The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience by Mikel Dufrenne (review)

Books 249 and of the arts to society and class. The chapters on intellectuals and on the journalistic attitude and its power and effects upon various endeavors in various institutions are worth signalling for their remarkably suggestive treatment . Also of interest is the chapter on historians and the performing artist. These refined analyses will be of interest to historians of literature and of the other arts who often have to deal with the complex relations of social classes and the arts. But, while I accept the argument presented in this work, I am somewhat unhappy with its form. It is, in fact, very abstract; the authors build a model, a sociologicalphenomenological work of art, presumably resting on empirical evidence. However, judging from the bibliographies , much of this is at second remove from historical research; it rests on the work of other sociologists, so that this work is itself an example of some of the refinement, self-consciousness and level of abstraction reached in certain intellectual metiers. I would at times have appreciated a more concrete historical example. The book assumes historical knowledge, which may be lacking among some readers. Still, the book provides a useful and welcome working model in a complex area. T h e Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience. Mike1 Dufrenne. Trans. from French by Edward S. Casey, et 41. Northwestern Univ. Press, Evanston, Ill., 1973. 578 pp. $17.50. Reviewed by Cerhnrd Charles Rump* This edition of Dufrenne’s work is the first translation from the French into another language. The original version had two editions and the editor and co-translator Edward S. Casey justifies the translated version on the ground that the book is ‘thesingle work for which Dufrenne will be longest remembered‘. He thinks of it as the book that ‘capped one of the most remarkable decades in the history of modern philosophy’, i.e. the decade from 1943 to 1953 (the year in which the first edition appeared), thus putting it in line with such works as Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (1943), Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology o , Perception (1945)and Gabriel Marcel’s Mystery of Being (195 I). Dufrenne’s book is divided into two parts, dealing with (a) the phenomenology of the aesthetic object and (b) the phenomenology of aesthetic experience. Both parts are themselves divided into two subdivisions. This division is fundamental to Dufrenne’s ideas. The terms ‘object’ and ‘perception’ also serve to ‘define the main movement of the book . . . proceeding from a consideration of the aesthetic object to a theory concerning the perception of this object’. This division is, of course, only assumed for hermeneutic purposes, as the aesthetic object and its perception are inseparable. The aesthetic objecr receives a very lengthy treatment, partly because it is more accessible than, for instance, aesthetic experience, and partly because the phenomenological method is better b dealing with the object or content of experience than with experience as an act. But most of all it is because of Dufrenne’s taking the ‘spectator’s point of view’ in his book and what the spectator experiences is just the aesthetic object. It is defined as being different from the work of arr in the first place. The work of art is the ‘perduring structural foundation for the aesthetic object’, endowed with a constant being independent from being experienced. The aesthetic object depends on its being experienced by the spectator. The aesthetic object is the work of art perceived for its own sake. This act concerns us with ‘le sensible’, i.e. ‘the sensuous’, which, in turn, is the work’s matter perceived aesthetically. ‘Thus the aesthetic object is the sensuous appearing in its glory’ (p. 86). Consequently, we must distinguish between the ‘brute sensuousness’ of ordinary perception and the ‘aesthetic *Rtjmerstrasse 32, D53 Bonn-Bad Godesberg, Fed. Rep. Ger. sensuousness’ unique to aesthetic objects. Dufrenne acknowledges a nonsensuous element in art, but ties it to the sensuous, as meaning, which organizes the sensuous, is ‘immanent in the sensuous, being its very organization’ (P. 1 2 ) . The aesthetic experience is based on the aesthetic object’s existence-in-order-to-be-perceived-by-spectators. The aesthetic experience is necessary to complete the aesthetic object...