The individual self in search of the livability of its life questions concerning contemporary aesthetics in view of present sensibility

pages: 677-700

Abstract

This essay interprets the aesthetic (that is founded in aisthesis) with respect to conceptions of an individual, sensitive self which came to the fore since 18th-century anthropology. For the sake of the livability of its life, this self must inevitably get involved in extra-ordinary latitudes of a sensibility which can demand too much of it at any time and which cannot get sublated in a largely normalized life. Final considerations refer to questions of practical forms of life in which that interest presently takes shape. Keywords: aisthesis, aesthetics, sensibility, self, life forms, normality