Filozofski vestnik Letnik/Volume XXII • Številka/Number 2 • 2001 • 21-42 
AESTHETICS, PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE AND 
"THE AESTHETIC TURN" 
LARS-OLOF ÄHLBERG 
Zweifellos erleben wir gegenwärtig einen Ästhetik-Boom. Er 
reicht von der individuellen Stilisierung über die Stadt-
gesta l tung und die Ökonomie bis zur Theor ie . . . zu-
nehmend gilt uns die Wirklichkeit im ganzen als ästhetisches 
Konstrukt. 
-Wolfgang Welsch 
Aesthetics should be . . . rethought in such a way that it 
becomes embedded in a broader context within philosophy 
of human culture. 
-Heinz Paetzold 
A book advocating philosophy as the reasoned pursuit of 
aesthetic living cannot harbor an essential dualism between 
reason and aesthetics, reflected in an unbridgeable divide 
between the modern and postmodern. 
-Richard Shusterman 
I 
"Aesthetics is a chaotic field of inquiry which has had unusual difficulty 
defining and organizing itself. It is also one of the most fascinating and 
challenging branches of philosophy", says Kendall Walton in his review of 
Michael Kelly's Encyclopedia of Aesthetics.^ Walton evidently thinks of aesthetics 
as philosophical aesthetics, or, as philosophy of art, but aesthetics can be 
understood in a much wider context - as it often is nowadays- as a general 
theory of art and aesthetic experience, as the theory of specific art forms, and 
' Kendall Walton, Review of Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, ed. Michael Kelly, 4 vols. (Oxford: 
Oxford University Press, 1998), Times Literary Supplement, September 29, 2000, p. 8. 
L A R S - O L O F ÄI-ILBERC. 
as an integral part of the philosophy of culture. If philosophical aesthetics is 
a chaotic business, what then about aesthetics broadly conceived? 
In this paper I propose to discuss some of the issues raised by Richard 
Shusterman and Wolfgang Welsch in their recent writings on the aims and 
purposes of aesthetics. Both philosophers advocate, with different emphasis 
and purpose, a reformation and transformation of aesthetics as an intellectual 
discipline, and they are both involved in the "aesthetic turn" in philosophy. I 
shall begin by sketching the background against which the current revival of 
interest in aesthetics occurs before discussing "the aesthetic turn" and in 
particular Shusterman's and Welsch's views. 
II 
Aesthetics as the systematic philosophy of art owes its existence, historically 
speaking, to the distinction between aisthesis sensory pe rcep t ion and 
experience) and noesis (reason and knowledge) in the classical philosophy of 
antiquity, the dichotomy between aisthesis and noesis dominat ing much 
subsequent Western philosophy and thought. 
Aesthetics as a philosophical discipline, inaugura ted by Alexander 
Baumgarten in the mid- 1750s but foreshadowed by Leibniz's reflections on 
the difference between clear and unclear ideas and sensations and their 
relationship to distinct (theoretical) ideas,2 is paradoxically both a child of 
rationalism and the Enlightenment and at the same time a critique - albeit 
an implicit one - of an absolute, logistic rationalism, which does not grant 
cognitive value to aisthesis. Wolfgang Welsch rightly observes that Baumgarten 
conceived of aesthetics (i.e. philosophical aesthetics) as complementing and 
correcting a one-sided and arid rationalism.3 Since the palmy days of the 
philosophy of art in the 19th century, when the philosophy of art was at the 
centre of the philosophical discussion and occupied such an important place 
in the philosophical systems of Hegel, Schelling and Schopenhauer,4 aesthetics 
2 Se Jeffrey Barnouw, "The Beginnings of 'Aesthetics' and the Leibnizian Conception 
of Sensation", Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics and the Reconstruction of Art, ed. Paul Matt ickjr . 
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 52-95. 
3 "Baumgarten hat die Ästhetik als Korrekturdisziplin des einseitigen Rationalismus 
konzipiert und begründet" (Wolfgang Welsch, Unsere postmoderne Moderne, 4e Aufl., Berlin: 
Akademie Verlag, 1993), p. 88. 
4 When aesthetics as the philosophy of art fell into disrepute during the last decades of 
the 19th century this was in large measure due to the overly speculative and "universalistic" 
character of Hegel's, Schelling's and Schopenhauer 's metaphysics of art, which elicited 
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AESTHETICS, PIIII .OSOPIIY OF CULTURE AND " T H E AESTHETIC T U R N " 
as the philosophy of art has been relegated to the outskirts of the philosophical 
landscape both in the phenomenological and the analytic traditions in 
philosophy during the first half of the 20th century."' During the 50s and the 
60s, however, there is a renewed interest in the philosophy of art both in 
Continental philosophy ("continental" being an infelicitous geographical 
me taphor ) and in analytic philosophy ("analytic" being an infelicitous 
chemical metaphor). Although ontology, epistemology, philosophy of science, 
ph i lo sophy of l anguage and moral phi losophy have domina t ed the 
philosophical scene, philosophical aesthetics conceived as the philosophy of 
art has gained a respected but subordinated position in general philosophy. 
This renewed interest in aesthetics is at least in part due to the "linguistic 
turn" in philosophy, which can be discerned both in phenomenological and 
hermeneutic traditions as well as in analytic ways of doing philosophy. 
During the 1990s, however, aesthetics as the philosophy of art and as the 
reflection on aesthetic phenomena in general has become a major concern 
in many academic disciplines and interdisciplinary projects. A plethora of 
works in and on philosophical aesthetics published in recent years is a sign of 
the times, but also in several other disciplines such as cognitive science, the 
psychology of perception as well as in cultural studies the renewed interest in 
aesthetic questions is visible. In addition to Michael Kelly's Encyclopedia of 
Aesthetics (1998), the first modern encyclopedia of its kind, six introductory 
books by Anglo-American philosophers on aesthetics have been published 
within no less than three years: Gordon Graham's Philosophy of the Arts: An 
Introduction to Aesthetics ( 1997), Dabney Townsend's An Introduction to Aesthetics 
(1997), George Dickie's Introduction to Aesthetics: An Analytic Approach (1997), 
Colin Lyas's Aesthetics (1997), James W. Mann's Aesthetics (1998), and Noël 
Carrolls Philosophy of Art: A Contemporary Introduction (1999). All these works 
are more or less firmly situated within the analytic tradition, and display both 
the characteristic virtues and vices of analytic aesthetics, the exception being 
Colin Lyas's book, which is by far the most original and engaging. The works 
an anti-philosophical bias in the emerging empirical discipmes of art history and the 
history of literature. 
5 Important and influential works in the philosophy of art have been written during 
this period as well, in particular by idealistically inclined philosophers such as Benedetto 
Croce (Estética come scienza dell' espressione e lingüistica generate, 1902) and R. G. Collingwood 
(The Principles of Art, 1938) and by philosophers transforming and transcending the 
idealistic tradition, Ernst Cassirer's PhilosophiedersymbolischenFormen (1923-9),John Dewey's 
Art as Experience (1925), Susanne K. Langer's Philosophy in aNetu Key: A Study of Symbolism 
in Reason, Rite, and Art (1942) and Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art Developed from "Philosophy 
in a New Key"( 1953) should be mentioned as well as Roman Ingarden's Das literarische 
Kunstiuerk (1931) and Untersuchungen zur Ontologie derKunst (1965). 
