Aesthetic community

Abstract

Taste, as a faculty of aesthetic appreciation, involves an individual, and yet assumes a community. In this article, a distinctly singular mode of being attuned to objects of taste is shown to be conditioned by the consent of others and by being-with others, thereby constituting what is named here an ‘aesthetic community.’ This idea of an aesthetic community is traced back to Kant’s sensus communis and to Heidegger’s notion of preservation: for both, it is the presence of a community that conditions aesthetic experience.