Zagreb, December 14-15, 2017
The Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb, organizes the international conference „What is Beauty?“. The conference will take place at the Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb, Croatia, on December 14-15th 2017. We would like to explore as many aspects as possible of the concept of „beauty“, both from a theoretical and a historical perspective. On the one side, the question of beauty is strongly connected to the realm of art and the production of artworks. In this sense, beside the general questions “What is beauty in art?”, “What makes an artwork beautiful?”, and “When did beauty become an attribute of art?”, we expect to address philosophical problems such as the relation of beauty and the beautiful to other aesthetic properties, to form and content in artworks, to different kinds of art forms, to aesthetic perception, cognition and experience and similar related matters. Subjective and objective aspects of beauty also deserve attention, and so does the problem of the beauty of nature and natural objects and of ordinary objects and events. On the other side, the nature and role of beauty is currently at the center of a large debate that involves – among others – biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers of biology and scholars in evolutionary aesthetics: Are our aesthetic preferences and attitudes also the product of evolution? Can this problem be understood within a nature/culture dichotomy? Is what Charles Darwin and others used to call sense of beauty confined to humans? What is the role played by the mind-body-brain system in aesthetic experiences? What is the role of emotion and cognition in such experiences? Finally, what are the most common ideas, theories, images and philosophical assumptions concerning “beauty” and “aesthetic experience” that sustain such discussions? And what is their history? Contributions from scholars of different fields that will address these and similar questions will also be welcomed.
If you find these topics among those in which you are interested and if you wish to present a paper, please submit an abstract, approximately, but no longer than 700 words to the e-mail address: beauty2017@ifzg.hr Deadline for submitting abstracts is July 1, 2017. We shall notify authors about the acceptance by July 15th, 2017. There will be 40 minitues for the presentation (we suggest, but not require, 20-30 minutes for the presentation and 20-10 minitues for discussion). Languages of the conference will be Croatian, English, and German. There is no conference fee.
For the accomodation in Zagreb, please see www.zagreb-touristinfo.hr
We are not able to cover travel and accomodation expenses.