Aesthetical Ontology, Ontological Aesthetics: Rethinking Art and Beauty through Speculative Realism

Abstract

We thus propose to criticize the subjective-anthropological conception of beauty and to define the meaning of an ontological conception of the beautiful while at the same time inquiring into an aesthetic conception of ontology from the standpoint of speculative realism. We discuss first the general character of Kantian aesthetics, considered as the founding moment of modern aesthetic subjectivism. The first section reviews Gadamer’s criticisms of Kantianism before exposing, in the second section, the reinterpretation made by some neorealist thinkers (Shaviro, Harman) of the Kantian conception of art and beauty and, more generally, of the meaning of aesthetics at large. Through this line of inquiry the third section exposes an aesthetic interpretation of the ‘principle of unreason’ introduced by Quentin Meillassoux. By way of conclusion, the fourth section examines the philosophical meaning of art and the general aims of an ontological aesthetic.