Per un’ecologia estetica. Le dimensioni non razionali della coesione sociale

Abstract

Ecology should be understood as a new kind of knowledge that goes beyond the structural limitations of scientific discourse. Its emphasis on transdisciplinarity as the only way to cope with the new complexity of its object of study should be taken even further, to make room for other ways of understanding that Cartesian reductionism has more or less done away with. This essay advocates the necessity of an aesthetic ecology up to the task of mending Western culture’s separation between reason and emotional sphere, discourse and imaginal dimension. Such an integrated thought could try and understand with some success crucial issues such as environment, trust and social cohesion, which sink their roots in a terrain made of qualitative relations, ideals of sharing and interpersonal understanding and coexistence that the economic accent on competition and individualism has banned from social discourse and awareness.