ABSTRACT
The affordance suggested by a work of art never consists in an entirely irrational turmoil. As a general theory of felt-bodily perception interested in “man as a natural being, sensibly and emotionally affected by his surrounding world”, a pathic aesthetics largely coincides with a more general phenomenological theory of atmospheres. A pathic aesthetics, which is atmospherological and neo-phenomenological, therefore is not a reflective theory on privileged objects, but rather a practice through which to learn “how to expose ourselves” to what happens, in an experience that treasures whatever we may unexpectedly encounter. As the pathic philosophy of felt-bodily feeling, aesthetics can even aspire to the role of “first philosophy”, using art – at most – as an emblematic example. Pathic aesthetics aims to present itself as a general theory of perception. Of course, this perception is neither experimental nor simply constative, but lived and affective.
