The International Centre for the Study of Aesthetics commemorated the 5th anniversary of the death of the renowned Italian scholar of Aesthetics Guido Morpurgo-Tagliabue (1907-1997) by publishing a collection of his essays on the notion of taste in 18th-century Italy and Great Britain. The collection is entitled Taste in 18th-Century Aesthetics (Aesthetica Preprint: Supplementa, 11, 2002, 256 pp.). The remarkable importance of this volume, which represents a very significant contribution to the history of the notion of taste in 18th-century Europe, inspired the organization of an international convention on Guido Morpurgo-Tagliabue and 18th-century aesthetics. The convention took place in Palermo (Italy) on November 1-2, 2002.
The present volume collects lectures and papers presented at that convention. The editor, Luigi Russo, opens the volume with an essay ("A Martian in Aesthetics") that provides an interesting description of Guido Morpurgo-Tagliabue and illustrates the relevance of his scholarship in the historiography of Aesthetics of the second half of the 20th century. The other essays included in the volume (i.e., Giuseppe Sertoli, "Morpurgo-Tagliabue and 18th-Century English Aesthetics"; Andrea Gatti, "Aporia and Dialectic of Taste"; Paolo D'Angelo, "Morpurgo-Tagliabue and the Aesthetic of Taste in 18th-Century Italy"; Salvatore Tedesco, "Morpurgo-Tagliabue and Italian Aesthetics in the Early 18th Century"; Roberto Diodato, "The Judgement of Taste. Essay on Morpurgo-Tagliabue's Thought"; Giovanni Matteucci, "Implications of the Relationship between Taste and Judgement in Morpurgo-Tagliabue's Work"; Giuseppe Di Giacomo, "The Notion of Family, Class, and the Individual in Morpurgo-Tagliabue's Reflection on Aesthetics") foreground specific aspects of Morpurgo-Tagliabue's scholarship that are considered to be particularly meaningful from both a historiographic and a theoretical point of view.
The Appendix features the lecture given by Baldine Saint Girons ("Guido Morpurgo-Tagliabue: le sublime et l'esthétique du pràttein") during the ceremony when Saint Girons' volume, Fiat lux. Une philosophie du sublime, was awarded the "Guido Morpurgo-Tagliabue Prize". The Italian Society of Aesthetics awarded that prize in Palermo, on November 2, 2002, at the end of the afore-mentioned International Convention on Guido Morpurgo-Tagliabue.