ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests how a phenomenological approach to aesthetics and multimodality can contribute to a development of the field and to a study of its epistemological basis. The starting point is in phenomenological aesthetics and semiotics, which embodies the sign functions and anchors them in a perceptive and gesticulating body. A phenomenological answer to this would be that it deals with the distinction between art and aesthetics and a clarification of the relationship between them. There is quite a significant difference between Peirce and Habermas, because the latter does not recognize the phenomenological basis of signs. A phenomenological point here is that it is wise to avoid making too sharp a distinction between the external and internal and, instead of this sharp distinction, study the potential dynamic and dialectics between external and internal representations. Aesthetic divergent multimodality therefore has a critical potential that can be used in the teaching to promote students' critical thinking.
