Aesthetics, philosophy of culture and "the aesthetic turn"

In sections I-II the renewed interest in aesthetics, manifested in a wealth of recent introductory texts on aesthetics, is discussed. I argue here for a historically informed philosophy of art - only too often an historical a pproach and a systematic-analytic approach to the problems of aesthetics ha ve been thought to be mutually exclusive. In section III I discuss the rese arch proposal for the renewal of the humanities of the Faculties of the Hum anities and Social Sciences at Uppsala University: "Cultural Analysis and C ontemporary Criticism", of which "The Aesthetic Turn" is a subsection. It i s an interesting and timely proposal, but it raises some difficult and cont roversial issues concerning the concepts of the aesthetic and of aesthetics , as do the writings of philosophers associated with "the aesthetic turn" i n philosophy. In section IV I criticize Richard Shusterman's views on the " aestheticization of ethics and life-styles", arguing that an aestheticizati on of ethics and morals implies the dissolution of ethics and morality; the aestheticization of ethics and life-styles is perhaps a reality in many po stmodern societies but it poses both philosophical and moral problems that the advocates of "aestheticization" (Rorty, Welsch, Shusterman) underestima te. Similar consideration apply to Wolfgang Welsch's "aestheticization of t heory and knowledge" in his book Undoing Aesthetics. In section V I argue t hat Welsch's proposal to widen the horizons of aesthetics is commendable bu t that the abandonment of an art-centred aesthetics is problematic. To my m ind Welsch's "transaesthetics" in spite of some of its interesting and posi tive suggestions rests on a conflation of "the aesthetic" and "aesthetics".