O del mio Dolce Ardor: Thermoaesthetics and the Phenomenology of Thermal Touch

To attempt to move the project of thermoaesthetics from a phenomenological perspective forward, understood conjunctly as the study of thermal touch and a thermal reading of art, in this paper, I first introduce the philosophical interest in temperature with the Aristotelian doctrine of thermal homeostasis and the importance of the idea of a Plastic Sensorium, in the context of scientific and philosophical haptic research currently active and developing. In the second part, I explore some recent studies in the fields of thermal and haptic aesthetics, reviewing three occurrences of temperature in art from the perspective of the phenomenological concept of generativity. Finally, I explore some Husserlian considerations on thermal touch and the cosmological questions a thermoaesthetics raises.