Exercising the look of love : Romano Guardini and art comprehension as a common space

Abstract

This article argues that the crisis of a work of art as a common space is a crisis of a Trinitarian World Comprehension, which means seeing the whole. Our world today is characterized by a phenomenon: In the end, we believe that we know everything and therefore know, judge, and classify everything. People need security and confirmation of who they are; thus, they no longer have the courage to face the new. Security is about being right, about power and dominance, about conquering others. It’s about having everything under control. Often we do not even want to have an experience because we already know what it’s about. We fail to realize that the true encounter goes beyond knowledge and experience and can produce something that we cannot yet know. The common space is such a space. It is a space of the “unavailable” (Unverfügbaren). The common space is not fixed and defined. A common space comes into being when we encounter the space for what it is and not what we want it to be. How can we encounter the common space? [extract]