Antik Dünya’dan Homo Aestheticus’a (Estetik İnsan) Estetik Deneyim ve Maddi Kültür İlişkisine Dair Nitel Bir Çalışma

Within classical attitudes, aesthetic experience can be defined in its simplest form as a phenomenon stemming from the sensations experienced by the subject due to interactions with the environment and its material elements. Evolutionary aesthetics argues that aesthetic sensitivity is crucial for human survival and establishing relationships with the environment. The earliest thoughts on aesthetic experience, which arose almost simultaneously with the advent of modern humans on earth, laid the groundwork for forming primordial religions at a social level. To cope with and adapt to their surroundings, humans enhanced their aesthetic experience by utilising tools, processing materials, decorating their bodies, and building nests. This situation seized the opportunity to create material culture, the primary output of their evolution. The phenomenological approach, which emerged in philosophy from the last quarter of the 19th century onwards, has taken on different dimensions and influenced numerous areas outside philosophy. Phenomenology, focusing on the individual's experience, has placed particular emphasis on the role of the body in generating material culture and aesthetic experience, contributing to the formation and shaping of aesthetic experiences. In the first half of the 20th century, the concepts of cognition and experience began to be explored concerning the material environment. Since the 1970s, ‘postcognitivist’ approaches have emerged that consider the effects of the body and environment on the formation of human cognitive processes. Based on these approaches, the influences of the body and social structures on human cognitive processes have begun to be examined through the lens of aesthetic experience and elements of material culture. This article represents the first Turkish study addressing the theme of evolutionary aesthetics and material culture. It begins with a discussion on the origin of aesthetic sensitivity. It concludes with the ‘Actor-network theory' which explores the concepts of experience and material culture about cognition and sociality. The discussion of the study says humans enhance their cognitive capacity and flexibility by constructing products of material culture through aesthetic sensitivity.