En æstetisk filosofi om sanseoverskridende erfaringer

Resumé

The full doctoral thesis, The Beautiful Thinking, by the Danish
Historian of Ideas Dorthe Jørgensen, is an impressive and erudite work
that challenges modern theology to learn from philosophical aesthetics
or, more specifically, a ‘metaphysics of experience’. Taking her point of
departure in Baumgarten’s concept of sensitive cognition, she sets out to
develop a philosophy which, contrary to the erratic strictures of empirical
science, on the one hand, and superficial tendencies of the modern entertainment culture, on the other, is able to grasp experiences of ‘immanent
transcendence’ or ‘a surplus of meaning’. In this review article, however, I warn against the romanticizing implications of this endeavor inasmuch as the subject matter of theology is a confessional tradition rather than some form of experiential sensitivity.