Mikel Dufrenne – författare

The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience (Fr. Phénoménologie de l'expérience esthétique) was first published in 1953. In the first of four parts, Dufrenne distinguishes the "aesthetic object" from the "work of art." In the second, he elucidates types of works of art, especially music and painting. He devotes his third section to aesthetic perception. In the fourth, he describes a Kantian critique of aesthetic experience.A perennial classic in the SPEP series, the work is rounded out by a detailed "Translator's Foreword" especially helpful to readers in aesthetics interested in the context and circumstances around which the original was published as well as the phenomenological background of the book.

Originally published in 1966, this pivotal work of Mikel Dufrenne revises Kant’s notion of a priori, a concept previously given insufficient attention by philosophers, to realize a rich understanding that finally does justice to one of Kant’s most troubling cruxes. Following the Husserlian analytics of phenomenology, Dufrenne postulates a dualistic conception of the a priori as a structure that expresses itself outside the human subject, but also as a virtual knowledge that points to a philosophy of immediate apprehension or feeling. A friend of Paul Ricoeur, with whom he was detained as a prisoner of war during World War II, Dufrenne’s work until now has been sorely overlooked by American philosophers.

En este estudio, Mikel Dufrenne desarrolla una crítica de la experiencia estética. Centrándose en «el sentido» propio y «las condiciones» que hacen posible la experiencia del sujeto contemplador, Dufrenne perfila la noción de objeto estético, fenomenológicamente entendido, en relación a la obra de arte. Para introducirse en el estudio de la experiencia estética, aborda la organización objetiva de la obra de arte, como totalidad estructurada y potencial instauradora de sentido. Por otro lado, partiendo de un estudio sobre la obra musical y de otro sobre la pictórica, propone un perfil general de la estructura de la obra de arte. De este modo, se va desvelando la clave metodológica: a partir de la descripción fenomenológica, desarrolla un análisis trascendental, para abordar finalmente el ámbito de lo propiamente ontológico. A su vez, considera que la experiencia estética supone el mantenimiento, por parte del sujeto, de una determinada actitud estética.