Abstract

Historicity and Intersubjectivity of the Aesthetic Experience: Between Jauß and Kant This article seeks to formulate a theory of aesthetic experience, which includes a historical dimension. It first takes some historical examples of aesthetic experience and looks for similarities amongst them. It then presents a personal reading of Jauß’s theory of aesthetic experience, which, though historicist, presents a general or universal structure. The article aims to demonstrate that Jauß’s theory is highly productive for the purpose of the current argument, but offers no satisfying solution to the problem of intersubjectivity. To solve this problem, the author turns to a recent reading of Kantian aesthetics, providing a complement to a general theory of aesthetic experience, which includes a non-relativistic factor of historicity.