Abstract

The paper aims at demonstrating that Martin Seel’s aesthetic theory suffers from the same unresolved tension that can be found in Schiller’s ›Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man‹: On the one hand, art is assigned the task of bringing to our attention the undiminished complexity of an object’s qualitative properties; on the other hand, however, art is also given the role of putting us into a state of »active determinability« thanks to its liquefaction of all our well-rehearsed determinations and determinations, thus allowing us the freedom of experimental self-exploration. Both theories fail to make plausible the argumentative transition that could establish a link between these two tasks of art.