Staging Emotions. The Aesthetic Root of the Ecological Niche

Aesthetic experience has always been deemed characterized by a close relationship with emotions. Starting from a conception of the aesthetic connected with the model of the extended mind, according to an enactivist rather than functionalist view, this paper aims at showing in what sense the aesthetic interaction has an intrinsic emotive component, as well as in what sense emotion has an intrinsic aesthetic feature. Within this framework, emotion is not conceived of as an internal content or a factual element, but as a thick aspectual modality that, in its expressions, is staged rather than being a fictitious or simulated component. Consequently, emotion, while sedimenting itself in aesthetic devices, also results as a decisive factor in the aesthetic establishment of the ecological niche thanks to the material collusion involving Homo sapiens and its environment.