The present volume collects the papers that were presented at a seminar dedicated to Wilhelm Dilthey's reflections on aesthetics. The seminar, which was organized by the International Center for the Study of Aesthetics, took place in Palermo on May 9, 2001.
Approaching poetry as an experience is the shared point of departure of all the essays, which then analyze a variety of issues that foreground the problematic modernity of Dilthey's reflection on aesthetics. Dilthey, in fact, maintains that poetry and art do not constitute an isolated realm of the spirit, but rather that they give shape to the potential horizons of meaning that unsettle experience at its profound level. This contention turns aesthetic reflection into a far from ancillary form of philosophic thought.
The essays collected in this volume examine Dilthey's theoretic approach both in relation to the evolution and the overall context of his thought (e. g., the essays by Bianco and Matteucci), as well as in relation to the developments and the critiques that Dilthey's work has stimulated in the fields of German philosophy of the Weimar period (e. g., the essay by Matassi).
The volume includes also the first Italian translation of an early essay by Dilthey (Hölderlin und die Ursachen seines Wahnsinnes ) which is emblematic of how the so-called Erlebnisaeshetik approaches the experience of poetry.