Rosario Assunto

Rosario Assunto (born March 28, 1915 in Caltanissetta ( Sicily ), † January 24, 1994 in Rome ) was an Italian philosopher , art theorist and landscape aesthet.

Rosario Assunto

Life

Assunto received his doctorate in law in 1938 and studied philosophy from 1944 to 1951 under the “critical ontologist ” and Kant specialist Pantaleo Carabellese (1877–1948) at the University of La Sapienza . He became an assistant at Carabellese and, after his death in 1948, with Luigi Scaravelli (1894–1957). In 1955 he became a private lecturer and from 1968 to 1980 he was professor of aesthetics at the University of Urbino . In 1981 he moved to Rome, where he taught as a professor of the history of Italian philosophy. As an elitist individualist, he was far removed from the movimento del Sessantotto (the Italian movement of 1968) and withdrew from public discussion since the 1970s. The increasing dominance of language and sign theory approaches in philosophy also contributed to this, which made Assunto's positions seem out of date.

Assunto had numerous contacts with avant-garde artists. He was married to the art historian Wanda Gaeta, who died early.

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Assunto dealt intensively with ancient, medieval and neoclassical theories of the beautiful. In Germany he was best known for The Theory of the Beautiful in the Middle Ages (1963, 1982), in which he systematically explains the basic concepts of medieval theories about the beautiful using quotations from their most important representatives since Augustine . It shows that the concept of aesthetics, as it was introduced by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten in 1750, can at best be applied metaphorically to medieval theories of art. Medieval philosophy understands painting and sculpture as a purely mechanical craft that serves to adapt matter to form, which has always been present in the artist's mind. In this way they contribute to the daily visualization of the idea of ​​the beautiful. Beauty is always an instrument of moral instruction; it is supposed to evoke emotions that influence lifestyle. This function of art gradually disappears, beginning with the Florentine Trecento . Parallel to the spread of nominalistic positions in the scholastic discourse, what is beautiful in art is subsequently determined more and more subjectively - culminating in humanism and neoclassicism. The work of art as such only means itself, it becomes a purely aesthetic sign of itself and detaches itself from ritual action and myth.

Since the Romantic era (only interrupted by the epoch of realism and naturalism), according to Assunto, works of art and literature have again become carriers of meaning, similar to the Middle Ages: They represent archetypes or myths , but now in secular garb. As for Dante (from the theological point of view) and Sigmund Freud or Herbert Marcuse (from the psychotherapeutic point of view) they have an anagogical function; they are more than “signs without the world”, not just “ornament, cultural sublimation or private pastime”, rather they embody supernatural “symbolism”. For Marcuse, art frees people from the principle of performance; for Thomas Mann , it combines individual consciousness with general consciousness, with myth.

Assunto distinguishes between vertical (anagogical) and horizontal significance. Vertical is the exploration of the past and the depths of the soul that gives meaning to the present. The reference to other parts of the world, to the polis , social life and institutions is horizontally (socially or historically) significant . Examples of this are the art and literature of Surrealism , which seeks to change the world, or the works of Bertolt Brecht or Luigi Pirandellos , the Italian film of neorealism , but also literature that refers to philosophical questions and thus beyond itself.

In Il paesaggio e l'estetica (1973) Assunto shows that humans not only look for and create their own landscape, not only in reality, but also spiritually . In several works he also developed a theory of the garden . He was influenced by the German romantic view of nature. In Ipotesi e postille sull'estetica medioevale (1975) he deals with Dante's poetry. Intervengono i personaggi (col permesso degli autori) (1977) is a collection of satirical-philosophical narratives.