2 3 
L A R S - O L O F Â I II.BERG 
by these Anglo-Saxon writers represent a more or less analytic and ahistorical 
approach to aesthetics and the philosophy of art, whereas Brigitte Scheer's 
introductory work, Einführung in die philosophische Ästhetik (1997),° is more a 
work in conceptual history ("Begriffsgeschichte") or the history of philosophy 
than a systematic introduction to the philosophy of art. Scheer claims that 
aesthetics has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance in the past fifteen years or 
so, not only in an institutional, academic context, but rather as a potent 
ferment, affecting many philosophical disciplines. In her view, philosophical 
aesthetics today has primarily a critical function, relativizing the claims of 
ahistorical reason, attacking the central paradigm of Western philosophy, the 
traditional, logocentric conception of reason. Philosophical aesthetics, in her 
view, is an inter- and transdisciplinary endeavour, and is together with 
epistemology one of the fundamental philosophical disciplines.7 
There are, to be sure, aestheticians and philosophers of art, seeking to 
avoid the two extremes of a determined anti-historical approach and a 
resolutely historicist approach - both of which seem to me to occlude 
important aspects of art and aesthetics. Theoreticians such as Luc Ferry, Gérard 
Genette and Jean-Marie Schaeffer in France, Oto Marquard, Wolfgang Welsch, 
Heinz Paetzold and Martin Seel in Germany exemplify the attempt to combine 
an historical approach to the problems of art and aesthetics with a more or 
less systematic and constructive perspective." How the historical and the 
systematic/analytic should be related to one another is a moot question; and 
we may well ask whether historical considerations are always relevant to 
" Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, 4 vols., ed. Michael Kelly (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 
1998), Colin Lyas, Aesthetics (London: UCL Press, 1997), George Dickie, Introduction to 
Aesthetics: An Analytic Approach (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), Dabney 
Townsend, An Introduction to Aesthetics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), Gordon Graham, 
Philosophy of the Arts: An Introduction to Aesthetics (London: Routledge, 1997), James W. 
Manns, Aesthetics (Armonk, USA, 1998), Noël Carroll, Philosophy of Art: A Contemporary 
Introduction (London: Routledge, 1999), Brigitte Scheer, Einführung in die philosophische 
Ästhetik (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997). 
7 Brigitte Scheer, Einführung in die philosophische Ästhetik, p. 1-5. 
8 See Luc Ferry, Homo Aestheticus: The Invention of Taste in the Democratic Age, trans. 
Robert de Loaiza (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), Gérard Genette, The 
Aesthetic Relation, trans. G. M. Goshgarian (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 
1999), Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Art of the Modern Age: Philosophy of Art from Kant to Heidegger 
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), Udo Marquard, Aesthetica und Anaesthetica: 
Philosophische Überlegungen (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1989), Wolfgang Welsch, Ästhetisches 
Denken (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1990) and Grenzgänge der Ästhetik (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1996), 
Jörg Zimmermann, Hrsg., Ästhetik und Naturerfarhrung (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1996), 
Heinz Paetzold, Die Realität der symbolischen Formen: Die Kulturphilosophie Ernst Cassirers im 
Kontext (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994), Martin Seel, Ästhetik des 
Erscheinens (München: Hanser, 2000). 
2 4 
AESTHETICS, PIIII .OSOPIIY OF CULTURE AND " T H E AESTHETIC T U R N " 
philosophical analysis. In any case, there seems to be a growing awareness of 
the importance of historical and contextual approaches to philosophical 
problems, in particular to problems in the philosophy of culture and in 
aesthetics. When dealing with problems in aesthetics and the philosophy of 
culture a downright historicist approach dispensing with arguments, reducing 
philosophical questions to purely historical questions should be avoided, as 
should the other extreme, treating aesthetic and cultural concepts as if they 
possessed some internal ahistorical necessity thereby reducing philosophical 
questions to purely logical ones. Historical concepts have a logic and are 
amenable to conceptual analysis, logical concepts have a history and can be 
analysed from a historical perspective. Andrew Bowie's aspiration to avoid 
"the tendency towards merely 'monumental ' history of ideas characteristic of 
some work in hermeneutics and the unconscious philosophical amnesia of 
much analytic philosophy" is certainly commendable.'1 
The revitalization and renewal of aesthetics is, however, not a purely 
academic matter, many theorists are convinced that contemporary aesthetics 
has, or, rather should, have a critical function in the larger culture as well; 
aesthetics is often conceived of as philosophy of culture and criticism of culture. 
As Michael Kelly says in the introduction to The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics: 
"[A]esthetics is uniquely situated to serve as a meeting place for numerous 
academic disciplines and cultural traditions [my italics]", aesthetics is "the critical 
reflection on art, culture and nature",10 and Brigitte Scheer claims that 
"philosophical aesthetics has experienced an extraordinary renaissance during 
the past fifteen years, not primarily as an institution, which keeps itself within 
its own disciplinary boundaries, but as a ferment penetrating and transforming 
almost all philosophical areas".11 Philosophical aesthetics has above all a critical 
potential because philosophical aesthetics in her opinion "repudiates the 
centra l pa rad igm of Western philosophy, the traditional logocentric 
conception of rationality and the absolutification of that conception".12 
Whereas "the linguistic turn" carried with it a heightened consciousness of 
the linguistic character and language-dependent character of our world 
views,13 it is today appropriate to speak of an "aesthetic turn", she claims, 
" Andrew Bowie, From Romanticism to Critical Theory. The Philosophy of German Literary 
Theory (London: Routledge, 1997), viii. 
10 Kelly, "Introduction", Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, xi. 
11 Scheer, Einführung in die philosophische Ästhetik, p. 1, my trans. 
12 Ibid. 
13 Scheer 's characterization of the linguistic turn is somewhat inaccurate, for the 
linguistic turn involved above all a preoccupation with the structure of language, the 
relationship between word and world, and more generally the analysis of linguistic 
2 5 
LARS-OI .OF Ä I II.BF.KG 
because aesthetics takes the interpretative and constructive character of our 
sensations and perceptions of the world seriously.14 In short, the aesthetic 
character of knowledge and experience in general is acknowledged in many 
quarters today, Scheer believes. Similar views are held by Wolfgang Welsch, 
who in his essay "Ästhetische Grundzüge im gegenwärtigen Denken" (1991), 
speaks of cognitive and epistemological aestheticization, the aestheticizing of 
knowledge and reality; in today's (post) modern world there is, he claims, a 
strong tendency, a tendency he apparently endorses, to view truth and reality 
as aesthetic phenomena - aesthetic in a wide sense of the term. In Welsch's 
view, constructivism is the dominant philosophy today, in stressing the 
constructedness of personal identity, of reality and of the world constructivism 
implies an aestheticization of truth, knowledge and reality.15 Welsch argues 
in his essay "Ästhetik außerhalb der Ästhetik - Für eine neue Form der 
Disziplin" (1995) in favour of an "aesthetics outside of aesthetics", aesthetics 
as a multi-disciplinary "trans-aesthetics", which transcends the boundaries of 
traditional art centred philosophical aesthetics and occupies itself with the 
analysis and criticism of contemporary culture and theory. Since the aesthetic 
has invaded most, if not all, areas of life and culture in "our postmodern 
modern world", philosophy, and in particular philosophical aesthetics must 
follow suit, Welsch believes. 
