ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on three themes: a life limited by illness, aesthetic experience and the return enhanced. The tension of Jane's dying has been resolved as the rhythmic patterns of the lifeworld have been understood through the process of reflecting on the experience. A more recent sociological interpretation of Kant suggests that the aesthetic experience of cultural objects is characterized by the "free play of cognitive and numinous experience unstructured by concepts". In relation to arts-based research, the impediment to the Kantian interpretation of aesthetic experience which confines it to fine art is challenged. A more spiritual view takes into account both the mystical aspects of the aesthetic alluded to by the philosopher William James and the relevance of nature, concluding with the suggestion that the varieties of aesthetic experience act as a gateway to "cosmic consciousness". To summarise, the phenomenological nature of aesthetic experience implies a sensate focus on an object as an experience felt in a particular way.
