Abstract

As is well known, Luigi Pareyson’s long confrontation with aesthetics mainly concerns the first phase of his work even if Pareyson never abandoned art as the object of his theoretical reflections. If the parabola of Pareyson’s thought within aesthetics were to be traced, it could be defined, though with a certain degree of uncertainty, as the passage from the hermeneutics of art to the hermeneutics of myth. In Aesthetics. Theory of Formativity Pareyson proposes a conception that is well outside of the classic structure of the philosophy of art, perceiving a close link between aesthetics and hermeneutics. In this book Pareyson develops a dynamic idea of form which allows him to articulate a critical comparison with Croce. By refusing the idea of immediate identity, not as a process of the relationship intuition/expression, he takes the step that makes it possible to come into contact with contemporary art. On the basis of this approach, Pareyson grasps the indeterminateness of form, which anticipates the idea of an «open work» later developed by Umberto Eco.