Fabio Tononi

This contribution proposes how beholders may internally process unfinished works of art. It does so by considering five of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s interrupted sculptures and pointing out their empathic and imaginative potential. The beholder focused on the surface, I propose, is inclined to mentally simulate the artist’s gesture that drafted the sculptures through the visible graphic signs of the chisels. This inner simulation takes place within the activation of various brain networks, located in the brain’s motor system. Renaissance authors associated the observation of the unfinished to learning and, as this article shows, this assumption seems to find confirmation in recent neuroscientific studies on mirror neurons and imitation learning. In this way, the empathic engagement established between the beholder and the work of art observed – as well as the role played by embodied simulation and imagination in this kind of visual perception – clarifies how the incompleteness can also have that pedagogical function recognised by Giorgio Vasari and Benvenuto Cellini.

This course examines Western culture and society from the 1840s to the present by focusing on the concepts of modernism, postmodernism, and hypermodernism (or hyperculture). Students will develop appropriate critical and analytical reading skills of philosophical and interdisciplinary texts on topics such as capitalism, the concept of modernity, the death of God, the modern city, cultural hegemony, the aura, the culture industry, the essence of the work of art, metaphysics, the public sphere, the postmodern city, the relationship between spectacle and society, postmodern literature, the concept of the rhizome, the panopticon, late capitalism, non-places, the concept of cultural hybridity, the concept of liquid modernity, globalization, youth, feminism, the post-human, democracy, information, and the concept of narration. Furthermore, students will learn to navigate philosophical thought by addressing the following questions: What does it mean to be modern? What distinguishes modernism from postmodernism? How can we define the contemporary era? What is the role of capitalism in the last 200 years? This course addresses these and other related questions by focusing on the works of various thinkers.

This course examines some problems of aesthetics and art theory by analysing texts from the history of Western thought. Students will develop appropriate critical and analytical reading skills of philosophical and interdisciplinary texts on topics such as aisthesis, poetics, taste, the sublime, aesthetic judgement, imagination, beauty, spirit, empathy, ornament, the concept of experience, the aura, the psychedelic experience, the concept of the beholder’s share, the theory of the avant-garde, emotion, photography, the essence of art, the concept of influence, the power of images, the end of art, neuroaesthetics, and perception. Furthermore, students will learn to navigate philosophical thought by addressing the following questions: What is aesthetics? What is the difference between speculative aesthetics and empirical aesthetics? What is the difference between an aesthetic judgement and an aesthetic experience? What is art? What is a work of art? What is the role of biology in perception? This course addresses these and other related questions by focusing on the works of various thinkers.

What is the state of democracy today? In the Western world, people often take the meaning of this term for granted, but do they genuinely know what democracy is? In this sense, how can we define democracy in today’s digitalized world? What is the relationship between democracy and information? Furthermore, do we really live in a democratic world? In Infocracy: Digitalization and the Crisis of Democracy—the 2022 translation of the original German book Infokratie. Digitalisierung und die Krise der Demokratie, published in 2021 by MSB Matthes & Seitz Berlin Verlagsgesellschaft mbH—Byung-Chul Han reflects on these and other related issues. Han’s analysis of the current political, social, and technological situation indicates that a profound democratic crisis is emerging. The loss of interest in truth, the end of grand narratives, the replacement of reason with data analysis (even in philosophy), the fragmentation of the population due to digitalization, and the predominant role of information in everyday life are all symptoms of a radical transformation underway in Western society, with severe consequences for democratic stability. In these terms, Han’s vision, at times excessively pessimistic, orients us on the crucial issues of our time.

The purpose of this essay is to advocate the ideas of Wilhelm Worringer, John Dewey, and Nelson Goodman on the roles of perception, empathy, emotion, and enjoyment in aesthetic experience. I will attempt to do this by offering a novel interpretation of some of these thinkers’ insights from a biological perspective. To this end, I will consider the following questions. What is an aesthetic experience? Does such a thing exist at all? If yes, is there a correlation between the concept of the aesthetic and perception? Is it possible, then, to find a biological basis for aesthetic experience? My argument is that a fresh analysis of the aesthetics of Worringer, Dewey, and Goodman, in light of some of the discoveries and theories of the cognitive neurosciences – such as the biological correlations of emotions, the “as-if-body-loop” theory, the discovery of mirror neurons, and the phenomenon of embodied simulation – may provide a contribution to longstanding philosophical problems relating to the nature of aesthetic experience.

This contribution proposes how beholders may internally process unfinished works of art. It does so by considering five of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s interrupted sculptures and pointing out their empathic and imaginative potential. The beholder focused on the surface, I propose, is inclined to mentally simulate the artist’s gesture that drafted the sculptures through the visible graphic signs of the chisels. This inner simulation takes place within the activation of various brain networks, located in the brain’s motor system. Renaissance authors associated the observation of the unfinished to learning and, as this article shows, this assumption seems to find confirmation in recent neuroscientific studies on mirror neurons and imitation learning. In this way, the empathic engagement established between the beholder and the work of art observed – as well as the role played by embodied simulation and imagination in this kind of visual perception – clarifies how the incompleteness can also have that pedagogical function recognised by Giorgio Vasari and Benvenuto Cellini.