November 8th to 11th, 2004

1st DAY - Monday - November 8th, 2004 - 7 p.m.
1st Session
2nd Lecture

On a Pragmatic Meaning of the Esthetical Experience
Prof. Dr. Ivo Assad Ibri
Department of Philosophy - Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil

[Abstract]
Pragmatism has been understood as a signification principle of philosophical doctrines and theories. Thus, it has sought to conciliate reason and experience along the trail defended by Kant's philosophy, despite differing from the latter in the sense that it is inserted in a distinctly realist philosophy, such as Charles Peirce's. In a pragmatic understanding of conduct as the external side of thought that feeds on a semiotic interlacing with experience, the meaning of the maxim of Pragmatism has been confined to a strictly epistemological domain, notwithstanding the fact that the reciprocal commitment between conduct and concept imposed by the maxim inserts it in an ethical domain.
However, whilst experience, under its nature of alterity, is conducive to the legitimization of concepts, would it be fitting to ask whether, when it is divested of such nature, typifying what Peirce calls the experience of firstness, or what we would here call an experience of an esthetic nature, could one attribute to experience a pragmatic meaning? In other words, can esthetic experience affect conduct? If the answer is yes, how will such affection occur? In this paper we shall endeavor to reflect on this question.

Center for Pragmatism Studies
Philosophy Graduate Program
Departament of Philosophy
Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo - Brazil