Kant and Leroi-Gourhan: remapping aesthetics in the context of cosmopolitanization

Abstract

This article will try to reconfigure the aesthetical dimension of cosmopolitanism within global and interconnected experience. Starting its analysis from Kant, it will show that for the German philosopher cosmopolitanism was closely patterned on an interdependence of technical civilization and aesthetics, which would initiate a cosmopolitan matrix for the development of human faculties. The essay relates this interdependence to the theories of André Leroi-Gourhan that pose a serious challenge to Kant’s views about human progress and evolution. In this framework, aesthetics and sensoriality turn out to be of vital importance for the subjective integration into technological and interconnected experience, where a constant negotiation between Kant’s ‘disinterested’ aesthetics and Leroi-Gourhan’s ‘functional’ aesthetics is involved. It is with the help of this negotiation, this article will argue, that an ‘aesthetic cosmopolitanization’ – a bottom-up process of promoting cosmopolitan sensibilities – could be inscribed into digital media and global experience.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Konstantinos Koukouzelis from the University of Crete for reading and commenting an early draft of this essay.