Contemporary Culture and Aesthetic Education

My focus is on the importance of an education of our senses and body through sensorial elements in order to improve our sense of situations and faculty of judgement. This was the key focus of aesthetics in its classical form from antiquity until it declines from the aesthetic agenda during the 19th century, a focus we on aesthetic education and communication. Important were arts and letters which still are important but very much on the defensive in our contemporary culture also because aesthetics often is a debate about criticism rather than about the sensorial and bodily aspect of cultural products. We can learn from the early generations within aesthetics not least from Kant when we keep in mind that his investigation of the aesthetic judgement is for the sake of judgement as such, thus for our ability to chose the right conduct of behaviour. The aesthetic judgement is a judgement about our relation to a specific cultural context, and our acquisition of it comes from being acquainted with cultural products. Aesthetics is thus closely related to hermeneutics, to how we interpret specific situations we find ourselves in.

Key words: education, sensorial, judgement, hermeneutics, Kant