Project Title: The Aesthetics of Knowledge: Theoretical Underpinnings and Ethical Implications

Funder: UniCA Starting Grant 2025

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.36329.76640

Funding total: 97.500 €

Project Description:

Aesthetic considerations guide our everyday lives in ways that are widespread and yet still poorly understood. The study of aesthetics has traditionally focused on the study of phenomena that are intrinsically valuable or worthy of disinterested appreciation. For instance, philosophers, and scientists more recently, have studied our appreciation of various art forms or of strikingly affecting natural objects and events. One of the problems with such a focus is that it limits the range of phenomena that are considered aesthetically interesting to those that have little relevance outside the aesthetic. Another problem is that attempts to give a satisfactory account of an alleged disinterested or distinctly aesthetic appreciation have notoriously had limited success.

By contrast, our search for knowledge is typically understood to be a central component of the business of human life. Indeed, the role of knowledge is so important that most existing analyses of knowledge have aimed to insulate its pursuit as much as possible from external interference by non-epistemic factors. More recently, however, there has been greater awareness of the importance of studying the non-ideal conditions in which humans typically pursue knowledge in real-life contexts, thus emphasizing social and non-ideal aspects of our pursuit of knowledge. What has largely been missing from such conversations, however, is a study of the aesthetic aspects of our pursuit of knowledge in real-life and non-ideal contexts. Our project aims to fill this gap by bringing centuries of investigations into aesthetic phenomena to bear on the central topic of our epistemic practices.

Our research will build on the work of recent philosophers and scientists who have started to devote their attention to the interplay between aesthetic and epistemic values. In turn, such investigations have an older history in the debates on the epistemic value of art. However, our project will have a broader scope by investigating not only phenomena typically subject to detached or disinterested contemplation, but also by shifting the main focus to the reverse direction of the relationship between these considerations. Whereas most previous attention has centred on how epistemic considerations influence aesthetic considerations, our research foregrounds the question of how the aesthetic may in turn shape the epistemic.