The allergy of philosophical aesthetics to sensuality and its desensitization in view of philosophical anthropology
The allergy of philosophical aesthetics to sensuality and its desensitization in view of philosophical anthropology

Summary/Abstract: I intend to show how traditional aesthetics isolates sensuality and how its efforts are compensated by philosophical anthropology. I assume that philosophical aesthetics has an allergic reaction to sensuality. This means that its “immune system” opposes something not quite harmful. It could be said (metaphorically, of course) that it is wrongly oriented. I shall attempt to show that the allergy has its deeper causes in the inadequacy of the patient’s circumstances. They have to be slightly changed, and the allergen should be applied in the form of a vaccine. Both such actions, amounting to a research reorientation, have been offered by philosophical anthropology – to some extent in its classical period (i.a. by Arnold Gehlen, Helmuth Plessner), and most fruitfully in contemporary times (mainly by Gernot Böhme). Allergy may be also an excessive reaction to some external stimulus. With regard to aesthetics the situation is very similar. In its original meaning aesthetics – through aesthetic experience – is “a return to the body”, to sensuality. But at the same time there is a constant fear that sensuality would be equated with mere physical pleasure. Anthropological perspective does not depart form aesthetic discourse, but rather – as I believe – efficiently argues against some of its methods.

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