Aesthetic Theory in Continental Philosophy

Aesthetics is a significant area of research in the analytic philosophical tradition, but it often seems to be accorded less value than other areas of value theory such as ethics and political philosophy. In continental philosophy, aesthetics has been given an important place by nearly every major thinker and tradition. This is due to the importance of art in European education and tradition, the French model of the philosophe as philosopher-writer, and the philosophical reasons behind its importance.

In the analytic tradition, meaning and truth are often thought to be exemplified by logic, science, and the formal structures of language. In continental philosophy, art has often taken this role of exemplifying meaning and truth, making it akin to a philosophical activity insofar as it is thought to produce meaning and truth. Aesthetics takes an important place because it is seen as a branch of philosophy that gives access to some of philosophy's perennially central concerns.

There is no general consensus concerning central topics of debate in continental aesthetics. Instead, this area of aesthetics may be approached according to major traditions and thinkers. Most of these developments have taken place in critical relation with modern and nineteenth-century aesthetics, especially as exemplified by the works of Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgement (1790) has been particularly important in shaping debates in later continental aesthetics, as it stakes out aesthetics as a domain autonomous in relation to other areas of philosophical concern, such as epistemology and practical philosophy.

The importance and scope of aesthetics in continental philosophy can be indicated at the outset by taking the relatively 'canonical' example of Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche on art. Heidegger sets out five statements on art:

1. Art is the most perspicuous and familiar configuration of will to power;
2. Art must be grasped in terms of the artist;
3. Art is the basic occurrence of all beings;
4. Art is the distinctive countermovement to nihilism;
5. Art is worth more than 'the truth'.

These theses indicate that for Nietzsche, art is far more than a pleasant diversion; it has profound ontological, cultural, political, and existential significance, and is even worth more than truth itself. Heidegger expands these theses by stating that Nietzsche's ontology is that of the 'will to power', in which Being as a whole is understood in terms of shifting relations of confluent and conflictual forces, producing the creation and destruction of particular beings.

The fourth and fifth statements give art a practical dimension in Nietzsche's philosophy. Heidegger insists that 'truth' in the fifth statement (and in all of Nietzsche's philosophy) must be understood in a specifically Platonic sense as referring to the supposedly true supersensuous world of the Ideas, in contrast with the untrue sensuous world of mere appearances. For Nietzsche, the old values he associates with nihilism—the decadence of culture and the devaluation of life—are essentially grounded in this Platonic conception of truth through its dominance in the religion, morality, and philosophy of the Western tradition.

In conclusion, aesthetics has had a significant and wide-ranging impact on twentieth and twenty-first-century continental philosophers.