Honors

• Premio Internazionale Carlo Scarpa per il Giardino of the Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche (1991)

Works

• L'educazione estetica , Milano, Viola, 1950.
• Educazione pubblica e privata , Milano, Viola, 1950.
• La pedagogia greca , Milano, Viola, 1952.
• Forma e destino , Milano, Edizioni di comunità, 1957.
• L'integrazione estetica. Studi e ricerche , Milano, Edizioni di comunità, 1959.
• Teoremi e problemi di estetica contemporanea. Con una premessa kantiana , Milano, Feltrinelli, 1960.
• La critica d'arte nel pensiero medioevale , Milano, Il saggiatore, 1961.
• Estetica dell'identità. Lettura della Filosofia dell'arte di Schelling , Urbino, STEU, 1962.
• Giudizio estetico, critica e censura. Meditazioni e indagini , Firenze, La nuova Italia, 1963.
• The theory of the beautiful in the Middle Ages , Cologne, DuMont, 1963, new edition 1982.
• Stagioni e ragioni nell'estetica del Settecento , Milano, Mursia, 1967.
• L'automobile di Mallarmé e altri ragionamenti intorno alla vocazione odierna delle arti , Roma, Ateneo, 1968.
• L'estetica di Immanuel Kant , una antologia dagli scritti a cura di, Torino, Loescher, 1971.
• Hegel nostro contemporaneo , with Raffaello Franchini and Mario Pensa, Roma, Unione italiana per il progresso della cultura, 1971.
• Il paesaggio e l'estetica , I: Natura e storia , II: Arte, critica e filosofia , Napoli, Giannini, 1973.
• L'antichità come futuro. Studio sull'estetica del neoclassicismo europeo , Milano, Mursia, 1973.
• Ipotesi e postille sull'estetica medioevale. Con alcuni rilievi su Dante teorizzatore della poesia , Milano, Marzorati, 1975.
• Libertà e fondazione estetica. Quattro studi filosofici , Roma, Bulzoni, 1975.
• Intervengono i personaggi (col permesso degli autori) , Napoli, Società editrice napoletana, 1977 (new edition Turin 2019).
• Specchio vivente del mondo. Artisti stranieri in Roma, 1600–1800 , Roma, De Luca, 1978.
• Alfred Hohenegger. Esploratore del possibile , with Gustav René Hocke and Elio Mercuri, Roma, De Luca, 1979.
• Infinita contemplazione. Gusto e filosofia dell'Europa barocca , Napoli, Società editrice napoletana, 1979.
• Filosofia del giardino e filosofia nel giardino. Saggi di teoria e storia dell'estetica , Roma, Bulzoni, 1981.
• Theory of literature among writers of the 20th century , Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1982.
• La città di Anfione e la città di Prometeo. Idea e poetiche della città , Milano, Jaca book, 1984.
• La parola anteriore come parola ulteriore , Bologna, il Mulino, 1984. ISBN 88-15-00645-1 .
• Il parterre ei ghiacciai. Tre saggi di estetica sul paesaggio del Settecento , Palermo, Novecento, 1984.
• Verità e bellezza nelle estetiche e nelle poetiche dell'Italia neoclassica e primoromantica , Roma, Quasar, 1984.
• with Margherita Azzi Visentini, Italo Zannier (ed.): Il giardino veneto. Storia e conservazione , Venice 1988.
• Ontologia e teleologia del giardino , Milano, Guerini, 1988.
• Leopardi e la nuova Atlantide , Napoli, Istituto Suor Orsola Benincasa-Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1988.
• La natura, le arti, la storia. Esercizi di estetica , Milano, Guerini studio, 1990.
• Giardini e rimpatrio. Un itinerario ricco di fascino attraverso le ville di Roma, in compagnia di Winckelmann, di Stendhal, dei Nazareni, di D'Annunzio , Roma, Newton Compton, 1991.
• La bellezza come assoluto, l'assoluto come bellezza. Tre conversazioni a due o più voci , Palermo, Novecento, 1993.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biographical note of the publisher in: Assunto: The theory of the beautiful in the Middle Ages. Cologne 1982.
2. ↑ Paolo Nicita: Assunto scandaloso esteta , in: La Repubblica , May 13, 2006.
3. ^ Herbert Marcuse: Drive structure and society. Frankfurt 1965.
4. ↑ Assunto, Theory of Literature , 1975, pp. 16 ff, 78 f.
5. ↑ Assunto, Theory of Literature , 1975, pp. 20 ff., 113 ff.