Appelqvist, Hanne

Helsingin yliopiston digitaalinen arkisto

EDITORIALSince its relaunch as an international journal of aesthetics in 2008, Estetika hasgrown into one of the central forums for work on aesthetics and philosophy ofart, seeking to cross the traditional boundaries between Anglo-American andcentral European traditions of thought. A particularly important period in the development of Estetika into its current form was when Fabian Dorsch wasEditor-in-Chief from 2012 until his unexpected and untimely death in 2017. UnderFabian’s leadership, Estetika started publishing articles exclusively in English,adopted the triple-blind peer-review process, and fostered a close relationshipwith the European Society for Aesthetics – a society whose very formation oweda lot to Fabian’s initiative. It has been an honour for me to assume the duties ofEditor-in-Chief of Estetika from Zoltán Papp, who led the journal in the interimsince 2017. I feel extremely lucky to be able to begin my work with the original,experienced, and dedicated editorial committee of Estetika. We are pleased to paytribute to Fabian’s work in this first issue of 2019 by publishing the winning essayof the Fabian Dorsch European Society for Aesthetics Essay Prize, ‘Tales of Dread’by Mark Windsor.Estetika strives to be a generalist journal in the field of philosophical aesthetics.Our ambition is to build bridges not only between anglophone and Continentaltraditions of thought but also between historical and contemporary views,between aesthetics and other fields of academic research, and indeed betweenaesthetics and other areas of philosophy. For aesthetics does not have to be the untidy ‘stepsister’ in the house of philosophy, unable or unwilling to ‘makeherself generally useful around the house’, as Monroe Beardsley suggested in hisAesthetics. In fact, the contributions published in this issue testify to the opposite. The issue opens with an interdisciplinary dialogue between Peter Lamarqueand Nigel Walter on the conservation of historic buildings and whether thesecould be understood as ‘ongoing communal narratives’. The dialogue provides aninteresting exchange on the benefits and potential dangers of appealing tonarrative in the context of architectural conservation, highlighting the diﬀerencesof emphasis within the disciplines of philosophy and architecture respectively.Another perspective on the construction of stories, albeit one formulated byreference to fiction, is given by Patrik Engisch’s article ‘Patchwork Puzzles and the Nature of Fiction’. Focusing on the composition of and the reader’sengagement with fiction, the article sets out to dissolve the tension KathleenStock has identified in Gregory Currie’s account. The dialogue between Lamarque and Walter also provides an opportunity toreflect on the practice of philosophy itself by reference to the notion ofKen WilderEstetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics, LVI/XII, 2019, No. 1, 3–4 3Zlom1_2019_Sestava 1  5.4.19  8:01  Stránka 3conservation. Could the church that ‘wishes to remove pews to accommodategreater liturgical flexibility or additional communal uses’, to borrow Walter’sexample, be compared to Beardsley’s ‘house of philosophy’ that may wish to getrid of Kant’s transcendental method of philosophy and still sustain the key insightsof Kant’s account of pure judgements of taste? The book symposium Is PsychologyRelevant to Aesthetics?, discussing Bence Nanay’s and Murray Smith’s recentmonographs on the interface between aesthetics and psychology, relates to thisvery question. For as noted by Elisabeth Schellekens and as acknowledged by Nanay himself, Nanay’s account of aesthetic experience emerging from the contemporary study of perception has noticeable aﬃnities with Kant’sposition in spite of obviously rejecting the Kantian conception of philosophy asmethodologically distinct from the empirical sciences. The views presented by Nanay, Smith, and Sherri Irvin underscore the promisethat work in psychology and neuroscience holds for aesthetics. Schellekens, whilesympathetic to the overall project, worries whether the naturalized approach cancount for aesthetic value and aesthetic normativity in general. Nanay’s response,that aesthetics is as closely related to metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophyof mind as it is to value theory, is a point that cannot be emphasized enough. Yetone may ask whether the question of normativity does not arise in epistemologyas well. For Kant it certainly did. Mojca Kuplen’s article ‘Cognitive Interpretationof Kant’s Theory of Aesthetic Ideas’ approaches the relationship betweenaesthetics and cognition from the opposite direction by bringing Kant’s historicalnotion of aesthetic ideas to bear on the question of grasping abstract concepts.In doing so, the article also casts light on the normative question at the centre ofKant’s epistemology: how is it possible to combine sensible content with a generalconcept, which Kant takes to be necessary for cognition?  On behalf of the editorial committee and myself, I thank the authors for theircontributions as well as the scholars who have contributed by serving as referees.We trust that this issue of Estetika will provide our readers with interesting andstimulating reading. Hanne AppelqvistEditor-in-Chiefhanne.appelqvist@helsinki.fiEditorial4 Estetika: the Central European Journal of Aesthetics, LV/XI, 2018, No. 2, 00–00Zlom1_2019_Sestava 1  5.4.19  8:01  Stránka 4

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Helsingin yliopiston digitaalinen arkisto