Nearness. A phenomenological aesthetics of the low senses

The metaphysics has considered the senses of touch, the smell and the taste as inferior, bodily senses and the aesthetics rejected their capacity of producing art. The theoretical and artistic revival of these senses during the past years hasn`t led yet to a systematic phenomenological approach to their aesthetic value; this is the main purpose of the present research project. Its first part contains a PHENOMENOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPERIENCE OF THE "LOW" SENSES. They are discursive and their fragmentary representations cannot be actualized voluntary. The subject is paradox, at the same time anonymous and extremely personal, active-intentional and exposed to the world. A reciprocal neighborhood replaces the opposition subject-object; the subject is no more free from the world, but free to an accord with it. Eros and Thanatos are present as fulfilment and melancholy, fusion and separation. The spatial structures of the experience (the map of a landscape and consistency vs. void) serve also as a model for a topological phenomenology; this is an an experiencing (erfahrendes) thinking, that goes through (er-fährt) its object (Heidegger). The subject becomes part of its object, which surrounds the subject as an embracing medium and the world becomes environment. The main moods and vectors of this field are reliance as nearness/wide-ness and fear as distance/narrowness. The phenomenological subject is dethroned and removed to the periphery of an quasi- autonomous sphere of (un)pleasure. Working out a general phenomenology of the body is the assumption and the basis for aisthetics (Aisthetik), i.e. for a theory of the finest perception; the aisthetics ramifies further into the particular aesthetics of all senses. The second part draws up an AESTHETICS OF THE "LOW" SENSES. Tactility and movement have a major contribution to the perceptual constitution of the aesthetic object. A survey of the representation of the low senses in all (visual-auditive) arts will be followed by the description of the city, dance, human body, gardens and trips as Gesamtkunstwerken. The possibility of producing works of art adressed exclusively to the touch, smell or taste is to be inquired and the esoteric movement will be pointed out as a para-aesthetics and as a legitime provocation for the traditional aesthetic discourse. The aesthetics of the bodily senses is feminist and anti-European; ist subjects were always the woman, the child, the "primitive" and the exotic Other. The aesthetics has to include the sensorial deprivations, but on the condition of criticizing both the previous aesthetics of the blind for judging their art approach according to visual criterias and the fiction of a pure aesthetic conscience. Also the aesthetics of fragrance is relative to technical and social rules. The lower senses implies the feeling and the mood, the refinement of the distinction and a contextual interpretation. As a topological aesthetics it describes the work of art as an aura, as an envelopping veil, fragrance or aroma, which irradiates aesthetically over the environment. The new values are the tactile patina and the olfactory affective atmosphere. Both of them have a narrative identity and claim therefore a phenomenology of history. The third part considers the relativity of the aesthetic border of the low senses to be a real chance of CONNECTING THE PHENOMENOLOGY WITH THE ETHICS BY THE MEANS OF AESTHETICS AS A THEORY OF PERCEPTION. These senses extend the meaning of knowledge by integrating in it the memory, the flair, the tactfulness, sagacity and sapientia. The existential value of art is due to the "sixth sense", which is neither the meaning, nor the esoteric transcendence, but the proprioception.

Philosophy has relied on the traditional primacy of the visual (and partially acoustic) experience in Western metaphysics and considered the senses of touch, smell, and taste inferior, mere bodily and therefore "secondary". These senses were twice "anesthetized" in the modern West: They were considered unable to produce art forms; and the process of civilization was not interested in their education, which led to their physical underdevelopment. The academic "silence" on touch, smell, and taste is due to the absence of a specific sensory education, to the terminological imprecision concerning their experience, as well as to culturally deep rooted preconceptions. The scientific investigation of these senses began recently and still lacks a general theoretical foundation. Guided mainly by phenomenological theories, but taking also into account recent studies scattered in disciplines like biology, psychology, psychoanalysis, urbanism, cultural and historical anthropology, art history, etc., the present work attempts to undertake a comprehensive philosophical analysis of the haptic, olfactory, and gustatory experiences and to work out an aesthetics of their artistic forms. The research sets forth the idea of grounding the art theory on "aisthetics" and on the anthropology of the senses and argues the necessity to extend the realm of aesthetics to configurations addressed to all senses, including design, urbanism, perfumery, and gastronomy. To summarize, aesthetics should perform a "cultural turn" and become cultural and environmental. The present research carries out phenomenological analyses of the experiences of touch, smell, and taste, partly in contrast with sight. Particularly they stress on the contribution of these senses to the constitution of the personal identity, on their social functions (to ground communities, but also as means of social distinction), and on their ethical implications (tactfulness, flair, sagacitas and sapientia referred initially to touch, smell, and taste). There is also discussed the usual association of the "secondary senses" with women, children, non-Western "primitives" and with the fascination of exotic places. Despite various difficulties in working out an aesthetics of touch, smell, and taste (due to their affective, subjective, ephemeral, and synesthetic character, etc.), upon closer inspection the distinction de jure between "aesthetic" and "non-aesthetic" senses proves to be untenable, and the demarcation line between art and non-art (the aesthetic border) to be relative to the cultural field in which our experience is embedded. Extended analyses deal with the suggestion of haptic qualities in the fine arts, with tattoo, dance and with the artistic experience of the blind people. Smells are either indirectly evoked in painting or are present as such in contemporary installations, in synaesthetic art forms (garden, architecture, urban "smellscapes", avant-garde experiments, etc.). The objections of the philosophers against an olfactory aesthetics were invalidated by perfumers in their writings, while the gastronomical styles and the various manifestations of Eat-Art actualize in two most different manners the aesthetic potential of the sense of taste. Patina, atmosphere and aroma were related originally with the experience of touch, smell, and taste, but they turn out to be relevant also as general aesthetic values. Since their subject is partly pre-reflexive, pre-intentional and collective, such phenomena represent a challenge to the classical phenomenological theory. The specificity of touch, smell, and taste impacts also the theoretical discourse: their tendency to synaesthesia makes inevitable the use of metaphors, while their essential temporality is most accurately reproduced in a narrative manner. Moreover, the experience of these three senses rehabilitates non-semantic criteria of the aesthetic experience, particularly sensibility. Sensitiveness refers not only to receptivity and vulnerability, but also to sharpness and tactfulness, designating generally the aptitude to apprehend fine differences in the realm of perception, feeling, and interpretation. Finally, sensibility is emphasised as a basic condition of the aesthetic experience and even as the primary foundation of an aesthetics of the "secondary" senses.