Abstract

Chapter 1 explores the philosophical origins of the three aesthetic paradigms at the heart of this book: the aesthetics of fragmentation, the aesthetics of autonomy, and the aesthetics of dependency. Common to all three is their indebtedness to the problems left unresolved by Kant's philosophy. This legacy gives rise to two dominant reactions in the late eighteenth century. The first is the neo-skeptical position that rejects Kant's project, while the second comes from the idealist thinkers who strive to complete Kant's system by arguing that the apparent contradictions of existence in fact are grounded in an underlying unity. The former provides the foundations for the avant-gardes and the latter for the aesthetics of autonomy. The chapter then turns to Kierkegaard and derives a third aesthetic model from his theology, one which falls between the previous two alternatives. This "aesthetics of dependency" provides a mediation of contradiction without unification by formulating the principle according to which the work must be organized in terms incompatible with that work's own representational and thematic structures. The purposeful relation of the work's parts is in this way made to depend on an interpretative perspective not coextensive with the logic of those parts themselves.

Share