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Philosophy Seminar Series - Crisis and Criticism II Moderator: Emre Şan Speaker: Oğuz Haşlakoğlu “Mimesis and the Enigma: The ‘invisible appearing’ in the visible of the invisible” Mimesis is a concept that has been almost condemned in the field of aesthetics until Adorno. Starting with Kant, who took the discipline of aesthetics from the hands of its founder Baumgarten on the grounds that it ‘could not contain information’ and gave it its current form, mimesis cannot be art as imitation; otherwise, art loses its originality and with it its creativity. In Hegel, this situation is taken to the extreme and does not remain in the context of representation as in Kant’s aesthetics; when the Platonic ‘idea’ comes into view as the truth of Spirit in terms of its German name of “Idee”, it becomes both real and beautiful in itself. Therefore, art is beautiful in itself as the realization of the Idee and is superior to the beauty in nature. Adorno, who established his aesthetics on the balance between Kant and Hegel, offers another definition to the concept of mimesis by taking an original path that denies both in its basic principles. Accordingly, mimesis is not imitating something in itself with reference to the subject, but 'assimilating' oneself in that thing with reference to the object. From this perspective, mimesis is authentic art in the sense of expressing the inevitable pain created by the wrong world by stripping oneself off oneself as a refuge of liberation that resists the dominance of the mind that appropriates everything through identity. The seminar will aim to question whether there is an opening that can take mimesis beyond Adorno by revealing the relationship between these three. In this sense, the concepts of imitation and symbol that will shed light on the relationship between visual and performing arts will be discussed in the example of 'line'. The comparison of the mimetic limit contained in the act of acting, which is necessary for the actor to take on his role, with the line, which is referred to as the basic element in visual arts, as a limit and a form possibility, will also shed light on this context as the main problematic of the seminar.