The relation between ethics and aesthetics

Elisabeth Van Dam examines the relation between ethics and aesthetics on the basis of the tension between the body in its pathos and the raising movements of reason/humanity. Subjectivity is grasped from within its linguistic utterances and is to be figured in the space of freedom, that is, in its ethical tensions and aesthetical powers. This research departs from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and his linguistically shaped ideas on ethics, aesthetics, subject and freedom. From thereon, a line is drawn towards Kant’s critical philosophy and the spirit of the age of Enlightenment (Schiller’s aesthetical theory and the ideas of the Weimarer Klassik  – Goethe, Wieland, Herder, Winckelmann).