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Purpose – This paper aims to set out an analysis of Gregory Bateson's thought about the relations between parts and wholes, between separateness and togetherness in order to illuminate the kind of answers Bateson proposed to the contemporary ecological dilemma. Design/methodology/approach – It roughly situates discourses of the "enchantment" of nature on the side of togetherness and discourses of scientific disenchantment on the side of togetherness. Findings – The essay looks at Bateson's discovery that neither separateness nor togetherness can ever be thought of without the other as an indication of the limits of both disenchantment and enchantment, and it suggests that awareness of these limits enables ecological insight. Originality/value – The essay proposes a broad summary of a general problem in Gregory Bateson's epistemology and shows how it emerges in political, social and ecological space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following pages treat about the transformations that affect art in the context of the bourgeois society and, subsequently, in the modern aspect of the industrialized one. To this respect, we cannot restrict our investigation solely to intrinsic metamorphoses occurring on the aesthetic level. This is because art is diaiectically connected to society; as such, it has to be questioned not within an ideal realm of categories, but in connection with concrete determinations at the social and historical levels; since the artistic materials and forms are subjected to a socially medi ated development, any sentence passed on art actu ally leaps over into the social. Therefore, our inquiry will also have to address elements of the extra-aesthetic and surprise the manner in which they reflect and determine the artistic change. This trajectory will allow not only to indicate the overall changes which affect art through the process of rationalizati on; but also to surprise the manner in which the in dustrialized society, under the guile of administrati on, performs an isolation of serious art while pushing forward a degenerate counterpart, adapted to the market of commodities, detached from a genuine aesthetic experience, and reduced to an exchange value. The response of the serious art will indicate not only the protest against this aspect of the admi nistered culture, but also a way which goes beyond its realm - namely, it will indicate how, in this society which favors the collective over individuality, the in dividual can protect himself against the continuously expanding mechanisms of domination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]