Podiumsdiskussion Ringvorlesung Andere Ästhetik

Lecture Series

Different Aesthetics – Art and Society in the Pre-Modern Era

What is art? What is it allowed – and not allowed to do? Is art autonomous or heteronomous? Is it free from purpose (perhaps even purposeless?) or is it a social practice that fulfills tasks and purposes within the environment of everyday life? Since 2019, Tübingen’s Collaborative Research Centre Different Aesthetics has been investigating the role of aesthetic practices in different social fields – from religion, politics and science to everyday culture.

The question of art and society emerges under a ‘different’ perspective: the Collaborative Research Centre examines aesthetic acts, artefacts and actors of the pre-modern era – from antiquity through the Middle Ages and up to the early modern period. By always viewing aesthetic practices as embedded in social activity, the CRC challenges narratives about art, artistic freedom and aesthetic autonomy that have been shaped by Western European modernity. As the thesis argues, there has been a close interconnection between art and life, between art and society, since antiquity.

The aim is to make this pre-modern, ‘different’ aesthetics known to a wider audience. The examination of pre-modern aesthetic phenomena opens up new perspectives for aesthetic practice and discourse of the present day.

Date: Summer 2025, Monday 6–8 p.m.
Location: Kupferbau, HS 25
Organization: Prof. Dr. Jörg Robert

Downloads: Programm

First funding phase

Aesthetic Turn – Perspectives of a ‘different’ Aesthetics in the Pre-modern Period

Aesthetics is back! For some time, the aesthetic turn has been a widespread topic of discussion – Tübingen included. Since summer 2019, the newly established Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1391 Different Aesthetics has been putting forward new views on an ‘aesthetics before aesthetics’, meaning before the classic philosophical aesthetics of the 18th century. As our CRC claims, aesthetics is much older than Baumgarten’s Aesthetica (1750) and idealistic art theory (Kant, Schiller, Hegel). For as early as the pre-modern age, in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, there is an intense and manifold reflection on forms and functions of art. Rather than finding expression solely in theoretical treatises, this reflection most prominently manifests itself in literary texts, images, objects and aesthetic acts themselves. Long before 1800, fundamental questions were raised which are also relevant for the current debates on art in public space: What is art? Where does it begin and what purpose does it serve? How do texts, images, and also objects or spaces of everyday life become ‘figures of aesthetic reflection’, i.e. media in which forms and functions of art are reflected? What do we mean when we talk about aesthetics or the aesthetical? How can the multitude of historical phenomena be described and put into a logical order? In pursuing these questions, the CRC opts for a historically broad and interdisciplinary approach. In total, 16 disciplines are involved (grouped into 17 individual research projects), ranging from archaeology to art history, musicology, classical philology, modern languages, history and theology.
The aim of the lecture series is to make the ‘different aesthetics’ of the pre-modern period known to a wider public. It will show that current debates on aesthetics, albeit often unconsciously, go beyond classical aesthetics and draw on the manifold aesthetic practices, manifestations and concepts of the pre-modern age. A panel discussion at the end of the lecture series with representatives of the art and literary scene will further deliberate the contemporary relevance of pre-modern aesthetics.