Poetic destroyers. Vico, Emerson and the aesthetic dimension of experiencing

Abstract

The aesthetic dimension of meaning-making in human conduct has been often overlooked. In this article, “aesthetic” refers to an immediate form of experiencing in which affective, ethical and cognitive dimensions are experienced as a totality, rather than a more restrictive meaning of artistic experience. The philosopher Giambattista Vico (1670–1744) developed the concept of “poetic logic,” that is a specific mode of thought typical of early stages of civilization. Poetic logic is the first form of collective elaboration of experience, a way of creating universals concepts based on sensory, affective sense-making and religious thinking. Vico claims that poetic logic was the cornerstone for the elaboration of whole systems of collective knowledge (poetic economy, science, geography, history, law, etc.) crystallized in myths. Poetic logic, based on imaginative function is a proper epistemological stance that, though overcome by rationality at a later stage of civilization, still plays an important function in keeping alive the ethical dimensions of collective life against the “barbarism of reflection.” Two centuries later, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), one of the fathers of Pragmatism, developed an idea of poetic and imagination as forms of knowledge. Though echoing Vico’s ideas, he represents the aggressiveness of modernity. From the discussion of their ideas, I will try to sketch the psychological aspects of the aesthetic dimension of experience that can be found in a wide range of human activities, including actions of killing, overpowering and social injustice. I will try to argue that meaning-making is oriented through processes that affect such aesthetic dimension.