Il significato paradossale dell'estetica
Commento a C. Menke
Abstract
In this paper my aim is to discuss Christoph Menke’s essay “Noch nicht. Die philosophische Bedeutung der Ästhetik” and to set it against the background of Menke’s previous writings. Moreover, I intend to deal with the question of the presumed marginality of aesthetics. I do that by asserting that aesthetics has a paradoxical role in philosophy; it follows that the presumed subordination of aesthetics reveals itself to be a primary importance role for the meaning of philosophy. By retracing Menke’s argumentations on the emancipation process of aesthetics, I intend to show that, if it’s true that aesthetics has to make clear the “unclear” principle of “force-Kraft”, it is also true that it brings something new to theoretical philosophy, something that the traditional “cogito” alone couldn’t grasp. While philosophy, says Menke, presumes the correspondence between ends and results, aesthetics is a theory of praxis, of action. I stress the importance of this statement and assume that aesthetics, by addressing itself to praxis, also turns to the realm of performance. By constructing an analogy with tragic performance, I show that modern aesthetics, born from a violent reaction to rationalism, always puts in crisis the procedure of philosophy and confirms, in this way, its genuinely philosophical destination.References
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