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The founding of the Hellenic Society for Aesthetics

Ελληνική Εταιρεία Αισθητικής / Hellenic Society for Aesthetics

• Καρδαμίτση-Αδάμη, Μάρω

The founding of the Hellenic Society for Aesthetics, in Athens, in the autumn of 1960, was an important event in the intellectual life of Greece. Founder of the Society was Panayotis A. Michelis, then Professor of the Theory of Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens. The article presents the deliberations and the dialogue between intellectuals of the time, from which emerged Michelis’s thoughts and opinions, as expounded in his writings, which led also to the founding of the Hellenic Society for Aesthetics.In this period there was a lively ongoing debate about the Greek- ness of architecture, which preoccupied the intellegentsia of Greece for years. For Michelis every discussion on architecture includes also the concept of aesthetics, a view totally consistent also with another ongoing debate in the second half of the 1950s, conducted between aestheticians, artists, architects, intellectuals and philosophers in the daily Press as well as in specialist periodicals, in relation to good and bad taste, and in which Michelis was an active participant.Concurrently, Michelis’s philosophical and aesthetic inquiries, although frequently going beyond the sphere of architecture, always have architecture as starting point. Michelis believes in architecture and in the architect’s talent, a belief that he was to hold firmly until the end of his life. Within this pervasive atmosphere regarding taste and aesthetics, Michelis organized in Athens, in September 1960, the Fourth International Congress for Aesthetics. During this Congress, the founding was announced of the Hellenic Society for Aesthetics, the main aims of which are to promote, study and research in the field of aesthetics and to engender interest among Greek intellectuals in aesthetic matters, with the parallel publication of the periodical Annals for Aesthetics, in which the aesthetic deliberations of Greek society are formulated and discussed.

• Arts
• History and Archaeology

• Αισθητική
• Τέχνη
• Ιστορία

Ελλάς