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Abstract
For millennia, aesthetic activities were expected to improve the world and ourselves. Aesthetics was to hone humanity. We find this conviction in Antiquity, in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, and throughout Modern Times and Modernity, from Plato via Leonardo da Vinci and Schiller to Dewey and Rorty. But this expectation is being harshly falsified in the present time. We are indeed aestheticizing everything through and through. But in the vast majority of cases, the result is not aesthetic improvement but mediocrity and monotony. Aestheticization today is an engine of misery. The discipline of aesthetics should resolutely criticize and counter this perversion. – How can this be done?