Aesthetics After Metaphysics: From Mimesis to Metaphor

Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy

by Miguel de Beistegui

This book focuses on a dimension of art which the philosophical tradition (from Plato to Hegel and even Adorno) has consistently overlooked, such was its commitment - explicit or implicit - to mimesis and the metaphysics of truth it presupposes. De Beistegui refers to this dimension, which unfolds outside the space that stretches between the sensible and the supersensible - the space of metaphysics itself - as the hypersensible and show how the operation of art to which it corresponds is best described as metaphorical. The movement of the book, then, is from the classical or metaphysical aesthetics of mimesis (Part One) to the aesthetics of the hypersensible and metaphor (Part Two). Against much of the history of aesthetics and the metaphysical discourse on art, he argues that the philosophical value of art doesn't consist in its ability to bridge the space between the sensible and the supersensible, or the image and the Idea, and reveal the sensible as proto-conceptual, but to open up a different sense of the sensible. His aim, then, is to shift the place and role that philosophy attributes to art.

Genres: Philosophy

204 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 19, 2012

About the author

Miguel de Beistegui teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, England.

Beistegui was educated in France (BA, MA in Philosophy at the Sorbonne), the US (Ph.D., Loyola University of Chicago), and Germany (Postdoc, Hegel-Archiv, Bochum).

He specialises in 20th century German and French philosophy, and has published books and articles in the following areas: ontology, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics and politics.

Initially specialising in the thought of Martin Heidegger, and in phenomenology in general, he has become convinced that philosophy needs to resist extreme specialisation and develop the conceptual tools to engage with our time. This means that it needs to bring together the various branches of philosophy, but also establish a dialogue between philosophy and the other disciplines, in the social as well as the natural sciences. His research and activities of the last ten years reflect such a commitment.