Fritz Kaufmann (1891–1958)

Abstract

In his short but brilliant “Art and Phenomenology” (1940) Kaufmann gives a comprehensive overview of the relation between phenomenology and art. He was concerned with finding a way that combines elements of edmund husserl’s phenomenology, e.g., transcendental reduction, and elements that can only be uncovered by a hermeneutics of facticity, such as the wholeness of one’s life and existential affectivity. In his Freiburg lectures, martin heidegger, as a follower of Dilthey, tried to develop a hermeneutics of life that understands all phenomena as rooted in one’s concrete historical life-project and its coherency, which is produced by care, trouble, and temporality.