Ibn 'arabi Society

"Different Aesthetics" – A New Approach to Sufi Texts? The topic of the MIAS-Warburg Symposium was inspired by an interdisciplinary research project on Premodern Aesthetics spearheaded by the University of Tuebingen. It approaches aesthetic acts and artifacts not as objects sufficient unto themselves and hence to be viewed with 'disinterested pleasure' (Kant), but as agents endowed with an aesthetic energy in which their true purpose resides, and which explains the dynamic impact they can have on socio-cultural and psychological processes. The aesthetic acts and artifacts studied by the project also include Christian mystical texts whose aesthetic energy aims to engender in the recipient a state of consciousness akin to the beatific vision. A collection of papers produced by contributors to the Tuebingen project has just appeared in English translation (Different Aesthetics: Principles, Questions, Perspectives, edited by A. Gerock-Reiter et al., De Gruyter, 2025). The presentation will introduce the scope of