Andrej Demuth: "A Phenomenological-Existential Analysis of Beauty"

Andrej Demuth, Comenius University, Bratislava: "A Phenomenological-Existential Analysis of Beauty"

Abstract
The article presents a phenomenological-existential analysis of the experience of beauty (the aesthetic experience) through Heidegger’s approach to the examination of mood. It thematizes a subject that Heidegger undoubtedly had an immense interest in, but which he himself didn’t address with the methods that he developed in his work Being and Time (Sein und Zeit). The text therefore attempts to present what Heidegger’s answer to the question, “What is beauty?” might have looked like in this period of his work. The analysis that is presented respects the original structure of the question about mood and investigates beauty from three points of view concurrently: 1) what do beautiful objects have in common and what is it that characterizes them, 2) what characterizes the experience of living through an aesthetic experience and, for that matter, 3) what happens to us when we have an aesthetic experience. Thus, it attempts to interpret beauty in the spirit of Heidegger’s understanding of Dasein and being before the turn. The study points to the cognitive aspects of the aesthetic experience in the sense of the understanding of beauty as an uncovering of being and the worldliness of the world.