Essays on Aesthetic Genesis is a collection of essays written on Jeff Mitscherling’s work in realist phenomenology, Aesthetic Genesis: The Origin of Consciousness in the Intentional Being of Nature. The authors explicate, expand, contextualize and apply the concepts of intentional being, the “New Copernican Hypothesis” (a reversal of the fundamental tenet of phenomenology that all consciousness is intentional—intentionality, rather, gives rise to consciousness), the idea of intentional structures in nature, and the foundational concepts of Aesthetic Genesis as they appear in the work of Aristotle, Ingarden and Gadamer amongst others. This book takes as its focus Mitscherling’s comprehensive phenomenological analysis of embodiment, aesthetic experience, the interpretation of texts, moral behavior, and cognition, and exemplifies subsequent work in the field of realist phenomenology being conducted by an international collection of active scholars influenced by Aesthetic Genesis.