meaning. See The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method, ed. Richard Rorty (Chicago: 
Chicago University Press, 1967). The term "linguistic turn" was, contrary to a widespeard 
opinion, not invented by Rorty, the logical positivist Gustav Bergmann seems to be the 
inventor of the expression "linguistic turn", by which he meant something else than Rorty, 
who adopted the term for the collection of essays The Linguistic Turn (See R. Rorty, 
Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays 1972-1980, Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982, xxi). The 
different "turns" in philosophy and cultural theory seem to have replaced the adaption of 
Kuhnian "paradigms" to the humanities; after "the epistemological turn" we have "the 
linguistic turn", "the interpretive turn" (Cf. The Interpretive Turn: Philosophy, Science, Culture, 
eds. David R. Hiley, James F. Bohman, Richard Shusterman, Ithaca: Cornell University 
Press, 1991), and "the cultural turn" (Cf. Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the 
Study of Society and Culture, eds. Victoria E. Bonnell & Lynn Hunt , University of California 
Press, 1999). 
14 Scheer, Einführung in die philosophische Ästhetik, p. 3., my trans. 
15 Wolfgang Welsch, "Ästhetische Grundzüge im gegenwärtigen Denken", 1991, in W. 
Welsch, Grenzgänge der Ästhetik (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1996), 62-105, trans, as Undoing Aesthetics 
(London: Sage, 1997). An important discussion of constructivism is found in John Searle's 
The Construction of Social Reality (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1995). Ian 
Hacking offers an interesting analysis of various forms of constructivism in his The Social 
Construction of What? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). 
2 6 
AESTHETICS, PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE AND " T H E AESTHETIC T U R N " 
III 
What then does "aestheticization" mean, what are the implications of the 
"the aesthetic turn" for research in the cultural sciences, and what is the status 
of philosophical aesthetics after "the aesthetic turn"? Several answers suggest 
themselves, bu t before considering Richard Shusterman's and Wolfgang 
Welsch's views a few comments on the answers proposed by the Faculties of 
the Humanit ies and Social Sciences at Uppsala University in the "Joint 
Programme of Renewal for the Humanities". "The Aesthetic Turn", which 
f o r m s p a r t of the p r o p o s e d p r o g r a m m e in "Cul tural Analysis and 
Contemporary Criticism", is described as follows: 
Within philosophical aesthetics today, a frequently used term is "the 
aesthetic turm", or in other words there is an increasing tendency to 
view the aesthetic dimension as primary and fundamental to the 
composition of our perceptions and experience of reality, a tendency 
that is for instance an outcome of the cultural upheaval in which we are 
living and which requires cultural analysis with a more aesthetically 
conditioned reflectiveness. This deepening and extension of the 
aesthetic dimension outside the traditional delimitations of art faces 
the aesthetic disciplines with new and vital research tasks."' 
The main points can be summarized as follows: (1) the aesthetic 
d imens ion is o f t en taken as primary as regards o u r percept ion and 
apprehension of reality, (2) this alleged tendency in contemporary thought 
is the result of recent cultural changes (the transition form modernity to 
postmoderni ty?) , (3) the aesthetic disciplines including philosophical 
aesthetics should broaden their horizons so as to include aesthetic phenomena 
outside the arts in their purview. The first claim is certainly true, the aesthetic 
dimension is taken as primary by many leading philosophers and cultural 
analysts today, but whether they are justified in doing so is a moot question, 
therefore the second claim that "cultural analysis with a more aesthetically 
conditioned reflectiveness" is required in order to understand contemporary 
culture (and art?) seems to me more doubtful. The third claim is unexceptional 
if it is interpreted as an exhortation to analyse the diversity of aesthetic 
p h e n o m e n a (and aesthetic aspects of diverse cultural phenomena) in 
contemporary society, which to my mind also includes a sharpened awareness 
of the complexity of the notion of the aesthetic, or, rather, of the different 
and heterogeneous notions of the aesthetic at play in the discourse of "the 
aesthetic turn". 
10 Uppsala University, "Humanities and Social Sciences", Proposal 2000-12-15, p. 23. 
2 7 
LARS-OI .OF ÂI ILBERG 
The background of "the aesthetic turn" and the tasks lying ahead for 
aesthetics (broadly conceived) are clarified in the following passage: 
There has been a renewed interest in aesthetics during the past few 
decades, both philosophical aesthetics and aesthetic analysis in the wider 
sense, largely due to the critical discussions surrounding postmodern 
theory (philosophy, aesthetics, cultural analysis) and postmodern art, 
literature, and architecture. The aestheticization of morality and lifestyle 
is often said to be a characteristic feature of contemporary culture. While 
traditional aesthetic theory often displayed litde or no interest in cultural 
spheres outside of high culture, and therewith limited its purview to 
fine art and belles lettre, contemporary aesthetics has broadened its 
scope to encompass everyday life and popular culture as well. This means 
that the very notion of the "aesthetic" is undergoing a transformation: 
from having been a relatively well-defined concept, it has become a more 
variegated and chaotic notion, reflecting the complex reality which is 
its object of study.17 
Here "the aesthetic turn" is explicitly associated with postmodernism and 
postmodern theory. Whereas the observation that traditional aesthetic theory 
(probably philosophical aesthetics is meant) has paid little or no interest to 
aesthetic phenomena outside of high art and culture is certainly correct the 
claim that "contemporary aesthetics" nowadays includes into its purview 
"everyday life and popular cul ture as well" is a lmost as certainly an 
exaggeration. In the first place this characterization applies to some, perhaps 
many, contemporary aestheticians, (notably Shusterman and Welsch), but — 
for better or worse- not to all or even most philosophical aestheticians. In the 
second place we should note that "everyday life and popular culture" has for 
a long time caught the interest of researchers in various disciplines dealing 
with aesthetic phenomena (sociology of cul ture , sociology of ar t and 
literature). Therefore it is a moot question whether the not ion of "the 
aesthetic" has undergone, or, is undergoing a transformation. In fact, one 
issue of fundamental importance is what is meant by "the aesthetic" and 
"aesthetics" by the champions of "the aesthetic turn", and last but not least , 
what could and what should be meant by these notions. Nor am I so sure that 
"the aesthetic", has been "a relatively well-defined concept" in the traditional 
discourse of philosophical aesthetics and the aesthetic disciplines; it seems to 
me that "the aesthetic turn" trades partly on the etymologically speaking 
original meaning of "the aesthetic" as "what pertains to sensations and 
perceptions and the sensuous enjoyment of sensuous and perceptual qualities". 
