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

(Hardback)

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The 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 Husserls view on expectations, Heideggers view on death and authenticity, Blanchots view on death, and Arendts view on natality. As for understanding the aesthetic experience as the paradigmatic experience, Skorin-Kapov is informed by Deweys work on art as experience, Gadamers work on experience of art, and Jausss work on the aesthetics of reception and the horizon of expectations. After our sensibility and representational capability are broken, recuperation then leads to sublimity and the subsequent feelings of admiration and/or responsibility, allowing for the intertwining of aesthetics and ethics. Additionally, elements of Kantian morality, Foucaults ethics, and Kierkegaards work on interactions between aesthetics and ethics together help to characterize the relation between aesthetics and ethics. Since we often encounter surprise due to unexpectedness in comedy, Skorin-Kapov also interprets philosophical views on the comedy and laughter (including Aristotle, Kierkegaard, Meredith, and Bergson), using the theatrical work of Dario Fo as an example. The novel analysis in The Intertwining of Aesthetics and Ethics will be of particular interest to students and scholars working or teaching in aesthetics, phenomenology, art history, cultural studies, and ethics.

Reviews

In 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 books 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

Author Bio

Jadranka Skorin-Kapov is professor of operations research at Stony Brook University, with additional PhDs in philosophy and art history, and author of The Aesthetics of Desire and Surprise: Phenomenology and Speculation.