Abstract:
The subject of this research is aesthetics as a fundamental category for understanding contemporary society and as a starting point for the development of a theological language that is relevant and current. At first, we explore the concept of Homo aestheticus as a relevant category to categorize the subjective condition of the modern human being. Therefore, we developed a kind of genealogy of aesthetics since its birth as a philosophical discipline and its process of epistemological autonomy; we demonstrate how the aesthetic paradigm that emerges from these reflections is incorporated by the art world, especially by the avant-garde arts of the 20th century; then, we reflect on how these processes initiate an aestheticization of everyday life that, later, will be incorporated by capitalist rationality for the seduction and creation of new consumers who start to relate to people, the world and God from aesthetic-imaginary-emotional criteria. In a second moment, we explain what a theological aesthetic is as we intend to develop here. We try to offer the foundations of a fundamental theology that takes the aesthetic as a hermeneutic way and a starting point for contemplating the data of Revelation. In this sense, we explore the proposal of a “Theological Aesthetics” of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. The presupposition assumed is that aesthetically appropriating the data of Revelation is not only possible, but essential for a Christian theology that intends to remain faithful to the revelation of God in Christ. In this way, we seek to offer an outline of the Balthasarian aesthetic-theological proposal. In the third and last moment, we investigate the implications of a theological aesthetic for a Homo aestheticus. We delve into the essential topics of a theological aesthetic, namely, a "doctrine of vision" and a "doctrine of ecstasy". From the phenomenological reading of John Panteleimon Manoussakis and Jean-Luc Marion, we articulate an Image of God and of Human Being extracted from revelation and with an aesthetic-theological basis. Through the concepts of Icon and prosopon, we point to a human identity that is radically opposed to the absolute subjectivity of the aesthetic age. In the aesthetic-theological description of the experience of God, we point to the prosopic principles of human existence that is materialized as an experience in relational openness and solidary spirituality.
