Evolutionary aesthetics and the alienation of human beings

Julio Muñoz Rubio

Resumen


Evolutionary aesthetics postulates that human traits considered as “beautiful” are a product of natural selection. Human beauty is accounted an indicator both of good health and of good genes. The appreciation of beauty is a biologically determined behavior. Therefore, beauty indicates which couples are the most indicated to mate with, because an offspring derived from aesthetically attractive individuals will increase fitness.

   I sustain that evolutionary aesthetics is a pseudoscience that pretends that human beings are naturally alienated from their capacity to decide about what is considered aesthetically attractive. According to this pseudoscience, such a capacity does not correspond to humans, inasmuch what actually decides about their actions is not culture, but biological interests. Evolutionary aesthetics contributes to naturalize sexual and love relations as private property and submission exchanges, all of which are naturalized with the veil of scientific “neutrality” and “objectivity”, both inexistent in this case. 

 

Key words: Aesthetics, evolution, Darwinism, alienation, Biologicism, dialectics, sensitivity, love, sexual selection.


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Referencias


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