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The Play-Drive and the Cosmic Child

Starting from the concept of a “play-drive” as introduced by Friedrich Schiller in his Letters on Aesthetic Education, the present study explores this concept at the interface of the crossroads between philosophy, anthropology, and aesthetics. In order to grasp what may be called the “space” of these phenomena, reflection must engage the relationship between Ancients and Moderns as well, to show that the figure of “the child” in Nietzsche and Heraclitus is apt to give its full dimension to Schiller’s theory of “play” as the consummation of humanity.

Cézanne: From what is inscribed to what is induced

In this paper four conceptual trilogies are discussed as defining Cézanne’s contribution (Picasso called him “the father of all of us”) to modern art: i) the three aspects of the art work: what is seen, what is felt, what is painted, i.e., the three terms that according to Cézanne must correspond; ii) the three registers on which, also according to Cézanne, aesthetics should be established: sense, forms and forces; iii) the three operations by which we are moved and that sustain our art works: antagonism, homology and substitution; and iv) the three changes Cézanne realised: the inversion of space, the inversion of the Gestalt and the fusion of internal and external spaces.