Beauty, Aesthetic Experience, and Emotional Affective States

The book attempts to outline the fundamental contours of the possible research of emotionality by the means of analysis of the cognitive aspects of an aesthetic experience. The study presents the results of an impressive methodological combination of philosophical (phenomenological) and current cognitive scientific research.

The monograph is focused on the subjectivity of aesthetic experience and the problem of rational interpretation of emotionality. The text studies why does an aesthetic experience exist, what is its content and what is its informational role and structure? Has beauty any cognitive value? Can we analyse beauty? In what sense we can think about the information content of aesthetic experience? The second topic of the book is a cognitive role of emotionality and its research. Why we have emotions? What can they tell us about yourself and about the world?

The methodology of the study is designed as a phenomenological research of subjective experience that is combined with the newest results in Cognitive science research.

Autorentext

Andrej Démuth studied philosophy and psychology. He is a professor of philosophy and the Head of the Department of Philosophy at the Trnava University. He is the author of many books and articles on cognition and the relationship between reflected and non reflected knowledge and he regularly gives invited lectures at universities in Slovakia and abroad. His research focuses on modern philosophy, epistemology and cognitive studies.

Inhalt

Forgotten emotionality and the issues in its research The structure of aesthetic experience A phenomenological-existential analysis of aesthetic experience Aesthetic experience from a neuroscientific perspective What matters to us in aesthetic experience from an evolutionary perspective? An attempt to summarize the meaning of emotion and an outline of the philosophy of emotionality from a second person point of view The cognitive aspects of emotions and the importance of their expression