Before I go deep on Aristotle, I figured I'd mention something I've been thinking about lately, which is aesthetics. Following up on some research I've been doing into the music of J.S. Bach for my "Meditations on Bach" project, I recently read a book about the founders of modern aesthetics during the German Enlightenment (Christian Wolff, Alexander Baumgarten, etc.). It turns out that these early thinkers saw aesthetics as a practical discipline; unlike post-Kantian philosophers of art who are interested in purely theoretical questions or, at best, epistemological justification of critical judgment, the originators of aesthetics wanted to spell out principles that would guide artists in the task of bringing more beauty into the world. Immediately I perceived parallels to philosophy as the personal love and practice of wisdom. Consulting my ancient Greek dictionary, I discovered the word φιλοκαλία / philokalia, which I would describe as the personal love and practice of beauty. This is a fascinating topic that I've sketched out in slightly more detail in a work-in-progress essay (I even subtitled it a "manifesto"), but I won't have time to dig into it much further until I complete my Aristotle book. So many projects, so little time...
(Cross-posted at philosopher.coach.)
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