Background
Luigi Pareyson was born on 4 February 1918, in Piasco, in the province of Cuneo.
philosopher politician art historian university professor
Luigi Pareyson was born on 4 February 1918, in Piasco, in the province of Cuneo.
University of Turin.
He received his doctorate from the University of Turin in 1939, finishing his degree with a dissertation entitled "Karl Jaspers and the Philosophy of Existence." As a professor at the University of Turin, he had many famous students, including Mario Perniola, Gianni Vattimo, and Umberto Eco. He died in Rapallo, in the province of Genoa, on 18 September 1991.
Pareyson is best known in Italy and abroad as a philosopher of aesthetics. The central concept in his aesthetics is that of‘formativity’, which he defines as ‘a way of making such that, while one makes, one invents the way of making’. Pareyson considers formativity to be a distinctive feature in all human activity a feature which testifies to, and is a product of, the freedom and autonomy of the person. In the case of art, however, formativity is engaged in for its own sake rather than instrumentally: art, thus, is ‘pure formativity’. Pareyson avoids aesthetic formalism by arguing that the artist’s ‘way of making’, his mode of formativity, is a kind of transformation of his personality, so that content, which expresses and reflects the personality, is also an aspect of form. Pareyson’s work on aesthetics was always well received, and his reputation is still high. Sources: Dizionario dei Filosof dei Novecento; Enciclopedia Filosofea; Dizionario generale degli autori italiani contemporanei.
Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.