CALL FOR PAPERS

Aesthetics and Affectivity
The Polish Journal of Aesthetics No. 60 (1/2021)
Editors:
Laura La Bella (Independent Scholar, PhD)
Stefano Marino (University of Bologna, Associate Professor of Aesthetics)
Vittoria Sisca (Independent Scholar)

Submission Deadline: October 30, 2020

Emotions, feelings, and, generally, the whole sphere of affectivity make up one of the most fundamental elements of human life, and also play an essential (although sometimes problematic) role in art and aesthetic experience. In this regard, let us simply consider this: on one hand, it is certainly possible to think and talk of something like a “common world” in terms of sensations shared by all human beings; on the other hand, if we focus on each individual’s emotions and feelings, and the way the latter often condition our perception of the real, this same notion becomes somewhat ambiguous. If this is true concerning our experience of the world in general, it is even truer and clearer in the specific case of our experience with art. Reflections on the fundamental role played by affectivity in the whole realm of human experience leads us to recognize, for example, that every experienced object, apart from its purely factual properties, presents some “splits” into which the subject fits, so to speak—specifically, to recognize (following Merleau-Ponty) that our description of reality, even as it appears in perceptual experience, is always full of “anthropological predicates.” This becomes fully apparent if we consider such experiences as fantasizing and dreaming (or, in a more radical and even dramatic way, certain psychological pathologies in which the subject’s “private world,” especially influenced by his/her emotions and feelings, sometimes almost completely eclipses evidence of what we conventionally consider “real”), and also applies to a great extent to art and aesthetic experiences of different kinds. From Plato and Aristotle to modern and contemporary times, philosophers have always assumed a close connection between art and what we may call the realm of affectivity (passions, feelings, emotions), sometimes also developing forms of skepticism and suspiciousness towards them as supposedly non-rational or irrational components of human life. However, throughout the history of philosophy there have always been also other voices, so to speak, that have proposed to think about affectivity, feelings, and emotions in a different way, leading to identification with emotional and even instinctual aspects, such as that of the feeling of horror, no less than with the obscure origin of the brightness of ancient Greek culture and art (Nietzsche), or to acknowledgment of the undeniably powerful and indeed constitutive role of “attunement” and “mood” in human existence (Heidegger), or to the proposal for the rediscovery and rehabilitation of the specific “intelligence of emotions” (Nussbaum). Of course, philosophical reflection on affectivity, with a specific focus on its role in the aesthetic dimension, can also lead to questioning of the validity and appropriateness of categories such as “rational” and “irrational” that we sometimes tend to use in an easy, unproblematic, and somehow dualistic way, both in everyday language and in philosophical discourses. In fact, it is a widely shared and quite common belief that our feelings and emotions (or at least some of them) are irrational, but it is also true that many philosophers and especially artists (poets, novelists, composers, painters, performers, etc.) have shown that it is often very difficult to simply draw a line sharply differentiating between the rational and emotional components of our knowledge, inasmuch as the affective component is not at all marginal in the general economy of our convictions and beliefs.
In adopting a broad and open philosophical approach—the only one which can do justice to the multiform and complex character of a question such as that of emotions and feelings—we invite authors to submit articles concerning the role of affectivity in human experience, with a particular focus on aesthetics, as broadly understood.
Thus we welcome proposals addressing (but not limited to) the following aspects:
– phenomenological analysis of emotions and their intentionality;
– the relationship between emotion and perception in normal, pathological, or dreamlike/fantastic experience;
– the phenomenon of affectivity as part of the grounds of philosophical thinking and aesthetic experience;
– the revealing power of affective dispositions and emotional states understood as primary expression of human embeddedness in the world;
– the investigation of the various roles played by moods in the history of aesthetics;
– questions concerning the corporeality of emotional states, including somaesthetic investigations;
– the relationship between moods, aesthetic enjoyment, and moral sentiments;
– the interaction between intellectual and emotional components within the aesthetic experience, including (but not limited to) artistic creation and fruition.

We encourage authors to seek original perspectives on aesthetics and affectivity. We are interested in articles that address this topic in innovative ways, including both historical and theoretical approaches. We accept submissions written only in English.

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We kindly ask all authors to familiarize themselves with the journal’s guidelines, available under “For Authors,” and to double-check the completeness of each article (with the inclusion of an abstract, keywords, a bibliography, and a note on the author) prior to submission. Only completed papers should be submitted, using the submissions page, which can be found here.

All articles are subjected to double-blind reviews. Articles published in The Polish Journal of Aesthetics are assigned DOI numbers. Please do not hesitate to contact us via email: pjaestheticsuj@gmail.com.

Please visit our website at: http://pjaesthetics.uj.edu.pl/.