Естетиката като метафизика...
Aesthetics as Metaphysics...

Summary/Abstract: The point of departure of the discussion in this text (planned to be read as a lecture) is the reinterpretation, in a philosophical context, of the Biblical narrative about the tree of life and the tree of knowledge (Genesis 2:9). This approach enables tracing the oppositions of vital breath vs. voluntary choice; justification vs. acting; outside vs. inside. These oppositions, in turn, reveal the essential relations of human being. One of these is the relation of know-how-in-order-to-know. Placed as a foundation for the discussion of aesthetics as metaphysics, this relation raises a number of questions relevant to aesthetics, including the possibility of the aesthetical. Leaning on the thesis that there can be no metaphysical preconditions for that which is aesthetically significant, the article raises the question of the metaphysical and the aesthetical as bordering concepts; as well as the question of the truth, which is generally accepted and self-evident but equally concern the higher spheres, which speak in different languages about this side of the world. The examples drawn from various spheres of art are given in view of the need for a double optic – of aesthetics and art – that any study on the aesthetical requires. In addition to examples taken from the plastic and visual arts (which are most frequently in the focus of philosophical studies) – examples widely ranging from Michelangelo to Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol – the lecture also turns to music, touching on Paul Hindemith’s symphony Mathis the Painter. Inspired by the idea that the arts are interconnected, the symphony presents in music the figures depicted on the Isenheim alterpiece by the painter Matthias Grunewald.

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