Idol or Icon? An Aesthetic Response to a Religious Question an Analysis of the Esthetic and Religious Experience

Abstract

Abstract This study represents an interrogation on the similarities between the aesthetic experience and the religious one. The ontological difference between an icon and an idol refers to the fact that the first is a re-presentation of a non- existing (false) god and the second of the authentic divinity. Based on this ontological difference, the experience of the idol appears to be similar to the experience of the fictional art work. In the opinion of phenomenologist Jean Luc Marion, the painting is closer to the idol and completely different to the icon. The experience of the idol is an aesthetic one, incompatible with the religious experience. Reaching to the works of hermeneutical phenomenologist Gadamer, Ricoeur, Chretien and others, we will underline the similarities between the aesthetic and religious experience, as hermeneutical (and conversational) experiences. The initiation of dialogue in the religious experience that enriches its experimenter is made by the divinity and the icon is a form of re-emerging into presence. Similarly, the aesthetic experience enriches its experimenter, is based on the emerging and re- emerging into presence of what the work represents and has a conversational dimension, in which the conversation is initiated by the art work. The belief in the godhood of the represented is a matter of religion, but the belief in the existence of what the work represents is inherent to both aesthetic and religious experiences. Moreover, this emergence into presence is a sine qua non for the experience of communion. In the absence of communion, neither the aesthetic, nor the religious experiences can be authentic. As hermeneutical experiences, both types of experience enrich their experimenter with a certain kind of truth.