Gadamer critiques modern aesthetic consciousness by tracing its development through Kant, genius, Erlebnis, symbol, allegory, and aesthetic differentiation, returning art to a distinctive experience of truth.
Night, Study, and Love are personified within a cosmic allegory where stars, moonlight, book, torch, bow, arrow, and owl unite knowledge, desire, and darkness.
Baumgarten and Kant define two decisive thresholds of aesthetics through sensuous cognition, perfection, judgement, free play, common sense, genius, aesthetic ideas, and the sublime.
Bildung, taste, judgement, genius, Erlebnis, aesthetic differentiation, artistic truth, and play define Gadamer’s critique of the subjectivisation of the experience of art.
