "A worldview is a coherent set of bodies of knowledge concerning all aspects of the world. This coherent set allows people to construct a global image of the world and to understand as many elements of their experiences as possible. A worldview can in fact be perceived of as a map that people use to orient and explain, and from which they evaluate and act, and put forward prognoses and visions of the future".² This original definition is extremely valuable, but still largely privileges the role of knowledge and cognitive mapping.³ If we consider, however, that worldviews in general also reflect the pre-conscious and pre-conceptual experience of the world, and that such an insight is more prevalent in many non-Western cultures, intercultural aesthetics embodies an important tool to refine and expand our notion of worldview.

Cited authors

Apostel Leo