Intercultural Aesthetics: A Worldview Perspective is the ninth volume of a series of publications collected under the title “Einstein meets Magritte: An Interdisciplinary Reflection on Science, Nature, Art, Human Action and Society” edited by the Leo Apostel Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of Brussels Free University (Belgium). It contains thirteen articles written by a number of specialists in the field of aesthetics, all of which attempt to expand their views by crossing cultural barriers.
As part of a series of publications focusing on the human construction of worldviews, the philosophical relevance of this volume exceeds the limits of purely aesthetic theory. And it does so thanks to its intercultural approach. Indeed, in a world where we increasingly begin words with prefixes such as multi-, trans-, poly-, cross- and inter-, the field of aesthetics could not stay behind. Beyond that, however, the intercultural vantage point adopted by this volume enables the field of aesthetics to exceed the limits of its own discipline. The majority of contributors indeed emphasize that a cross-fertilization between Western and Eastern views (such as Japanese, Chinese and Indian) in particular – but also African perspectives (cf. Heinz Kimmerle’s contribution) – can elevate aesthetics to a discipline dealing with the encounter of human beings with the world as a whole, rather than with the reception of works of art solely. “Aestheticism” then would cease to be bound up with “high” culture and art would be regarded as intermingled with life.
This broad definition of what is to be called “aesthetic” is, as it happens, fairly foreign to traditional Western modes of both aesthetic and philosophical thought. The Eastern estrangement from our spontaneously adopted Western views, then, has a demythologizing power, and opens up new horizons for our thinking about both the sphere of art and our construction of being in the world. In challenging Western modes of worldview construction (including the place assigned to art within it), the different contributions to this book seek to create a picture of the world enhanced by new perspectives. As such, the volume engages in an endeavor which has been at the heart of philosophical – and especially hermeneutical – efforts throughout the ages. Aesthetics then turns into philosophy, into a consideration of the human experience of the world and its mental construction of it. Such an aesthetic approach to the world, common in Eastern lines of thought, is present throughout the volume. It brings us to reconsider a number of traits common to traditional Western philosophy.