THE WORK OF ART AS END OF THE WORLD. EXOTICISM AND SHADE IN THE ESTHETIC THOUGHT OF EMMANUEL LEVINAS

The following work tries to explain and analyze the main concepts of Emmanuel Levinas' aesthetic thought from a hermeneutical point of view focused on the ontological meaning that lies under Levinas' ideas concerning perception of the work of art and essence of aesthetic experience in general. "Exoticism" and "shadow" are the two key-notions that illustrate the "metaphysical" background of Levinas' theory of art. Both terms refer, although in a different sense, to the way in which the aesthetic gaze rips the continuity of the forms that shape the perceived world, permitting to sensation, in this way, the access to the domain of that which is nocturnal, formless and defined by alterity that hides behind it.