Sascha Roßmüller: CULTURE – AESTHETICS - IDENTITY

This book deals with culture in the sense of an aesthetic manifestation of our identity as community-oriented beings with a tribalistic tendency – the Aristotelian ζῷον πολιτικόν (Zōon politikon). Culture as a phenomenon of the condensed expression of collective self-understanding, interactively identity-inducing and identity-forming. An art experience that triggers inner emotion, or a receptiveness to art in the sense of understanding timelessly valid forms of artistic expression in their symbolic content, can help to embed a certain aesthetic longing in continuity and allow it to become a characteristic feature of identity. The revelation of our identity is celebrated in hymnic form in universally admired works of art. In this respect, this book is also a challenge to the ideology of iconoclastic self-contempt. It is not scientific, makes no claim to completeness, is based in part on a very subjective selection related to personal cultural experiences – and, above all, does not take the slightest consideration of “political correctness.”

162 pages, paperback