THE PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATION O. BECKER THE VACUITY OF ART AND THE DARING OF THE ARTIST

This paper is the first publication of a translation of the classical phenomenological article by Oskar Becker into Russian. It contains an exemplary application of phenomenological method in the field of esthetics. The aim of the article's author is to introduce the new category of “vacuity” (it goes from K. Solger) in the former esthetics. Becker believes that vacuity is a con- stitutive feature of the beautiful as well as of the esthetic domain as such. He also calls it “fragility” and “frailness”. The philosopher uses the method of separation (die Abhebung) trying to distinguish the proper meaning of fragility and the similar but not identical phenomena. He states that fragility belongs to any esthetical phenomenon regardless of its tragic or comic character or of its character of pulchritudo vaga. The analysis of the possibility of the disinterested pleasure as opposed to the phenomenon of “thrill” in the field of esthetics given by Becker is of very importance. Generally, he thinks that the esthetical objects are phenomena as phenomena. And their way of being is auto to phainesthai in the sense of Th. Hobbes. The main thesis relating to the esthetical phenomena by Becker, who follows F. Schelling here, is that their ontological basis is in the identity of conscious and unconscious principles of being. In conclusion, Becker analyses of the temporality of being of an artist basing on Heidegger's hermeneutical ontology. Becker, however, introduces his own notion of stateliness (die Getragenheit), which shows that the being of an artist is raised by grace of nature outside the ordinary historicity. Thus, according to Becker.