Communicability and Empathy: The Problem of Sensus Communis in Kester’s Dialogical Aesthetics

• Authors: Nae Cristian
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

In this article, I sketch out and examine the aesthetic basis of an implicit ontological model of community, grounded on dialogical practice, which appears in Grant Kester's proposal for a dialogical theory of socially engaged contemporary art. I address two distinct but related aspects of Kester's view on understanding as a constitutive part of dialogical aesthetic experience. First, I endeavour to show that the post-foundational framework of a 'procedural knowledge' which he uses to support his theory of aesthetic communication requires a stronger intersubjective ground to ensure the actual empathic understanding of the other dialogical partner. In this respect, I claim that he could be using the Kantian notion of sensus communis in a constitutive rather than in a regulative manner, thus grounding empathy on an ante-predicative level of experiencing alterity. This unorthodox usage of the Kantian aesthetic postulate points towards a particular understanding of sensus communis as the universal communicability of human finitude, which I eventually argue for on the lines of Jean-Luc Nancy's thinking.

Keywords

EN

AESTHETIC COMMUNICATION; DIALOGICAL THEORY OF ART; KANT I.; KESTER G.; NANCY J. C.; PROCEDURAL KNOWLEDGE; SENSUS COMMUNIS

Discipline

• PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY

• Publisher: Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 48
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 4-29
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Nae Cristian

• Cristian Nae, George Enescu University of Arts, Iasi, Romania

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

11CZAAAA09494