2013 Programme
EVENT #33
Umberto Curi
About beauty
Simone Weil once wrote that “whenever we reflect on beauty we come up against a wall. Whatever was written about it is lamentably and evidently inadequate”. Few other notions are as variable and subjective as the notion of beauty: what seems beautiful to us may seem ugly or unimpressive to someone else. That is what happens when we comment on a movie or a contemporary work of art. At the same time there are a few things – a child’s gaze, the color of a sunset – whose inherent beauty no-one would ever question. To some people, beauty is connected the individual taste; to others, beauty must fulfill certain criteria that can be objectively established. In an attempt to solve this conflict, Umberto Curi examines the ways in which beauty was conceived at the origins of the West’s cultural tradition.
is Emeritus Professor of History of Philosophy at the university of Padua and teaches at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan. He was visiting professor at the universities of Los Angeles and Boston, and he held lectures at many world universities Barcelona, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Lima, Madrid, Oslo, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Vancouver, Vienna. He contributes to the book supplement of Corriere della Sera. His books include: Miti d’amore. Filosofia dell’eros (Bompiani, 2009); Polemos. Filosofia come guerra (2000), La forza dello sguardo (2004), Meglio non essere nati. La condizione umana tra Eschilo e Nietzsche (2008, Premio Capalbio 2009 and Praemium Classicum Clavarense 2010), Imparare a morire (2011), all published by Bollati Boringhieri; Straniero (2010, Premio Frascati), Passione (2013) published by Raffaello Cortina Editore. His next book, L’apparire del bello, will be published this year by Bollati Boringhieri.
EVENT #18
Stefano Bartezzaghi, Massimo Recalcati
To inherit or to be creative? Art in the time of disoriented generations
