After the “Death of Arst ”: Is there any Life for Aesthetics? Dan-Eugen Rat ¸ iu * Babes ¸ -Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca AǍǞǟǝnjǎǟ. Alongside with the often proclaimed end of metaphysics and of history, the “death of art” has been a concern for philoso- phers by the end of the millennium. This topic is deeply related to the questioning of the status of philosophical aesthetics. The pre- sent paper traces back the history of the topic of the “death of art” attempting to clarify its relation to the aesthetic discourse, by explo- ring the different discursive strategies it implies and explaining the reasons for various theoreticians and artists have embraced it. The examination of the eschatological rhetoric related to art opens up a new way of thinking about the means for aesthetics to stay alive and to preserve its relevance for contemporary art and everyday life. In a book entitled Adieu ` a l ’esth ´ etique (2000), Jean-Marie Schaeffer claims that the belief or hope in the renaissance of an aesthetic doctrine has a deceptive character, despite the increasing debates and philosophical con- siderations on art and aesthetic experience. This would be due mainly to the continuous association between aesthetics and art, by which aesthetic and artistic dimensions are reduced or identified to one other, and to the claiming tosubject the artistic and aesthetic facts to the jurisdiction of philosophy as to their validity and legitimacy (Schaeffer 2000, pp.1-12). Moreover, but from a different standpoint, a correlation was established by authors like Gianni Vattimo in La fine dela modernita (1985) between the end of philosophical aesthetics and the “death” or “twilight of art”, seen as symmetrical aspects of a general situation described as the age of the end of metaphysics and of history (Vattimo 1993, pp.53-65). Is this an apocalyptic diagnosis, a mere millenarian lament, or a genuine fear raised * Email: daneugen.ratiu@gmail.com 410 Proceedings of the European Society for Aesthetics, vol. 2, 2010