In this article, we illustrate some principal features of Pareyson’s philosophical aesthetics and their relevance within aesthetic organizational research and the study of social practice in organization. In his main work on aesthetics, Estetica: Teoria della formatività, written during the Fifties, the Italian philosopher proposes a personalistic existentialist hermeneutics and stresses the concreteness of the person in the social interaction with the concreteness of the Other and of the materiality of the world created and formed. Aesthetic philosophy as ‘formativeness’ focuses on flesh, incarnation, materiality of the interpreted world, doing while inventing how to do, and the practice of doing philosophy. In the essay, we underline the relationship between ‘formativeness’ and the valorization of aesthetics in the study of organizational practice that has led to the appreciation of the corporeality of personal knowledge in the process of knowing in practice. We argue that, if we want to appreciate Pareyson’s contribution to organization and management studies, we can see management as art, production processes as artistry, a work well done as a work of art, and of course art in itself. Our conclusion is that, while ‘philosophy’ constituted the link between Pareyson’s Formatività and the aesthetic discourse on organizational life, ‘practice’ constituted the link among ‘formativeness’, organizational aesthetics research and practice-based studies.
Keywords aesthetic philosophy; formativeness; organizational aesthetics; Luigi Pareyson; Practice-based Studies