Challenging Urban Anesthetics: Beauty and Contradiction in Georg Simmel's Rome. With seven images and notes “in the meantime”
Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
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Challenging Urban Anesthetics : Beauty and Contradiction in Georg Simmel's Rome. With seven images and notes “in the meantime”. / Reeh, Henrik.
I: Journal of Somaesthetics, Bind 6, Nr. 1, 2020, s. 65-90.Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Challenging Urban Anesthetics
T2 - Beauty and Contradiction in Georg Simmel's Rome. With seven images and notes “in the meantime”
AU - Reeh, Henrik
N1 - With six digital photographs in color, taken by the author in Rome 2018, and commented on in the article.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Georg Simmel, philosopher and sociologist in the Berlin of 1900, repeatedly searched for a conception of anaesthesia – ”Blasiertheit” – capable of addressing a reality of consumption, money and metropolis. Given the generic presence of a blasé attitude in big cities, according to Simmel, one might expect the roles of aesthetics and sensory experience, let alone beauty, to be minimal or non-existent. This observation may indeed apply to Simmel’s everyday environments of modernity in Northern Europe, such as in his homecity Berlin. Yet modern subjects are on the move. So is Simmel during a prolonged stay in Rome 1898, a place (Urbs, in fact) which invites him to reconsider the relationship of city and beauty, as well as that of elements and totality. An anonymously published fragment by Simmel (1899) goes even further. Here, a particular experience of Rome reveals contrasts and fosters a principle of contradiction that may, in turn, leave room for aesthetic experience in modern urban culture. Following Simmel’s footsteps in Rome, 120 years after, one may explore the only site that Simmel names and comments on according to somaesthetic and urban-cultural guidelines. While many would expect spectacularizing tourism to have taken control, reality proves more complex. An urban lifeworld is at play and generates a surprised feeling of beauty in the foreign visitor who happens to re-visit this site, listening to children’s voices and sensing their playful movements there as contributions to a somaesthetically informed experience of beauty and city alike.
AB - Georg Simmel, philosopher and sociologist in the Berlin of 1900, repeatedly searched for a conception of anaesthesia – ”Blasiertheit” – capable of addressing a reality of consumption, money and metropolis. Given the generic presence of a blasé attitude in big cities, according to Simmel, one might expect the roles of aesthetics and sensory experience, let alone beauty, to be minimal or non-existent. This observation may indeed apply to Simmel’s everyday environments of modernity in Northern Europe, such as in his homecity Berlin. Yet modern subjects are on the move. So is Simmel during a prolonged stay in Rome 1898, a place (Urbs, in fact) which invites him to reconsider the relationship of city and beauty, as well as that of elements and totality. An anonymously published fragment by Simmel (1899) goes even further. Here, a particular experience of Rome reveals contrasts and fosters a principle of contradiction that may, in turn, leave room for aesthetic experience in modern urban culture. Following Simmel’s footsteps in Rome, 120 years after, one may explore the only site that Simmel names and comments on according to somaesthetic and urban-cultural guidelines. While many would expect spectacularizing tourism to have taken control, reality proves more complex. An urban lifeworld is at play and generates a surprised feeling of beauty in the foreign visitor who happens to re-visit this site, listening to children’s voices and sensing their playful movements there as contributions to a somaesthetically informed experience of beauty and city alike.
KW - Faculty of Humanities
KW - Georg Simmel
KW - Beauty
KW - Schönheit
KW - Rome
KW - Giardino di Sant'Alessio
KW - Urban park
KW - Photography
KW - Memory
KW - Urbs
KW - Urbanity
KW - Happiness
KW - Children
KW - Play
KW - Lemon trees
KW - Orange trees
KW - Beauty
KW - Georg Simmel
KW - Rome
KW - Urban culture
KW - Aventine Hill
KW - Children
KW - Happiness
KW - Contradiction
KW - Photography
KW - sound
U2 - 10.5278/ojs.jos.v6i1.3829
DO - 10.5278/ojs.jos.v6i1.3829
M3 - Journal article
VL - 6
SP - 65
EP - 90
JO - Journal of Somaesthetics
JF - Journal of Somaesthetics
SN - 2246-8498
IS - 1
ER -
ID: 243828411