The Shock of the New: The Experience of Groundlessness in Vattimo's Aesthetics.

The purpose of this article is to examine the themes present in Gianni Vattimo's Art's Claim to Truth. I argue that there is a central phenomenon that links his aesthetics to his hermeneutics: the experience of groundlessness. I consider how three aspects color this experience: the artwork's lack of foundations, the ungrounding of our world, and an element of a-rationality/irrationality indicated by the event of art as experience--i.e., as expressed in affectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]