The postulate of restoring humanity to the "aesthetic state" and the realization of the idea of homo aestheticus became the center of interest in Friedrich Schiller. One of the contemporary revitalization of this idea, which proves its vitality and actuality, is the work and the socio-political activities of Joseph Beuys, "the cunning peasant of the Lower Rhine region" – as he was considered by others and as he himself considered while forming his legend. Beuys believed that the role of artists was in fact the fulfillment of their mission, continually moving beyond artistry, giving the literal reality of the status of art. Beuys was involved in politics He was interested in protecting the environment, upbringing of young people and education. He promoted spiritual freedom, legal and economic equality. He used his sense of humor and irony when dealing with "deadly areas" of industrialized society, the ‘trauma’ of modernity and he started the processes of healing communities. He developed an extended notion of art, "fine arts" and "social sculpture". He wanted to broaden the idea of creation and molding different materials to all spheres of life. He not only significantly changed the concept of art by using as artistic material fat and felt, but he also transformed fundamental and borderland situations of human existence.
Martin Heidegger’s lecture The Origin of the Work of Art, presented on November 13th, 1935 in Freiburg, marked a significant turn in its author’s philosophical thought. Earlier Heidegger had immersed himself in politics, yet when it proved to be a blind alley or simply a mistake, he turned to aesthetics. And although he never endeavoured to form a systematic theory of art or aesthetics, art does hold a solid position within his philosophical output. When certain researchers tackle the issue of Heidegger’s specific, metaphorical language, they point out that the philosopher addressed well known issues that, in fact, had already been widely discussed beforehand. While analyzing art, he asked a basic question about its substance. The provided answer would also remain on the traditional side: only art, as opposed to thinking with the use of certain terms, saliently relates to being – here Heidegger’s thought finds its common ground with those of philosophers as different as Schelling, Nietzsche or Adorno. Heidegger himself found his idea of art very much opposed to traditional aesthetics - to what focused on artistic experience and on experiencing art. In his opinion, all attempts to interpret a work of art that were based on the term “experience”, using it then to construct a whole concept of modern aesthetics, were deleterious effects of the old philosophy focused on subjectivity, where aesthetics is inevitably degenerated – not only by promoting the wrong idea of the spheres belonging to the artist and the viewer, but also by losing sight of the work of art being the highest, essential instance. Thus, solely a work of art remains the object of his specific metaphysics, since it embodies the substance of art. And so, the desire to “see through Heidegger,” focusing on his key opus - The Origin of the Work of Art - follows the perspective drawn by Hermann Mörchen who aimed at breaking the philosophical refusal to make connections between Heidegger and Adorno, as well as confronting the output that each of them had left after their deaths. Within that perspective, a significant role is played, next to Adorno, by Walter Benjamin – as there are certain remarkable aesthetic problems that at times set the two adversaries closer to each other, and at times further apart. Benjamin’s letters involve a critique of Heidegger’s work. According to Adorno, every attempt to justify aesthetics by invoking the origin of art as its core, must lead to a disappointment. Whereas Benjamin, in an essay that was supposed to earn him a degree, mused about the “origin of German Trauerspiel;” and like Heidegger, he also wrote about van Gogh. Thus, the presented conclusions may not only imply differences, but also correspondence and compliance of certain philosophical assumptions made by the philosophers.
Book Review: Roman Konik, "Między przedmiotem a przedstawieniem. Filozoficzna analiza sposobów obrazowania w oparciu o malarstwo, fotografię i obrazy syntetyczne", Oficyna Wydawnicza Atut Wrocław 2013.
How much aesthetics in aesthetics...? The pluralism of aesthetic theory does not exempt aesthetics from the answer to the question about its status as a philosophical discipline. The possibility of an aesthetic theory, which in the past two centuries was understood, significantly narrowing, if not falsifying, the meanings of the term “aesthetics” as a philosophy of art, became problematic in the face of the crisis of traditional understanding of art itself. Discussions about its “end” revealed not only the unstable, not to say: falling foundation, but also the uncertainty of the attitude that aesthetics, the uncertainty of aesthetics and the reason for its existence in relation to art. Artistic practice and the catastrophic historiosophy associated with it placed on the agenda as urgent and demanding solutions ontological and epistemological issues, the status of a work of art. Is the history of aesthetics therefore the history of the struggle of knowledge about art with the universalist claim of philosophy and its theological-metaphysical and idealistic-historiosophical overprotection? Does its present position determine the way in which it solves the tasks arisingin this fight? The spectacular renaissance of aesthetics as “the first science” — in connection with the issue of perception, aesthetic experience, new media, the category of sublimity or allegory neglected by romantics — determines that the question of how much aesthetics there is in aesthetics seems to be the most relevant.
On the way leading Hermann Cohen from his family Coswig to Marburg and — later — to Berlin, from a Jewish province to a multicultural metropolis, Breslau is a special point. The future philosopher came here in 1857, hoping for the future of fice of the rabbi, to begin studies at the newly established Jewish Theological Seminary. Here too, four years later, he enrolled at the university, opening up the prospect of an academic career. A special point, which allowed him to create in the next years an “impressive system” which is a bold attempt to present German and Judaism as identical or connected. Jewish and religious content was a permanent and constant component of Cohen’s works, and Religion of Reason and System of Philosophy form a whole. Already before the creation of works devoted to Kant, some features of Cohen’s philosophy of religion are revealed, which originated in his studies at Breslau, one of the most important Haskalah centers in the middle of the 19th century. Cohen found there an atmosphere conduciveto the later shaping of the science of the universal religion of reason. After many years, Cohen assessed the Jewish Theological Seminary as “the most important educational institution [of his] youth.”
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