Dorthe Jørgensen

The term ‘the intermediate world’ is a key concept in Den skønne tænkning and the metaphysics of experience presented by this book. The metaphysics of experience is about the experiences of transcendence and beautiful thinking that take place in the intermediate world. In the article “The Intermediate World,” this subject is introduced through a discussion of thoughts and concepts formulated by Paul Klee, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Mark C. Taylor, and Eugenio Trías. The text depicts the intermediate world as the level of experience at which the understanding does not yet distinguish between subject and object. The intermediate world is thus not a realm between human and world, nor is it something outside the world we know. The intermediate world is rather the present world in its most original state: the ‘place’ where we find the source of all experience and cognition, a source called ‘basic experience’ characterized by sensation, faith, and comprehension. In this realm, imagination is active and takes the form of an objective force rather than a subjective mental power. Imagination opens mind and world, thus allowing not-yetactualized possibilities to become perceivable.

Philosophy is experiencing a crisis. This can be seen not only from the discourse on university policy—with its demand for immediate applicability and its ongoing attack on the humanities—but also within philosophy itself. There is a widespread reluctance towards thinking that goes beyond pure description and barren concept analysis. It is therefore essential to revitalize the philosophia that philosophy was originally introduced as. This revitalization should not ignore the criticism of metaphysics, nor should it result in anti-metaphysics, but rather take shape as a philosophy of experience characterized by an interest in experiences of transcendence (i.e., aesthetic, religious, and philosophical experiences). Philosophical aesthetics and hermeneutic phenomenology have already attempted to encourage ‘meditative thinking’ in times dominated by ‘calculative thinking.’ Both philosophy and the humanities can be enhanced by a philosophy of experience that mobilizes thought found in A. G. Baumgarten’s aesthetics and Walter Benjamin’s hermeneutics.