Organisation profile

Besides love, hope and companionship, aesthetic pleasures are what makes life existentially worthwhile. These pleasures comprise the experience of beauty, coziness (“hygge”), excitement, grace, ambiguity, et cetera. Members of the research group et (&) have a shared interest in studying the dynamic intersections between aesthetics & experiences with the purpose of disseminating this knowledge to other research fields, students, and society.

et (&) works on the assumption that aesthetics has seminal significance socially as well as existentially. The social significance of aesthetics is demonstrated by the massive aesthetization of everyday life in contemporary Western societies, which to a large extent are shaped by design, consumer goods, media exposure, market or political communication and other aesthetic practices. But on the other hand, aesthetics is often treated as a fringe phenomenon: i.e., as a mere ornament for aspects or issues that are deemed more valuable. Aesthetics seems economically, politically, but also academically insignificant. et (&) is motivated by this paradox: that the field of aesthetics is treated as important, yet unimportant (& vice versa).

et (&) thus strives for an aesthetic reveille and aims at defining a contemporary concept of Bildung, of (self-)formation aimed at tackling 21^st century challenges in existentially and socially responsible ways.