Moritz Geiger and Aesthetics

Abstract

Although a member of the Munich school of phenomenology Moritz Geiger is also an American phenomenologist. Apart from his visits to the United States, Geiger spent the last years of his life, and died, in this country. As one of the major writers in phenomenological aesthetics, Geiger did not exercise an influence commensurate with his work. There are good reasons for this “failure.” His emigration to the United States deprived him of an audience sufficiently versed in phenomenology and the intellectual climate from which it emerged. His early death left various unfinished works, including Die Bedeutung der Kunst. The emerging interest in various circles in the Husserlian philosophical phenomenology and its methodology left the more specialized domains of phenomenological researches less visible. As a matter of fact, because of the specialization Husserl called Geiger a “quarter phenomenologist”.¹ Moreover, the American interest in existential and ontological topics shifted the focus away from concrete phenomenological work toward the more abstract concerns of Being and Existenz.