Description
Book SynopsisThe Intertwining of Aesthetics and Ethics: Exceeding of Expectations, Ecstasy, Sublimity analyzes the common experiential ground for both aesthetics and ethics by considering 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. Jadranka Skorin-Kapov discusses different philosophical positions on the relationship between nature and art, in conversation with Kant, Hegel, Goethe, Gadamer, and Adorno. She argues that Kantian sublimity can carry over from nature to art. As part of the discussions of expectations and authenticity, the author interprets Husserl's view on expectations, Heidegger's view on death and authenticity, Blanchot's view on death, and Arendt's view on natality. As for understanding the aesthetic experience as the paradigmatic experience, Skorin-Kapov is informed by Dewey's work on art as experience, Gadamer's work
Trade ReviewIn this beautiful book, Jadranka Skorin-Kapov brings us to the edge of the impossible. She gives a rich and compelling philosophical account of the aesthetic encounter: how it surprises us, affects us, and takes us beyond ourselves. -- Steven Shaviro, Wayne State University
In this brilliant tour de force through modern and contemporary aesthetic and ethical theories Skorin-Kapov aims at probing their suitability for supporting two fundamental claims: first, that the aesthetic and the ethical experience are always already weaved together on account of their common root in the experience of the sublime; second, that the aesthetic encounter is in the end primary and all-encompassing. Beginning from contemporary theories propounding to blend aesthetic and ethical feeling and thought, this wide-ranging work argues for the importance of uncovering the historical-philosophical origins of their merger. Readers will find here breathtakingly rich resources for probing deeper into modern and contemporary notions of aesthetic feeling and judgment, from Kantian theory, through nineteenth century European idealism and romanticism, to critical theory, existentialism, phenomenology and hermeneutics. Skorin-Kapov shows how genuine aesthetic experience paradoxically implies a negation of experience, if experience is meant to involve various degrees of objectivity and contextuality, including social standards and cultural norms that may be irrelevant to, even incompatible with, the nonobjective, ecstatic dimension of the aesthetic encounter: pure desire, unadulterated expectation of an unspecifiable ‘more,’ rupture and, finally, authentic surprise in the experience of the artwork. It is from this sublime experience, the Author argues, that both the aesthetic and the moral world are born. This book’s bold theses are sustained by learning as well as imaginative insight. These make for a rare combination of instructive and exciting reading on the fundamental re-thinking of ethics and aesthetics in contemporary continental philosophy. -- Allegra de Laurentiis, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Table of ContentsPreface Introduction: Experience versus Non-Experience Chapter 1. Nature versus Art and the Aesthetic Chapter 2. Expectations and Authenticity Chapter 3. Experience and Art Chapter 4. The Intertwining of Aesthetics and Ethics Chapter 5. Laughter: A Two-Way Street between Art and Morality Conclusion: Art, Morality, Society Bibliography
