Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to offer a revaluation of several phenomena that, it is argued here, are too readily omitted from, unjustifiedly maligned by, or inadequately accounted for in the considerations of philosophers of aesthetics: the phenomena of asceticism, the grotesque, and the arts of the Middle Ages coalesce). The first step towards such a revaluation is a reappraisal of philosophical aesthetics itself, which is undertaken here in Chapter One. This is followed, in the latter half of Chapter One and in Chapter Two, by a appraisal of asceticism, and a valuation of the grotesque. Chapters Three and Four are given over to a more detailed account of what is entailed by the aesthetic endeavour, by the ascetic’s peculiar investment therein, and what “lessons” may be learned from his example