17 Ibid., pp. 24-5. 
2 8 
AESTHETICS, PIIII .OSOPIIY OF CULTURE AND " T H E AESTHETIC T U R N " 
I am inclined to think that much of the impetus of "the aesthetic turn" derives 
from privileging one aspect of the traditional meaning of "the aesthetic", or, 
one use of the notion of "the aesthetic" at the expense of others, and granting 
"the aesthetic" in the sense of "sensuous qualities", "what pertains to 
(pleasurable) sensations and perceptions", pride of place. One aspect of "the 
aesthetic" has become dominant in "the aesthetic turn" at the expense of 
others, and in particular, at the expense of "the artistic". The claim that "the 
aesthetic turn" owes much to postmodern theory and postmodernism (as well 
as postmodernity) is, I believe correct, therefore many interesting and exciting 
tasks await the philosophical aesthetician and cultural analyst, for, postmodern 
theory and postmodernism in the arts and in the culture at large is a very 
mixed bag.18 We need to ask ourselves which postmodern theories and ideas 
have influenced and determined the nature and shape of "the aesthetic turn". 
Needless to say, our attitude towards "the aesthetic turn" is conditioned by 
our views on postmodern theory and postmodernism in general.1''1 
Lest my remarks concern ing the proposal for the renewal of the 
humanities at Uppsala University be misunderstood, I hasten to add that the 
proposal to explore "the aesthetic turn" is, in my view, very timely and amply 
justified, but "the aesthetic turn" should not simply be taken for granted, nor, 
s h o u l d t he n a t u r e a n d e x t e n t of " the aes thet ic t u r n " be taken as 
unproblematically given; in short "the aesthetic turn" should be subjected to 
a critical analysis from various points of views (philosophical, art historical, 
sociological), something that is certainly not excluded by the wording of the 
document. My own view is that there is indeed - for better or worse - a 
widespread aestheticization of many aspects of contemporary everyday life 
and mass culture (as well as of theory), but "hedonistic consumerism" is in 
many contexts p e r h a p s a more appropr ia te label for what is called 
"aestheticization". I also believe that it is important for the cultural sciences 
including philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy and sociology of culture 
to c o n f r o n t " the s ta te of cu l tu re" critically. When it comes to the 
18 We shou ld also no te that , accord ing to some analysts, pos tmodern i ty and 
postmodernism are already passé. The architectural historian and critic Philip Jodidio, 
for example, asserts that "it is clear that the time of the Post-Modern is gone" (Philip 
Jodidio, Contemporary European Architecture, vol. IV, Köln: Taschen, 1996, p. 6). 
Who is the paradigmatic postmodern theorist? Foucault, Baudrillard, Derrida, 
Lyotard, or Rorty? Although only Lyotard and Rorty (at a time) accepted the label 
"postmodernist", all thinkers mentioned are habitually regarded as crown witnesses for 
postmodernism. But there are fundamental and irreducible differences between the 
"postmodernism" of a Foucault and a Derrida and a Baudrillard, consequently the 
implications for "the aesthetic turn" differ widely depending on which theorist we regard 
as typical of "the postmodern turn". 
2 9 
LAR.S-Ol.OF Am.»ERG 
aestheticization of theory, and the claims that knowledge and reality have 
been "aestheticized" I am not so sure that this is what actually has happened 
across the board, moreover I part company with those who applaud the 
aestheticization of morals, theory, reality and what not. I shall offer some 
arguments for my position in the sequel, but now that the cat is out of the 
bag, I turn to the views of Richard Shusterman and Wolfgang Welsch, perhaps 
the most influential proponents of "the aesthetic turn". 
IV 
"The project of modernity (with its Enlightenment roots and rationalizing 
differentiation of cultural spheres) has been identified with reason", says 
Richard Shusterman in his recent work, Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and 
the Philosophical Life (1997).2H The postmodern, he continues, is "contrastingly 
characterized as dominantly aesthetic".21 Now, both Shusterman and Welsch 
are prone to contrasting the modern and the postmodern in this rather cavalier 
way, but although there clearly is something in this contrasting characterization 
of the modern and the postmodern, I think we should be wary of such snappy 
and fo rmula ic descr ipt ions of s o m e t h i n g as vast, p o l y m o r p h i c a n d 
heterogeneous as modernity and postmodernity. In spite of the fact that 
Shusterman warns us against taking these terms ("the modern" and "the 
postmodern") "as denot ing dichotomous, inimical essences",22 he cha-
racterizes Habermas as "championing the claims of reason and modernity", 
and Rorty as "representing the aesthetic and postmodern".23 Although I think 
Shusterman has the aesthedcization of morals and life-styles in mind (perhaps 
world views and reality as well) when he speaks of the postmodern as largely 
aesthetic, he apparently also believes that postmodern theory is in some sense 
"aesthetic", or, more aesthetic than traditional, modern theory, since aesthetic 
aspects enter into all or most kinds of theor iz ing accord ing to h im. 
Postmodernism has taken an aesthetic turn, says Shusterman, thinking of the 
(aesthetically inspired?) critique of reason, and above all, of the "the 
postmodern implosion of aesthetics into ethics and politics".24 What does the 
"implosion of aesthetics into ethics and politics" actually mean? One thing it 
20 Richard Shusterman, Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life (New 
York: Routledge, 1997), 113. 
21 Ibid. 
22 Ibid. 
23 Ibid., p. 114. 
24 Ibid., p. 127. 
3 0 
AESTHETICS, PIIII .OSOPIIY OF CULTURE AND " T H E AESTHETIC T U R N " 
doesn' t mean, I suggest, is that "ethics and aesthetics are one", as Shusterman 
implies in quoting Wittgenstein.2r' Wittgenstein's "parenthetical phrase", he 
claims, is "today so meaningful", because it "gives pointed expression to 
important insights and problems of both aesthetic and ethical theorizing in 
our pos tmodern age".20 According to Shusterman, Wittgenstein "denies 
modernism's aesthetic ideology of artistic purism" and "implies that such 
isolationist ideology is no longer viable now that the traditional compart-
mentalization of knowledge and culture threatens to disintegrate into manifold 
forms of interdisciplinary activity".27 Shusterman is, of course, aware of the 
context in which Wittgenstein's remark (proposition 6.421 in Tractatus) occurs, 
a r emark expressed "in that austere economy of p regnan t minimalist 
expression so characteristic of the modernist style",28 as he puts it. Shusterman 
knows that for the early Wittgenstein ethics as well as aesthetics (as expressions 
of value) involve seeing things sub specie aeternitatis, that ethics and aesthetics 
are transcendental and concern the realm of the mystical, a conviction that is 
- mildly pu t - uncongenial to a postmodernist.2'1 Therefore Shusterman's claim 
that "Wittgenstein's ambiguous dictum that ethics and aesthetics are one by 
erecting the aesthetic as the proper ethical ideal"30 supports the postmodern 
"aestheticization of the ethical" is surprising. It may be the case that the 
postmodern conviction "that aesthetic considerations are or should be crucial 
and ultimately perhaps paramount in determining how we choose to lead or 
shape our lives" is widespread,31 but it is certainly not Wittgenstein's idea nor 
is it an idea we should accept lightheartedly.32 
25 Richard Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (Oxford: 
Blackwell, 1992), p. 236-7. 
2" Ibid., p. 237. 
27 Ibid. 
28 Ibid., p. 236. Wittgenstein's proposition 6.421 reads: "It is clear that ethics cannot be 
put into words. Ethics is transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same)" 
(Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Pliilosophicus, 1921, trans. D.F. Pears & B. F. 
McGuiness, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), the original German parenthetical 
sentence being: "(Ethik und Ästhetik sind Eins)". 
