Abstract

The article addresses the experience of depth and volume of space as a key issue of sensory existence and, accordingly, a key issue of aesthetics. In Kant’s philosophy, space and time correlate and oppose each other as forms of external and internal feeling, however, for judging the reality of the world, the possibility of mutual reflection of space and time turns out to be fundamentally important. The depth of space opens up inside this reflection, so it actually becomes an expression of the principle of the real. Depth perception involves many forms of refraction and embedding of internal and external into each other, requiring careful phenomenological analysis, but the main question remains the location of consciousness in space. The experience of such an arrangement is given by a medium, whose role is a part of the body or a fragment of sensual openness to the world, which begins to be perceived as part of the world itself. In our perceptual experience, the distinction of sensory modes of reality (channels of perception) comes to the fore and the selection of one of them as a leader, which allows it to become a carrier of meanings belonging to other modes. The leading channel actually becomes a representative of the holistic experience of sensuality, and its isolation reveals the work of the medium hidden behind the surface of perception. As such a medium, a person acts as an attitude to the eventfulness of the world, a form of openness, which is due to a constant level of tension, mobilization of feeling, support for one sensory mode by another, readiness for perception. The work carried out by the medium leads to the emergence of an image as a form of entry into space and time, in which the sensual presence acquires its integrity. Aesthetic experience returns to the primary phenomenon of the presence in sensuality and the openness of sensuality to time and space, so that sensuality is lived not only as a given, but also as an opportunity for the subject to grow in relation to both himself and the world.