Many things can be said about art: contemplation, revelation, expression. The aesthetics took many turns to escape these words without being able to illuminate a new one. François Zourabichvili proposes that it be game. But seriously. Take the game seriously and play art seriously. And also to philosophy. This course traces the philosophical experience of constructing concepts, something that happens very rarely: that of play thanks to art, that of art thanks to philosophy. Zourabichvili speaks frankly, does not go around. Hegel, Rimbaud, Gadamer, Beethoven, Freud, so many people are getting things out of Hegel, Gadamer, Beethoven, Freud, so many. It gets into meanders to then come out with an idea that will enter another meander to, finally, bring clarity about what is confused, as Baumgarten said in the eighteenth century. Art is the confusing thing and that is precisely its clarity.
Philosophy, says Zourabichvili, must admit that aesthetics is not one of its branches, but its destiny. The rest is history of philosophy, "a disease." Art is the object of philosophy because it is the way in which it takes itself as such, on the ledge between the clear and the confused. It is about thinking with others, not starting with, below or above others. It is not that by the effect of the epoch Hegel seems bad to us and Deleuze seems good to us. Beyond good and evil, "we are going to see the authors with our questions," says Zourabichvili, and the choice of corpus is as free as the result is precise, because it is governed by an affirmation.