Aesthetic Experience in Self-identifying Perspective

Abstract

This article reveals the relationship between individual self-awareness, an aesthetic attitude to reality, and art. The basis of the study of their relationship is the analysis of empirical self- consciousness or everyday consciousness, which differs from the pure self-consciousness presented in the classical philosophical tradition. Consideration of features of worldview construction in everyday life and aesthetic orientation of everyday consciousness allows, on the one hand, the reconsideration of the role of art in the formation of personality, and on the other hand, the revelation of the illusory nature of the classical view of the “I” as a monolithic, substantial unity. Contemporary art in particular stimulates us to play with images of the “I,” but at the same time it teaches us to keep distance between game situations and what is constitutive in relation to the “I,” allowing us to consolidate an integral image of ourselves in personality. Art goes beyond museums, actively invades the world of everyday life, and elicits the question of how much we have mastered the “art of being ourselves.”