Aesthetic Experience and Verbal Art :: Argumentative Philosophy Argument Papers

Aesthetic Experience and Verbal ArtIt is a everyday assumption that there is an art which can be defined as literary or vocal. Yet, this definition relies mainly on linguistic criteria. atomic number 50 literary art also be accounted for philosophically? In this account I intend to offer such an account. Starting from the Hegelian design of language and of the aesthetical experience, I shall argue that literary, and more specifically poetic, deal can be defined as the verbal completion of an aesthetic experience, and that this distinctive feature marks off literary discourse from different types of discourse such as scientific and philosophical discourse.In Hegels linear perspective language is concomitant with conscious-ness. (1) The birth of language is to be situated in the transition in the growth of the overcomes identity from the conscious moment to the self-conscious moment. To a conscious subject, reality offers itself as an object (Gegenstand) and the world refle cts the categorizing action mechanism of the rationality (understanding, Verstand). In the self-conscious subject the world is internalized with the effect that it becomes a presentation (Vorstellung, pictorial concept) of the subjects conceptualization of the world. This presentation is realized in verbal signs. Indeed, the dyadic structure of the sign (signifier/signified) exhibits a minimal degree of corporality together with a maximal degree of signification (meaning). The material expectation of the sign is completely subordinated to the meaning it conveys. To Hegel therefore the verbal sign is a kind of objective correlative to the internalized conceptualization of the world accomplished by the self-conscious subject. In and through language the self-conscious subject expresses its internalized and thus highly immanent perception of the world in an objective verbal presentation.In the transition (Aufhebung, sublation) from consciousness to self-consciousness, i.e. from unde rstanding (Verstand) to insight (Vernunft, reason), there is a flying equaliser in which the world yields its opaque materiality and the mind (Vernunft, reason) has not provided fully internalized the object. The empirical world discloses itself in the light of the mind and the last mentioned conforms itself to the former. This aesthetical appearance or semblance of meaning (das sinnliche Scheinen der Idee) is the very load of the aesthetic consciousness or experience. In the aesthetic experience the subject does as yet not intend to understand (i.e. the function of the intellect (Verstand)) nor does it want to conceptualize the empirical reality (i.e. the function of reason). In other words in the aesthetic contemplation there is a momentary harmony between the subjective and the objective aspect of comprehension, between sensuous and rational perception, between rationalization and insight.