Aesthetics as Phenomenology: The Appearance of Things

289 Pages·2015·2.194 MB·English

by  Günter Figal, Jerome Veith

AESTHETICS AS PHENOMENOLOGY
Studies in Continental Thought
John Sallis, editor
Consulting Editors
Robert Bernasconi William L. McBride
Rudolph Bernet J. N. Mohanty
John D. Caputo Mary Rawlinson
David Carr Tom Rockmore
Edward S. Casey Calvin O. Schrag
Hubert Dreyfus †Reiner Schürmann
Don Ihde Charles E. Scott
David Farrell Krell Thomas Sheehan
Lenore Langsdorf Robert Sokolowski
Alphonso Lingis Bruce W. Wilshire
David Wood
Aesthetics
AS
Phenomenology
THE APPEARANCE OF THINGS
GÜNTER FIGAL
Translated by
JEROME VEITH
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington & Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
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Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Published in German as Günter Figal, Erscheinungsdinge
© 2010 Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Co. KG Tübingen
English translation © 2015 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
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Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-0-253-01551-8 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-01558-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-01565-5 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15
For A. M. E. S. with love
Enough now of preposterous theories. No conceivable theory can mislead us
with respect to the principle of all principles: that every originally giving intuition is
a legitimating source of cognition, that everything that offers itself to us originarily
in “intuition” (in its corporeal actuality, so to speak) is to be accepted simply as what
it is presented as being, but also only within the limits in which it is presented there.
—Edmund Husserl, Ideas I
•
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Translator’s Foreword xi
Introduction 1
1. Art, Philosophically 7
2. Beauty 42
3. Art Forms 97
4. Nature 140
5. Space 183
Notes 223
Bibliography 247
Index of Names 263
Index of Subjects 267
Index of Terms 273
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PREFACE
Upon completing my book Gegenständlichkeit, which appeared in 2006 [the En-
glish translation appeared as Objectivity in 2010], I decided to undertake a new,
intensive engagement with art. I wanted to know in more detail how the objec-
tive itself is constituted, and I wanted to clarify this by means of artworks, the
objects par excellence. The present work also became a demonstration of grati-
tude to all the artists and artworks that have enriched my life. I am also grateful
to all who have assisted in the creation of the volume.
First in this regard is my wife Antonia Egel, without whom the book could
not have begun and without whom it could not have been completed. There is
not a single important idea we have not put to the test conversationally, no as-
pect we have not scrutinized together in its correctness and consistency. Even
the experiences of art that nurture the book were made together.
My thanks also go to my friends Damir Barbaric´, Rudolf Bernet, Gott-
fried Boehm, Donatella Di Cesare, Lore Hühn, Toshitaka Mochizuki, Dennis
J. Schmidt, Manfred Trojahn, Bernhard Zimmermann, and special thanks this
time to John and Jerry Sallis, who made my visit to Fallingwater possible.
An invitation from the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) to
spend my winter semester 2009–2010 as a Fellow of the School for Language and
Literature made it possible to complete the present work calmly. I would like to
thank the other fellows in the program, especially Richard Eldridge, Rolf-Peter
Janz, and Marisa Siguan, for their stimulating conversations. I extend my heart-
felt thanks to the literature director of the School for Language and Literature,
Werner Frick.
Finally, I would like to thank David Espinet, Tobias Keiling, and Nikola
Mirkovic´ for their thorough reading and helpful responses, and Anna Hirsch and
Ole Meinefeld for their careful editing of the text.
Günter Figal
Freiburg im Breisgau
May 2010