Literature

Florian Eglin, dandyism as the art of refining violence

By Quentin Perissinotto · March 26, 2025

Literary dandyism, an elegant insurrection against the trivial, has found a figure in French-speaking Switzerland: Florian Eglin, a punchy aesthete.

Society

The authoritarian temptation to abolish aesthetic canons

By Yann Costa · 20 March 2025

The «body positive» movement aims to neutralize beauty standards under the guise of fighting discrimination. This approach, taken to the extreme as under the Maoist regime, deprives the individual of the vital impulse inspired by beauty.

Philosophy

In search of an objective and universal beauty

By Jonas Follonier · March 14, 2025

A subtle tradition dating back to the Scottish Enlightenment, and in particular to David Hume, one of its leading exponents, makes the aesthetic evaluation of a thing a personal feeling, but one caused by properties actually possessed by that thing.

Philosophy

Roger Scruton's paradox of beauty

By Antoine-Frédéric Bernhard · 09 March 2025

Is beauty in things or in our minds? According to British philosopher Roger Scruton, neither option is satisfactory. By pointing out the paradoxical nature of aesthetic judgments, he attempts to overcome the opposition between objectivism and subjectivism.