From aisthesis to aesthetics: Schelling's reversely valued Mimesis

This research arises from Kant's choice of the term aesthetics while he was transforming what can be generalized as the experience of beautiful into a philosophical field of study.The etymological origin of the term aesthetics is Greek aisthesis, which can be regarded as sensation or perception. Kant started his system with the aisthesis in the sense of sensation and he finished his system with the aesthetics in the sense of experience of beautiful. As a result, asking the question about the relation between these two senses becomes inevitable. Besides, since aisthesis is both the initiator and closer of the Kantian system, it becomes a necessary element to complete the system. Therefore, revealing the relation between aisthesis and aesthetics is the key factor to understand any investigation regarding to art and human nature. Schelling is the one who discovered the key factor is the art. According to Schelling, the way to establish the unity of reason that the Kantian system cannot establish is the aisthesis itself. Therefore, starting from the relation between aisthesis and aesthetics, this research tries to reveal how Schelling constructs "the I" through this relation and depending on this construction it claims that the art is the only activity with which human beings can recognize themselves as human beings. For this aim, the relationship between the aisthesis and aesthetics in the Kantian philosophy is examined in the first chapter. Since such an examinationassumes many philosophical dualities such as life-death, mind-nature, thought-matter, subject-object, unity-plurality, the context is founded on these conceptual dualities. The result is that Kant understands aesthetics as an anesthetic experience and converts the aisthesis into anaisthesis in his mediation on beautiful. The second chapter raises the claim that the possibility of regarding aesthetic per se only if the dualities that Kantian system assumes are eliminated. For this reason, the relationship of thought and being of modern philosophy which cannot be overcome by Kant is centred on, as a philosopher who defends the necessity of monism and objects to all modernistic dualisms, Schelling's critique of Cartesian way of thinking is discussed and the reason why the unity of reason could not be formed is revealed. The result of this section is that thought and matter must not be different in kind for the possibility of experience. The final chapter is about the way/how Schelling constructs his system and how he reveals that thought and matter has the same origin along with his critiques of Kant and Fichte. Since he thought that philosophy starts with and ends in intuition, he made art complementary and vital organ for philosophy. Therefore, self-knowledge and self-recognition of "the I" becomes possible with the return of aisthesis to itself.