69 Natasa Vilić Bauman’s understanding of aesthetic space Natasa Vilić 1 Original scientifc paper University of Banja Luka UDC 111.852:17.035.1 Faculty of Philosophy DOI 10.7251/SOCEN1713069V Department Philosophy/Aesthetics Accepted: 15.09.2017 Bulevar vojvode Petra Bojovica 1a 78 000 Banja Luka e-mail: natasa.vilic@f.unibl.org Bauman’s understanding of aesthetic space Abstract In this paper we will revise the concept of art as a form that demands a physical space in order to encounter the Other and in doing so we will endorse Zygmunt Bauman’s comprehension of aesthetic space. Contemporary artists like Andy Warhol, Jan Fabre and Oliver Stone testify that this physical and aesthetical space represents what Bau- man calls the “challenge that labors the knowledge” On that way, contemporary art becomes a “mirror” of life and culture, an image of a “fuid modern era”. Only one thing missing in that image is a distance, which enables us to behold a truthfulness and wholeness of a being. Keywords: art, space, aesthetics, encounter with other, culture, fuid life Art has always set before us the demand to understand a human being and the reality in which he dwells (to which he belongs to). Te fundamental question that we have always asked ourselves and we still need to ask, in spite of all accumulated knowledge and modern technology, is the same one that Friedrich Nietzsche posed more than a century ago: “What does a man ac- tually know about himself?” 2 A man is the cause of Nature, but also the con- sequence of that what he makes out of himself. “In nature, there is no efect 1 Associated Professor, PhD in Philosophy 2 Friedrich Nietzsche (1991), Philosophy and truth – selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the early 1870’s. London, Humanities Press International, p. 80