2" According to Hans-Johann Glock Wittgenstein's "sibylline pronouncement" involves 
the following points: (1) ethics and aesthetics are concerned with necessities, which by 
their very nature cannot be expressed in meaningful propositions, but only shown, (2) 
ethics and aesthetics constitute a higher, transcendetal realm of value, and (3) ethics and 
aesthetics are based on a mystical experience (Hans-Johann Glock, A Wittgenstein Dictionary, 
Oxford: Blackwell, 1996, p. 31). 
311 Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics, p. 237. 
31 Ibid. 
32 Cf. Joseph Margolis' remarks about Shusterman's use of Wittgenstein's dictum (J. 
Margolis, "All the Turns in 'Aestheticizing' Life", Filozofski Vestnik 1999:2, "Aesthetics as 
3 1 
LARS-OLOF A I ILBERG 
But what exactly is involved in "the aestheticization of the ethical", and 
what does "aesthetic" mean here? Shusterman offers the following clues. The 
aestheticization of the ethical, he says, is "perhaps more evident in our everyday 
lives and the popula r imaginat ion of ou r cu l tu re than in academic 
philosophy",3 3 this aestheticization being manifested "by our cul ture 's 
preoccupation with glamour and gratification, with personal appearance and 
enrichment".34 This, Shusterman says, is "the postmodernist ethics of taste", 
whose most influential philosophical advocate is Richard Rorty. Rorty favours 
"the aesthetic life", which among other things implies the ideal of private 
perfection, self creation and a life motivated by "the desire to embrace more 
and more possibilities",35 and the "aesthetic search for novel experiences and 
for novel language" [novel languages being ways of defining oneself in novel 
ways].31' The "ethics of taste", Shusterman argues, is a consequence (though 
not a logical consequence) of anti-essentialism regarding human nature. If 
the absence of a human essence, Shusterman says, implies no determinate 
ethic, it cannot imply an aestheticized ethic either, but "it still can lead to an 
ethics of taste, since in the absence of any intrinsic foundation to justify an 
ethic," Shusterman continues, "we may reasonably be encouraged to choose 
the one that most appeals to us".37 The appeal of an ethic, he believes, is 
ultimately an aesthetic matter, "a question of what strikes us as most attractive 
or most perfect".38 It is important to note that Shusterman, following Bernard 
Williams, makes a distinction between ethics and morality, ethics being mainly 
concerned with values and the good life and morality with obligation.311 Bearing 
this distinction in mind Shusterman's view that the aestheticization of ethics 
is a good thing becomes perhaps less objectionable, but what about moral 
obligations? Can moral obligations also be "aestheticized" and conceived of 
in terms of taste, choice and appeal? Shusterman seems to think so, for, he 
Philosophy", Proceedings of the XlVth International Congress of Aesthetics 1998, Part I, 
Ljubljana 1999, p. 199). 
33 Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics, p. 238. 
34 Ibid. 
35 Richard Rorty, "Freud and Moral Reflection", in Freud: The Moral Disposition of 
Psychoanalysis, eds.J. H. Smith &W. Kerrigan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 
1986) p. 11. 
3li Ibid., p. 15. 
37 Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics, p. 243. 
38 Ibid. 
m "Ethics, as distinguished from morality, recognizes that there is more to the good 
life than the fulfilment of obligations", says Shusterman (ibid., p. 245). According to 
Williams "morality [is] a special system, a particular variety of ethical thought" (Bernard 
Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, London: Fontana/Collins, 1985, p. 174). 
3 2 
AESTHETICS, PIIII .OSOPIIY OF CULTURE AND " T H E AESTHETIC T U R N " 
argues that "[f]inding what is right becomes a matter of finding the most 
fitting and appealing gestalt, of perceiving the most attractive and harmonious 
constellation of various and weighted features in a given situation or life".40 
Finding what is right is, Shusterman claims, "no longer the deduction of one 
obligation from another more general obligation [.. .], nor is it the outcome 
of a logical calculation based on a clear hierarchical order of obligations".41 
Therefore, Shusterman concludes, "ethical justification comes to resemble 
aesthetic explanation in appealing not to syllogism or algorithm but to 
perceptually persuasive argument [. . .] in its attempt to convince".42 Two 
comments are in order: first, Shusterman almost imperceptibly switches from 
"moral" (in moral obligation) to "ethical" (in ethical justification), but he 
presumably means that moral deliberation, finding out what our obligations 
are in a certain situation, is rather like aesthetic explanation andjustification; 
second, he speaks of ethicaljustification, as resembling aesthetic explanation 
"in its attempt to convince". This seems to be a rather strange "disembodied" 
view of moral obligation, for even if it is the case that we sometimes are called 
upon to justify our actions from a moral point of view and although it is also 
true that we sometimes feel the need to justify our actions and the actions of 
others and that therefore the purpose of offeringjustifications is to convince 
(ourselves or others), this is by no means always the case when trying to find 
out what course of action to take and when asking ourselves (or others) what 
our moral obligations are. Moral obligations are invoked not only in order to 
justify a certain course of action, or to convince somebody of the right course 
of act ion. F inding ou t (by whatever means - del iberat ion, intuit ion, 
spontaneous feeling) what our moral obligations are in a given situation leads 
normally to action; moral obligations are action-guiding. The main purpose 
of finding out what our moral obligations are is not to justify an action or to 
attempt to convince somebody of the Tightness of the action in question, but 
simply to do the right thing. Shusterman's view of moral obligations seems to 
me to be strangely contemplative and "intellectualised". When Shusterman 
says tha t" [f] inding what is right becomes a matter of finding the most fitting 
and appealing gestalt" he has, I think, either pronounced a tautology or 
actually left the universe of discourse of ethics and morality behind. For we 
may well ask about the most fitting and appealing gestalt, "fitting and appealing 
from what point of view"? Fitting or appealing from a moral point of view or 
from an aesthetic point of view? If the answer is "from a moral point of view" 
411 Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics, p. 245. 
41 Ibid. 
42 Ibid. 
3 3 
LARS-OI .OF ÂI ILBERG 
we are dealing with a tautology, if the answer is "from an aesthetic point of 
view" we have, I suggest, not so much aestheticized ethics and morality, but 
abandoned ethics and morality altogether. Applying aesthetic considerations 
and standards of the kind envisaged by Shusterman (and Rorty) to ethics and 
morality means that questions of right and wrong, of justice and equality, 
should be answered by invoking "taste", "appeal" and "liking" instead of by 
appealing to norms and standards (however changeable, heterogeneous and 
flexible). Shusterman's view implies to my mind the denial of the rationality 
of ethics and morality and moral deliberation, and the dissolution of ethics 
and morality as guides to action. The aestheticization of ethics and morals is, 
in my view, not a new ethics or morality, but a new a-morality (I am not saying 
immorality). In spite of this, and somewhat paradoxically, Shusterman can be 
seen to advocate a new ethics and a new morality. For all his anti-essentialism 
and anti-foundationalism Shusterman seems to think that his anti-essentialism 
and anti-foundationalism provides some kind ofjustification for a new ethics 
and morality, for an aestheticized ethics and morality. Shusterman's views are 
therefore reminiscent of earlier endeavours to find a "justification" for ethics 
and morality. But "to propose a new justification [for morality] would be to 
inaugurate a new practice",43 as Paul Johnston has argued convincingly to my 
mind. If the proposed practice ("the aestheticization of ethics") differs in 
fundamental respects from what has hitherto been considered to be ethics 
and morality we are justified in regarding the new practice as a new a-morality. 
