Abstract

Stemming from the term aisthesis , Aesthetics is born. As Heidegger notes at thebeginning of Being and Time aisthesis, for the pre-Socratic Greeks was related to the process ofrevealing and concealing . Physical sensory perception was trusted as knowledge. However,the history of Aesthetics has covered over this sense of the term. From Antiquity on, a history ofphilosophy and Aesthetic Theory alike begin a grand metaphysical project to separate sense perceptionfrom reason and logos. This project culminates in the Age of Reason, with the final subordination of allaesthetics to the categories of representation.Post-Kantian philosophy and Aesthetic Theory has attempted to invert this hierarchy, forcingrepresentation into a subset of aesthetics. These efforts take the form of re-partition, re-integration, andre-turn. In this article I will trace these two trajectories and then conclude by arguing that Deleuze’saesthetic theory ultimately undermines both of these projects, rejecting the “re” as the re- investment inabstract thought. By overturning metaphysical binaries, Deleuze presents us with a practice of art andphilosophy that is grounded in radical difference, not the re-production of the same