ABSTRACT
When a person adopts a disinterested attitude towards something, she does not intentionally relate to it according to her specific perspective, she does not engage with it in a practical way, and therefore temporarily loses the sense of herself. In Chapters One and Two, I argued that it is a necessary condition of engaging with an artwork to adopt the perspective that the work unfolds. One therefore cannot relate to what a work shows according to one’s own perspective if one wishes to engage with it as it asks to be engaged with. I further defined the engagement with an artwork as a free play among one’s powers that aims to construct a meaningful metaperspective, but that due to the work’s antagonistic multiperspectivity and dialectic structure, does not come to an end, but remains an open-ended, yet pleasurable, process of re-articulating and creative synthesizings. I also stressed the non-practical nature of this engagement and claimed that it is mainly responsible for the fact that one temporarily loses the sense of oneself while relating to what an artwork shows. Then, in Chapter Three, I explained what it means to have a sense of oneself, and why relating practically to things and having such a sense of self go hand in hand. Finally, in this chapter, I show why a person typically cannot relate to what an artwork shows in a practical manner, and therefore must temporarily lose the sense of herself while relating to art.
