ABSTRACT
When adopting a disinterested attitude, one does not relate practically to the world according to any interest, nor does one intentionally or cognitively relate to it according to one’s own specific perspective. Why should this make one temporarily lose the sense of oneself, though? What does it actually mean to have such a sense in the first place? So far, I have mostly relied on an intuitive understanding of terms such as “losing the sense of oneself” or “having a sense of one’s own specific self.” In order to spell out fully my account of disinterestedness, such an understanding does not suffice. It is also insufficient simply to rely on introspection in order to defend successfully the claim that a person must lose the sense of herself when aesthetically relating to what a work of art shows. To defend these claims, three things must be accomplished: (a) we must explicate the nature of the sense of self that a person temporarily loses when adopting a disinterested attitude, (b) we must identify the conditions of having this sense of self, and (c) we must explain why these conditions are not satisfied when a person relates to what an artwork shows. In this chapter, I attend to the first and second task; in the next, and final, chapter, I will attend to the third task.
