European Scientific Journal February 2018 /SPECIAL/ edition ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431 82 One Phenomenological Approach to Beauty Andrej Démuth, (prof., PhD) Trnava University, Slovakia Slávka Démuthová, (Associate prof., PhD) University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, Slovakia Doi: 10.19044/esj.2018.c3p7 URL:http://dx.doi.org/10.19044/esj.2018.c3p7 Abstract The presented contribution attempts to introduce a phenomenological- existential analysis of experiencing beauty (aesthetic experience) through Heidegger’s approach to the examination of state-of-mind. It points out a topic which no doubt extremely interested Heidegger, but which he did not approach by the method he offered in Being and Time. The text thus attempts to reconstruct what Heidegger’s answer to the question “what is beauty?” might have sounded like in this period of his work. The offered analysis respects the original structure of the question regarding the state-of-mind and examines beauty from three viewpoints: 1) what beautiful objects have in common and what characterises them, 2) what characterises aesthetic experience, and finally, 3) what matters to us in an aesthetic experience. Thus it attempts to interpret beauty within Heidegger’s understanding of being and being-in-the- world before the “turn” in his thinking. The study points to the cognitive aspects of aesthetic experience in the sense of understanding beauty as the uncovering of being and the truth of the world. Keywords: Beauty, experiencing, aletheia, being, value Introduction In this study we shall attempt to analyse the issue of beauty and aesthetic experience 14 through a unique phenomenological approach, which was presented by Martin Heidegger in his Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) in the hope that this approach may prove to be beneficial not only for the philosophical study of beauty, but also for other disciplines dealing with beauty, or even for philosophers – non-specialists – dealing with other issues and disciplines of philosophy. 14 Despite the thematic multidimensionality of aesthetic experience, containing a great many more aspects than just beauty, for the purposes of this study (due to methodological reasons) I shall limit myself to the identification of beauty with the content of the aesthetic experience.