Shusterman may be right in maintaining that in these postmodern times 
aesthetic consideration play a fundamental role in "choosing" life-styles and 
values and in deciding what the p rope r and r ight act ion is in given 
circumstances. But if we applaud this state of affairs, as Shusterman does, 
have we not discarded ethics and morality altogether, or, rather, accepted a 
playful hedonism - some would say nihilism - as the guiding principle of life 
and action?44 
I have said that Shusterman's idea of the aestheticization of ethics is less 
objectionable than his analysis of morality, because it is obvious that there are 
many conflicting versions and visions of the good life in contemporary society, 
and it seems that we have no "neutral" criteria by which different versions of 
the good life could be judged. Nevertheless, something more can be said 
about the supposedly arbitrary and "aesthetic" choices people make regarding 
4:1 Paul Johnston, Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 69. 
44 Paul Johnston's remarks about Bernard William's "justification" of morality apply in 
this case too: "Central moral concepts such asjustice, integrity, and guilt are marginalized 
or rendered opaque, while the very notion of obligation comes to seem highly problematic" 
(Johnston, Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy, p. 73). 
3 4 
AESTHETICS, PIIII .OSOPIIY OF CULTURE AND " T H E AESTHETIC T U R N " 
the good life in these postmodern times. In the first place, Shusterman like 
Rorty and Welsch exaggerates the extent to which we are able to choose a life-
style and an ethic. Economic, social, cultural and psychological realities impose, 
I suggest, robust limitations to what life-styles, and which ethics are open to 
us. Nor should it be forgotten that the choices open to us and the choices we 
actually make may be - to a larger extent than we realize - conditioned by 
factors beyond our control. The aestheticization of ethics seems to appeal 
mainly to liberally minded postmodern philosophers and intellectuals and 
reflects perhaps also the predicament of many "ordinary" middle-class persons 
in affluent societies, but large sections of the population in affluent societies, 
not to mention poor societies, have a much more restricted range of "choices" 
of life-style and ethics.4r' I also believe that something more than just aesthetic 
appeal enters, and should enter our ethical deliberations, our thinking about 
the good life. Consider the following example. I suppose racist and sexist 
values and attitudes can be part of an ethic, i.e. of a conception of the good 
life. If we accept the aestheticization of ethics, it seems that the only thing 
that can be said about this ethic is that we dislike it, that it does not appeal to 
us. But racist and sexist values are not free-floating phenomena, they have a 
history and they fit into certain social, economic, cultural and psychological 
patterns. These values are, for those, who embrace them and live by them not 
something theyjust find appealing, many racists, perhaps most actually believe 
that it is a scientific truth that non-whites are mentally and morally inferior to 
whites. Since this view is a delusion, a racist ethic can be rejected, not jus t on 
aesthetic grounds, no t ju s t because we dislike it, but on rational grounds.41' 
Even if aesthetic considerations may enter our deliberations about the good 
life, I think, Shusterman and company play down the role of reason and 
argument in ethics. 
V 
In the wake of "the aesthetic turn", Wolfgang Welsch envisages aesthetics 
as a new "prima philosophia". Modern epistemology, Welsch claims, has been 
continuously "aestheticized" since Kant. There is, he says, "a fundamental 
aestheticization of knowledge, truth and reality".47 Aesthetic categories such 
45 See, fo r example , Zygmunt Bauman 's Globalization: The Human Consequences 
(Cambridge: Polity, 1998). 
4<i Even if arguments are unlikely to convert racists to a more humane and tolerant 
ethic it remains true that racism is not only distasteful, but also irrational. 
47 Welsch, Grenzgänge der Ästhetik, p. 96, my trans. 
3 5 
LARS-OI .OF Â I ILBERG 
as appearance or fictionality ("Schein") , mobility ("Beweglichkeit") , 
groundlessness ("Bodenlosigkeit") and uncertainty ("Schweben") have, 
according to Welsch, replaced "the classical ontological categories of being, 
reality, permanence".48 But it is in the first place far from clear, whether the 
"classical" categories have in fact been replaced by the categories of 
appearance, mobility and uncertainty, and in the second place I fail to see 
what is specifically aesthetic about these latter categories. In any case Welsch's 
contention that "our 'first philosophy' has to a significant degree become 
aesthetic",4''' seems to me to be based on a confusion. Although aesthetics is 
regarded a new "first philosophy", it is a first philosophy of an entirely different 
kind from the "first philosophy" of, say, Descartes or Kant, that is to say, not a 
first philosophy at all, for aesthetics as a "first philosophy" implies, according 
to Welsch, that, in fact, there are no foundations, and aesthetics is not a new 
"foundational" philosophy or science: "Aesthetics [. . .] does not offer a 
founda t ion" . 5 0 The very absence of a f ounda t i on , Welsch con tends , 
characterizes the aesthetic turn, and constitutes a paradigm shift. Welsch's 
use of the Kuhnian term "paradigm" incidentally reveals the affinity between 
the discourse of "turns" and the discourse of "paradigms" - and the problems 
with both. Welsch's use of "paradigm" in this context, seems to me to be one 
among thousands of examples of misusing an vulgarizing the Kuhnian 
conception of paradigms and paradigm shifts.51 Welsch detects the signs of 
aestheticization everywhere in contemporary theorizing, in philosophy as well 
as in the sciences: "The insight that reality is aesthetically constituted is not 
only shared by many aestheticians, but is a view held by all thinking theorists 
of science and reality in the 20th century".52 In order to support this rather 
extraordinary claim (those who do not understand, let alone accept, the claim 
that reality is aesthetically constituted are apparently unthinking reactionaries) 
Welsch appeals to Nietzsche and refers to his influence on contemporary 
thinking. Even those, who are not Nietzscheans, he claims, are forced to argue 
48 Ibid., p. 71, my trans. 
*•' Ibid., p. 96, my trans. 
r'" Ibid., p. 97, my trans. 
51 In the postscript (1969) to The Structure of Scientific Revolution Kuhn says that there 
are "two very different usages of the term [paradigm] " in the original text, viz. paradigms 
as the constellation of group commitments, which means that there is a "disciplinary 
matrix", which is shared by "the practicioners of a particular discipline", and paradigms 
as shared examples (Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962, 2nd. ed., 
University of Chicago Press, 1970, pp. 182,187). No cultural analyst or social scientist has 
to my knowledge spoken of "disciplinary matrixes" or "shared examples", perhaps because 
there aren ' t any in the human and the social sciences. 
