The Intertwining of Aesthetics and Ethics: Exceeding of Expectations, Ecstasy, Sublimity

ISBN-13: 9781498524568 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 216 str.

Jadranka Skorin-Kapov

Opis

This book elaborates on the common experiential ground for both aesthetics and ethics. The analysis considers experiential environment (both nature and art), the precedents to desire, the notion of experience incorporating a break, and the reverberations of surprise leading to the intertwining of aesthetics and ethics. Different philosophical positions on the relationship between nature and art (including Kant, Hegel, Goethe, Gadamer, and Adorno) are presented, arguing that Kantian sublimity can carry over from nature to art. Discussions of expectations and authenticity include interpretations of Husserl s view on expectations, Heidegger s view on death and authenticity, Blanchot s view on death, and Arendt s view on natality. Dewey s work on art as experience, Gadamer s work on experience of art, and Jauss s work on the aesthetics of reception and the horizon of expectations, contribute to understanding the aesthetic experience as the paradigmatic experience. Recuperation following the break of one s sensibility and representational capability leads to sublimity and the subsequent feelings of admiration and/or responsibility, allowing for the intertwining of aesthetics and ethics. The elements of Kantian morality, Foucault s ethics, and Kierkegaard s work on interactions between aesthetics and ethics, provide additional characterizations of the relation between aesthetics and ethics. The surprise due to unexpectedness is often encountered in comedy, hence philosophical views on the comedy and laughter (including Aristotle, Kierkegaard, Meredith, and Bergson) are interpreted, and the theatrical work of Dario Fo is used as an example."