Towards an aesthetic experience as mysticism: prolegomena of a trans-subjective universal aesthetic judgement in Duns Scotus

Abstract

This article takes up one of the fundamental aspects of Scotist metaphysics, namely: the univocity of the concept of being, “a true revolution in the history of metaphysics”, according to H. Salinas, because it inaugurated the possibility of establishing it as science: God could be intelligible in the intelligibility of the creature. Within the framework of the question about the implications in the aesthetic field that such a metaphysical approach could have, after a brief introduction about the centrality of the Opus Oxoniense, the essay addresses progressively the questions about the Scotist concept of the univocity of being and of the primum cognitum; the concept of the primum cognitum as ens logicum; that of ens verum as a horizon of universal validity; and, by way of conclusion, being as ens pulchrum, a concept to which, as a transcendental, corresponds an immanent universal trans-subjective aesthetic judgment that allows us to understand the aesthetic experience as mystical experience.