„Zaujetí kvalitou“ jako protoestetická událost

Contrary to Ingarden’s meticulous analyses and explanations of many serious aesthetic problems, the initial stages of aesthetic experience or, more aptly, the event that immediately precedes this experience, is rather neglected in his work. This study seeks to fill in the ‘place of indeterminacy’ in Ingarden’s description of the process of aesthetic experience, where the philosopher draws on two notions: drawing toward quality and entry emotion. It uses two main sources. The first is phenomenology, in particular Husserl’s notions of the transition to modalities, the inclination to judge, and Dufrenne’s affective qualities and aesthetic value. As a second point of departure, the study borrows from a wide range of contemporary concepts proper to such fields as cognitive neuroscience, including affective heuristics, affective forecasting, unconscious affect, attitude and attitudinal change, and subtle distinctions in the field of emotions by Damasio: emotion, feeling, and feeling of feelings. Tracing the complex inter-relations among attention, affect, and the affective fixation of attentional focus, the author presents his conclusion concerning the non-aesthetical nature of the first quality in proto-aesthetic event, the event character of this proto-phase of the aesthetic experience, and the initiation of aesthetic experience through self-reflective feeling of feeling, aka entry emotion