52 Ibid., p. 85, my trans. 
3 6 
AESTHETICS, PIIII .OSOPIIY OF CULTURE AND " T H E AESTHETIC T U R N " 
like Nietzsche when the fundamental problems in the philosophy of science 
are discussed, and Welsch quotes Karl Popper's well-known view that all our 
knowledge is uncertain and changeable/'3 If Nietzsche said that all knowledge 
is uncertain and if Popper said that all knowledge is uncertain, that certainly 
does not mean that Popper argued in the same way as Nietzsche, nor that 
Popper implicitly admitted that the "fundaments" of knowledge and reality 
are in some sense aesthetic. We find a similar non sequitur in Welsch's discussion 
of Rorty's Contingency, Irony and Solidarity and in his comments on the work of 
some prominent physicists. Rorty showed, in Welsch's opinion, that "all our 
' fundaments ' are aesthetically constituted, in that they are throughout cultural 
artefacts"/'4 It is, according to Welsch, common knowledge that physicists 
such as Bohr, Dirac, Einstein and Heisenberg realized that their theories were 
not representations of reality, but rather productions. They were, moreover, 
aware, Welsch says, that imagination is indispensable for succesful scientific 
research. Now Rorty's conception of knowledge and reality as presented in 
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, is certainly non-foundational, constructivist 
and pragmatist. But why should we say that all our fundaments are aesthetically 
constituted because they are cultural artefacts? Most, perhaps all aesthetic 
phenomena are cultural artefacts and if knowledge and reality are cultural 
artefacts, they are also cultural artefacts, but from that fact (if it is a fact) it 
does not follow that knowledge and reality are aesthetically constituted. Welsch 
is here conflating the notions of "aesthetically constituted" and "culturally 
constituted". His case is equally weak in regard to the famous physicists he 
adduces as evidence for the importance of aesthetic consideration in scientific 
theorizing. For, even if imagination enters scienfic research (it does), and 
even if aesthetic considerations play a role in scientific theorizing (they do), 
there is n o reason to conclude that Bohr and company used aesthetic 
arguments in solving crucial theoretical problems. Welsch's statement that 
the mathematician and philosopher Poincare believed aesthetic skills to be 
more important than logical ones in matehmatics is equally misguided, for in 
the passage quo ted by Welsch, Poincare says no such thing; aesthetic 
considerat ion, says Poincare, play a great role in mathematics, and he 
emphasizes that mathematicians need imagination, a special "mathematical 
imagination".r,r' This, I suggest, has very little to do with the aesthetic turn and 
the aestheticization of knowledge and reality. The truth is that we can detect 
aesthetic aspects everywhere (even in art), we can view things sub specie 
53 Ibid., p. 85. 
54 Ibid., p. 87. 
55 Ibid., p. 92, footnote 72. 
3 7 
L A R S - O L O F AIILBERG 
aestlieticae, but that does not make everything aesthetic except by an illicit 
conceptual manoeuvre. 
Welsch is on firmer ground (!) when he analyzes the aestheticization of 
life-styles, ethics and everyday life. Aesthetic processes, he contends, are not 
only of decisive importance in the newmedia, aestheUc (in the sense of "virtual") 
processes create a mediated reality, or, rather, an imaginary room, where the 
distinction between real and unreal seems to vanish. Welsch detects a different 
form of aestheticization in the stylization of subjects and life-styles, that may 
ultimately lead to the homo aesteticus. All life forms, all approaches to reality and 
to ethical norms, Welsch claims, have assumed "a peculiar aesthetic quality". 
Welsch is here referring to what I have earlier called "hedonistic consumerism". 
The criteria for choosing between different moralities, he thinks, cannot be 
but aesthetic. In discussing Shusterman I have argued that talk of choosing life 
styles and ethics is somewhat exaggerated; I quite fail to see how anyone actually 
chooses a life style or an ethic in the way one chooses a shirt or a cake (not that 
choosing a shirt or a cake is an entirely arbirtrary matter). There is, to be sure, 
an element of choice and arbritration in reflecting on ethics and morality, but 
I do not believe that we can choose a life style or a morality at will. There are, I 
think, profound psychologically, socially and culturally determined limits to 
what we can conceivable choose, believe and do. 
I have argued that Welsch's aestheticization rests, at least in part, on 
conceptual confusion and conflation. Welsch, however, claims that those who 
find the aestheticization of everyday life etc. distasteful often avail themselves 
of a cheap conceptual trick and argue that aesthetics by definition deals only 
with art. The opponents of aestheticization theories are in Welsch's opinion 
therefore guilty of an illicit conceptual move. This attitude, Welsch continues, 
is escapistic, and does not enhance our philosophical unders tanding of 
contemporary reality/'11 In response to Welsch's charge I admit that I dislike 
some of the effects of the aestheticization of everyday life (as does Welsch). 
But that is surely beside the point. In arguing that most of the phenomena 
Welsch regards as the effects of aestheticization I am not saying that these 
aspects of contemporary life should be ignored, nor that they shouldn' t be 
studied by philosophers. They fall, however, more naturally within the domain 
of a general philosophy and sociology of culture than within aesthetics. I see 
no point in broadening the concept of the aesthetic and aesthetics to such an 
extent that almost everything from science, philosophy, ethics, morals, life 
styles, the products of the entertainment industries, etc. are regarded as 
aesthetic phenomena to be studies in the new discipline of trans-aesthetics. It 
5li Ibid., p. 20. 
3 8 
AESTHETICS, PIIII .OSOPIIY OF CULTURE AND " T H E AESTHETIC T U R N " 
is indeed remarkable that almost everything, except art, seems to be included 
in the aestheticization of reality, and thus a fit subject for the new "trans-
aesthetics". 
In his contribution to the International Congress of Aesthetics in Ljubljana 
in 1998 Wolfgang Welsch presents what he regards as a case study of the 
aestheticization of the everday. Contemporary sport, according to Welsch, 
"obviously represents a striking example of today's aestheticization of the 
everyday".57 There is a shift Welsch maintains in todays's sport "from an ethical 
to an aesthetic perspective" on health.58 Today's sport, he believes, has "turned 
into a celebrat ion of the body",5'-' the older "modern" practice of sport 
presumably being something else, mortifying the body, for example, or forcing 
the body to perform beyond all reasonable limits. "This novel type of training", 
Welsch maintains, "respects the body and does away with the old ideology of 
mastering the body",00 and Welsch quotes the Finnish world champion in 
cross-country skiing Mika Myllyla as saying that "the greatest enjoyment comes 
from training, not from winning".1'1 Had Welsch quoted Myllyla as an example 
of a new "aestheticized" attitude to sport if he had finished seventh or fifty-
seventh in the world chamionships in Ramsau in 1999,02 had he quoted him 
as an example of "a new care for the body" if he had known that Myllyla 
would be caught using perfomance enhancing drugs during the world 
championships in cross-country skiing in Lahti in February 2001? The fact 
that the Finnish skier, whom Welsch regards as a shining example of a new 
"postmodern" aestheticized approach to sport, was caught cheating, is not 
only ironic, but casts a rather lurid light on postmodern aestheticization 
processes. The distinction between reality and appearance is more important-
both ontologically and morally than Welsch is prepared to admit. 
VI 
Although the discourse of "aestheticization" and the "aestheticization of 
theory, reality and ethics" is a relatively new (and contemporary) pheno-
menon , it is not without precedents. The concepts of the aesthetic, of 
57 Wolfgang Welsch, "Sport - Viewed Aesthetically, and Even as Art?", Filozofski Vestnik 
1999:2, "Aesthetics as Philosophy", Proceedings of the XlVth International Congress of 
Aesthetics 1998, Part I, Ljubljana 1999, p. 213. 
58 Ibid., p. 217. 
»' Ibid. p. 215. 
