Agamben and Destruction of the Aesthetics in the Man without Content

The main concern of Agamben in The Man without Content is the problem of art as a result of and even the foundation of contemporary nihilism. He believes that art since it has begun to be treated as a subject of aesthetics and taste has lost its fundamental functions and powers in opening the human world and revealing the truth. Drawing on Heidegger, Benjamin, and Baudelaire, this article attempts to analyze and interpret the thoughts of Giorgio Agamben about the destruction of aesthetics, what he means by that and how he proceeds. Following Heidegger, Agamben intends to destroy aesthetics in search of rediscovering and reviving the origins (archai) that are hidden and forgotten in the ruins of the tradition. Based on the concept of poiesis as the essential feature of art, in contrast to praxis as the only action of man in modernity, he tries to diagnose the contemporary condition of art. In the search of original structure or the essence of art as poetic action of human beings, Agamben believes that the role of art in our contemporary situation is to fill the gap between the past and the present because in our nihilistic situation tradition cannot transfer its meaning and truth to us, so we encounter it just as a cultural heritage.