Aesthetic Theory and the Philosophy of Nature

Said Mikki

doi:10.3390/philosophies6030056

Abstract

We investigate the fundamental relationship between philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of nature, arguing for a position in which the latter encompasses the former. Two traditions are set against each other, one is natural aesthetics, whose covering philosophy is Idealism, and the other is the aesthetics of nature, the position defended in this article, with the general program of a comprehensive philosophy of nature as its covering theory. Our approach is philosophical, operating within the framework of the ontology of the process of the production of art, inspired especially by the views of Antonin Artaud, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bakhtin, Deleuze, and Guattari. We interrogate Dilthey and Worringer while outlining an ontology of art based on the production of nonhuman images and a nonpersonal experiential field of nature.

Highlights

Let us ponder the transition from Aristotle [1], on one side, to Artaud [2], Eisenstein [3,4,5,6], Bakhtin [7,8,9,10,11], on another, and back
Note that Artaud was by no means ignorant of the externalization of experience in material forms, but he consistently rejected a dualistic ontology comprised of mind/body, or somatic/psychological structures working in parallel, preferring instead a fully fledged materialist ontology based on bodies and their coupling and mutual interactions, where consciousness is seen as a generated natural product created from within the highly abstract system of bodily relations
‘natural aesthetics’ with Idealism,2 and ‘aesthetics of nature’ with Artaud, the natural question to ask here is that about the real philosophical difference between the two views of aesthetic theory

Summary

Introduction

Let us ponder the transition from Aristotle [1], on one side, to Artaud [2], Eisenstein [3,4,5,6], Bakhtin [7,8,9,10,11], on another, and back. As we can see those thinkers, namely Schiller, Goethe, Dilthey, and Worringer, present an excellent unorthodox frame of reference for developing an alternative to idealism and its aesthetic theory, but this time while fully based on the philosophy of nature, not the Cartesian-Kantian-Hegelian subject. From this perspective, Worringer becomes a key figure who seems to able in particular to illuminate the complex transition from modernism to postmodernism, e.g., via his role in shaping the thinking of postmodernists such as Deleuze, Guattari, and Baudrillard.

Schiller’s Law

The Nonhuman Experiential Field of Nature

Interlude

Remarks on Posthumanism and Aesthetics

Conclusions