Il sublime delle stenelle. Riflessioni sull’estetica del whalewatching

Abstract

ABSTRACT The present article applies some classical categories developed by the early modern tradition of philosophical aesthetics to an area of inquiry that has only recently been studied extensively by contemporary aesthetics. Here I propose to consider the practice of whalewatching as an aesthetic practice, having its specific aesthetic features and peculiarities. To do so, I will cross three very different traditions: the early modern tradition represented by the theorists of the Sublime as an aesthetic category of relevance, developed by many authors in the XVIII century and here presented via the reconstruction of Remo Bodei, the pragmatist, experience-centered aesthetics of John Dewey and the more contemporary, mostly Anglo-American, studies on animal aesthetics as a distinct topic. The discussion of the traditions mentioned is aimed at providing a theoretical framework not only valuable for an analysis of the aesthetic nature of the practice of whalewatching, but also to propose a new category of aesthetic experience, that I call here animal sublime.