«'Ibid. p. 218. 
'" Ibid. 
1,2 Myllyla won the 10, 30 and 50km cross-country races. 
3 9 
LARS-OI .OF Â I ILBERG 
aesthetics, and of aestheticism are open to d i f fe ren t and conf l ic t ing 
interpretations. The concept of aestheticism, as used by the historian of ideas 
Allan Megill in his book Prophets of Extremity (1985) shows some affinities to 
Shusterman's and Welsch's conceptions of aestheticization. By "aestheticism" 
Megill understands the tendency "to see 'art ' or ' language' or 'discourse' or 
'text' as constituting the primary realm of human experience",''3 a tendency 
he regards as characteristic of much recent avant-garde thought . This 
aestheticism, emphasizing the potential of language to create its own reality 
is, according to Megill, a counterpart to the post-Romantic notion of the work 
of art creating it own reality.1'4 Megill's "aestheticism" shares with postmodern 
aestheticization the critique of Enl ightenment thought in stressing the 
constructivist character of discourse and language, perhaps also in the attempt 
"to bring back into thought and into our lives tiiat form of edification, that 
reawakening of efatoú, which in die Enlightenment and the post-Enlightenment 
view has largely been confined to the realm of art".65 The "aestheticism" of the 
Enlightenment critics such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida, and 
the "aestheticization" discourse of Shusterman and Welsch can thus be seen to 
reformulate and to transform central themes in Romantic and post-Romandc 
aesthetics. Shusterman's and Welsch's reformulat ion of aesthetics and 
celebration of (certain aspects) of the aestheticization of contemporary life can 
be seen as a democratic and pragmatic version of the high-brow aestheticism 
Megill finds in Nietzsche and Heidegger. 
In order to put the renewal of aesthetics envisaged by Shusterman and 
Welsch in sharper focus, it may be useful to contrast their views of the tasks of 
aesthetics with more traditional conceptions of the aims and purposes of 
philosophical aesthetics. The Polish philosopher and aesthetician, Bohdan 
Dziemidok, presents the following definition of aesthetics in The Blackwell 
Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Social Thought (1993): 
In its modern meaning aesthetics is most frequently understood as a 
philosophical discipline which is either a philosophy of aesthetic 
phenomena (objects, qualities, experiences and values), or a philosophy 
of art (of creativity, of artwork, and its perception) or a philosophy of 
art criticism taken broadly (metacriticism), or, finally, a discipline which 
is concerned philosophically with all three realms jointly.1'0 
03 Allan Megill, Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (Berkeley: 
University of California Press, 1985), p. 2. 
Ii4 Ibid. 
,ir> Ibid., p. 342. 
'"' Bohdan Dziemidok, "Aesthetics", The Blackwell Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Social 
Thought, eds. William Outhwaite & T o m Bottomore (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), p. 4. 
4 0 
AESTHETICS, PIIII .OSOPIIY OF CULTURE AND " T H E AESTHETIC T U R N " 
Aesthetics is thus basically a philosophical discipline concerned with 
aesthetic phenomena in general and with works of art in particular as well as 
the philosophical analysis of art criticism (metacriticism). Although the 
philosophical study of aesthetic phenomena in general are said to form part 
of aesthetics, Dziemidok's definition is clearly art centred in a way that 
Shusterman's and Welsch's conceptions of aesthetics aren't.'17 The British 
philosopher and aesthetician Malcolm Budd presents a similar definition in 
another recent publication, The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1998), when 
he describes aesthetics as "consist[ing] of two parts: the philosophy of art, 
and the philosophy of aesthetic experience and character of objects or 
phenomena that are not art".llfi Whereas the problems of the philosophy of 
art are relatively well defined, "the philosophy of aesthetic experience" 
concerns a variety of heterogeneous phenomena, including not only aesthetic 
experiences of nature (environmental aesthetics), but it hardly includes "the 
aestheticization of ethics and everyday life".1'11 
There is nothing wrong in studying the aestheticization of ethics and 
everyday life, on the contrary, it is impor tan t to study the manifold 
aestheticization processes at work in contemporary culture, but I doubt 
whether these concerns should be at centre of philosophical aesthetics. The 
arts and the experience of art raise many important and intriguing problems 
that should not be put into the mixed and rather ill-defined bag of "trans-
aesthetics", nor should they be swallowed by a new "soma-aesthetics". Ales 
Erjavec is right in saying that there is a "broadening of the notion of the 
aesthetic" at work here and that Welsch's trans-aesthetic implies a "collapsing 
of the aesthetic and of aesthetics".7H I entirely agree with him that art should be 
1,7 Cf. Susan Feagins definition of "aesthetics" in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy 
(1995), where aesthetics is defined as " the branch of philosophy that examines the nature 
of art and the character of experience of art and the natural environment" (Susan Feagin, 
"Aesthetics", The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. Robert Audi, Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1995, p. 10). Aesthetics is thus not identical with the philosophy of art, it 
includes environmental aesthetics, but hardly "the aestheticization of ethics and everyday 
life". 
"8 Malcolm Budd, "Aesthetics", The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 1, ed. Edward 
Craig (London: Routledge, 1998), 59. 
08 The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy is intended to replace Paul Edwards large 
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, published in 1967. The definition of "aesthetics" offered by 
John Hospers in that work reads: " [T] he philosophy of art covers a somewhat more narrow 
area than does aesthetics, since it is concerned with the concepts and problems that arise 
in connection with works of art and excludes, for example, the aesthetic experience of 
nature" (John Hospers, "Aesthetics, Problems of ' , The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol 1-2, 
ed. Paul Edwards, New York: Macmillan, 1967, p. 36). 
70 Ales Erjavec, "Aesthetics as Philosophy", Filozofski Vestnik 1999:2, "Aesthetics as 
4 1 
LAKS-OLOF A I ILBERG 
viewed as "a relatively distinct phenomenon requiring its relatively distinct 
theoretical reflection".71 The problems of representation in art, the value of 
art, the rationality of critical judgement etc., will not go away by simply ignoring 
them.72 If we are not interested in such questions, we are not, I suggest, doing 
philosophical aesthetics (but, rather, undoing aesthetics). The questions 
concerning the aestheticization of theory, ethics and everyday life are best 
viewed as problems for the philosophy and sociology of culture and the 
criticism of culture. Art and aesthetics are too important to merge into an 
undifferentiated new discipline studying "the aestheticization of everything".73 
Philosophy", Proceedings of the XlVth International Congress of Aesthetics 1998, Part I, 
Ljubljana 1999, p. 18. 
71 Ibid. 
12 See, for example, the excellent collection of essays Art and Representation which 
discusses the problem of representation in general and the problems of representation 
invarious art forms (Art and Representation: Contributions to Contemporary Aesthetics, ed. Ananta 
Ch. Sukla, Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2001). 
™ This article is partly based on a paper presented at the International Colloquium 
"Aesthetics as Philosophy of Culture", organized by the Slovenian Society of Aesthetics in 
Ljubljana, 29 June-lJuly 2000. A few passages in sections II and IV have appeared in my 
article, "Aesthetics between Philosophy and Art: Four Variations", in Swedish in Nordic 
Journal of Aesthetics 2000:20-1, pp. 55-77. 
4 2