Extended Aesthetic Experience in Contemporary Art

Pragmatism Today 5(2), 67-72 (2014)

6 Pages Posted: 20 Jan 2020

Date Written: January 25, 2015

Abstract

The discipline of aesthetics is in a quite particular position: even though the meaning of the Greek term ‘aisthesis’ would lure us into thinking that aesthetics was the discipline of the ‘sensational cognition’, this term has been the designator of a more restricted field. It has mostly been applied to questions of philosophy of art, and due to this application, the meaning of the term ‘aesthetic’ has also been restricted to the senses which allow for the experience of art: the so called “intellectual” senses, the visual and auditory ones. In my opinion, aesthetics should reflect on those contemporary artistic enterprises attempting to include the senses that have been neglected so far: touch, smell, and the sense of taste. Therefore we can expand the realms of the aesthetic so that it would include all the experience channeled by the external senses. This expansion entails some theoretic issues: it leads to difficulty in distinguishing between the aesthetic and the sensational experience, and it might lead to ambiguity regarding the literal and figurative meaning of ‘art.’

Keywords: aesthetics, aesthetic experience, contemporary art, extended aesthetic experience

Suggested Citation

Horvath, Gizella, Extended Aesthetic Experience in Contemporary Art (January 25, 2015). Pragmatism Today 5(2), 67-72 (2014), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2555226

Gizella Horvath (Contact Author)

Partium Christian University ( email )

Primariei 36
Oradea, 410209
Romania

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