What is happening to aesthetics?

Abstract

In order to answer the question 'What is happening to aesthetics?' in the title of the article one has to decide what the problem of aesthetics consists in. The discipline is in a crisis, and sometimes its 'death' is announced and the rule of anti-aesthetics is proclaimed whereas the debate 'Aesthetics or anti-aesthetics?' ends up in a cognitive stalemate: aesthetics is tainted with the error of normativism and reductionism; and anti-aesthetics finishes in relativism. Hence a return is necessary to the classical philosophy (metaphysics) of art (Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas) that avoids errors of the aesthetic tradition and works out a universal and neutral criterion for evaluating purposefulness in art, and also does not interfere with the competence of humanities or of art criticism.