During my stay in Berlin from 1973 until today, but especially in the beginning, I realized that I had shortcomings in the theoretical field of art. And I do not mean only the space of Art History, which I more or less knew, but more the depth: that is, what is art, what is hidden behind an image, what is the magic of art, that artists sacrifice so much to serve it, and it is not exhausted, but as religion remains and does not disappear from society? It was like asking what life is, how it was created and why we exist. So little by little, timidly I began to study the thoughts and analyzes of philosophers who from antiquity dealt with this aspect of art and in fact very seriously: from Plato and Aristotle, through Kant and Hegel, to reach the most modern, through which I understood the older ones.
At first I believed or thought that a work of art that according to many has a quality, sooner or later will be imposed. But I found that this was true in the old days, in closed societies, which in the long run had established firm rules, which they followed, and the confrontations between them took place in a limited space and in the long run. Today, when time and space have shrunk due to the rapid transmission of information through technology, the gates of all kinds of thought, philosophy, religion, aesthetics, etc. have opened wide, and the old rules are no longer valid.
In this pluralism that is reopening before us, I feel the great need to seek the scientific help of experts, and not to limit myself simply to my instinct which has limited possibilities. And these are first and foremost the serious philosophers and writers who have dealt in depth with the aesthetics of art. I began to question the objectivity of quality, the rules by which DNA normally takes on nature. What once moved many, such as the BEAUTIFUL, is reversed, and replaced by the UGLY, the AGGRESSIVE, the CHEAP MATERIAL: expensive materials are offered for the war industry. So, for these and many other questions I had to turn to the help of the wise.
The one who helped me the most with his writings in many questions I had and have is Wolfgang Welsch who lives in Berlin. Studying his texts, for the first time I understood the terms “aesthetic-anesthetic”, those who are iconoclasts and why. It paved the way for me to understand what “Erhabene” is, the High, which the Mind captures with meanings, but the imagination fails to understand it and turn it into an image, into visible forms, either because of size or because of spirituality. which is not decoded, and which Kant did not want to touch for many reasons.
I understood the importance of the Postmodern, that many theorists either did not understand what it was about to make it understandable to us, or reacted deliberately. For Welsch it was clear and he explained it clearly.
[Or that the Postmodern brings nothing new, only diversity. And this diversity includes the previous forms, from antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Modern era. The news is that for the first time it is becoming sovereign and legitimate, and that is what differentiates Postmodern from Modern of the 20th century.
Lyotard described this relationship of the Postmodern to the Modern as follows: “The Postmodern was neither for nor against the Modern. It always existed, only it was hidden “.
This is the picture we need to know. What was once a connecting link has now taken over. Therefore, we should not be surprised that Lyotard, as a model of postmodern thought, does not first recognize Wittgenstein with the games of language, but Kant with his variations on the forms of the mind, like Aristotle who captures the Wisdom and the diversity of existence.
And because these difficult but interesting meanings of the wise a. are not embedded with a shallow reading and b. What I studied would be useful to make known to younger Greeks, I decided to translate them and edit them in Greek.
Unfortunately, to date I have not been able to publish them, as, as is well known, the rights process is complicated and costly. But I hope that one day this wish will come true.
