Comparative Aesthetics: A Comparison between Cultures and Arts

Abstract

There are essentially two main comparative models in aesthetics: the one refers to the structure of thought, civilization, and culture in a complex comparison between great traditions from east to west, and from north to south; the other concerns the multifarious forms of art, its objects and results, and the different implications of sensibility in reception. On the one hand, a reflection, or an intercultural analysis is posed, on the other, an exploration into the exchange and correspondence between the arts, the media and the senses is highlighted. All this also entails an interplay of movement towards the loci of being, sometimes approaching mythology and the sacred, sometimes linked to the new technologies of communication. These two models are not rigidly fixed; rather than models, they are maps of theoretical paths, comparisons and aesthetic experiences having different objects can be integrated. In the face of these events that mark a global aesthetic civilization, as they now involve the whole planet, it is necessary for research to be characterized by a mobile, flexible spirit capable of focusing on difference, particularity and heterogeneity without abandoning more general synthetic designs which are no longer dogmatically regulative. This does not diminish the value of aesthetics as a discipline, but forces in to renew its canons.