Aesthetic geometries of life

Abstract

ABSTRACTAesthetics in the Ethics examines life which is composed of powers of relation. Human and other beings, whether they identify as human or an other form of life, are expressed through the entity’s powers of existence. Spinoza’s thinking is located historically before the formal philosophical science of aesthetics, as well as our contemporary understanding that aesthetic self-determination is a mode of ‘care’. However, this article suggests that the Ethics provides a fascinating early-modern example of these powers. In the second part of the article, I show that they are also questions central to the work of the architect, Buckminster Fuller, and artist, Agnes Denes. Their designs and art-works, especially their planetary maps, highlight how Spinoza’s aesthetics corresponds with modern visualisations of life and non-life, for the individual, society, and also at a planetary scale.