Le origini di Homo e le origini dell'esperienza estetica

This article explores the possibility of conceiving of the origins of aesthetic experience as a major evolutionary discontinuity directly correlated with anthropogenesis. After a brief examination of some traces of primitive art, and taking into account some relevant ideas by Aristotle, Alberti, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty, Plessner, and Gerald Edelman, the author discusses the conditions under which “sensation” (aisthetis) could become a complex “experience”, byevoking the image of, or referring to, absent objects.