Abstract

This essay develops a critique of various modes understanding what is "a moment of meaningful form in art." Approaches that maintain a separation between form and content, or the subjective and the objective cannot truly do justice to the presentational nature of meaning in art. In particular, the essay discusses Mikel Dufrenne's conception of "expression" in his The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience as being paradoxically misleading when it comes to understanding the experience of meaning in its phenomenality. The essay concludes with the need to bear in mind that the relationship between presentation and representation, or experience and objectivity should be comprehended in terms of "complementary difference."