This year it will have been 20 years since I became professor of aesthetics at the University of Helsinki. Then too, in the mid-1990s, the economic recession was at its worst, and the future of the subject of aesthetics rested on a knife-edge. My predecessor had retired from a personal supernumerary professorship and it looked doubtful that the funds for a professorship of aesthetics would be found. A temporary saviour was found in the form of a five-year professorship which allowed the worst of the storm to be weathered.

One of my most consoling memories is thus that the subject gained a permanent professorship after that period, in 2000. At that time I was a visiting professor in Philadelphia, USA, and I still remember how the news also sparked enthusiasm among my colleagues there. The professorship offered me the opportunity to begin to develop the subject systematically and with more vigour. I also recall something of those numerous degree reforms and administrative reorganisations which I have seen over these 20 years: sometimes consolidation was the byword, at other times things were fragmented into small units. It seems that things go in cycles, perhaps even by the logic of eternal return.

One of the most important sources of motivation for the work of a university lecturer and researcher is each year to see a new and enthusiastic group of students beginning their studies. If lecturers are able to maintain that enthusiasm and desire to study, they have already succeeded in their work. Guiding a master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation to its completion is always a process that demands effort, and becoming a master or a PhD signifies a new phase in a student’s life. Now and then I meet former students, and I cannot deny the great satisfaction I feel on seeing what diverse and demanding roles they have been given.