Tra le parole e le cose

Maurizio Ferraris’ program of philosophical research can be summarized, as he wrote, in three stages: aesthetics as a theory of sensibility, natural ontology as a theory of unamendability and social ontology as a theory of documentality (cf. Ferraris 2012a: x-xi). Among these, the first stage of his philosophy has affected my studies in a particular way. This phase involves some of the main theses of his positive philosophy that, in my opinion, can also be developed as part of the research on contemporary arts. In order to show this, the text is organized as follows. In the first two paragraphs, I will reflect on the conception of aesthetics as a theory of sensibility and on some of the main theoretical cores of his positive philosophy. The three following paragraphs aim to raise some questions concerning the delicate relationship between aesthetics and art, considering both the nature of the former and the relentless evolutions of the latter. The two final paragraphs offer the fundamentals of a proposal that I think could be formulated keeping as reference two lessons learned from Ferraris’ positive philosophy