Abstract
European intellectual history teaches us that beauty is not just an adornment to life but is also a major source of strength for our life. Moreover, the positive aesthetic experience also has healing power. That beauty is a highly effective antidote to life's suffering, i.e. acts as an anti-depressant, has been documented in the tradition of philosophical aesthetics from Plato to Bloch. Beauty reveals truth and goodness (Plato), it shows the harmonious order and the glory of things (Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite), it is one of the transcendental names of God (Thomas of Aquinas), in beauty the world appears in its perfection (Baumgarten), beauty is the daughter of freedom (Schiller), it offers a temporary escape from the suffering of existence (Schopenhauer), aesthetic values are the only values that withstand nihilism and the meaninglessness of existence and are thus the actual stimulus of life (Nietzsche), the beautiful is the sensual appearance of the idea (Hegel), beauty is an anti-depressant and Weckamin of being, it tears people out of their forgetfulness of Being (Heidegger), there is a close relationship between the shining forth of the Beautiful and the evidentness of the Understandable (Gadamer), in an artwork and through the aesthetic attitude the Other, foreign, the non-identical that is mangled and mutilated in the administered world is preserved and saved (Adorno). Many more positive affirmative descriptions from the tradition of philosophical aesthetics demonstrate that beauty and the aesthetic have a therapeutic dimension.Disclosure of interestThe author declares that he has no competing interest.
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