Mirko Zurovac on the difficulties in grounding aestetics

This paper examines the challenge of grounding aesthetics in the later philosophy of Mirko Zurovac, with particular attention to his study Difficulties in Grounding Aesthetics. Zurovac contends that aesthetics cannot be established without a prior investigation of its methodological and conceptual presuppositions. The discussion analyzes how Zurovac formulates his aesthetic position through engagement with major twentieth-century aesthetic theories, focusing especially on his analyses of Max Dessoir’s „general science of art” and Charles Lalo’s integral aesthetics. Zurovac interprets the difficulties in grounding aesthetics as indicative of the intrinsic complexity of aesthetic experience and the art phenomenon, rather than as temporary methodological issues. This complexity, he argues, resists reduction to any single scientific or theoretical framework. The paper underscores his critique of attempts to explain art through unified models, whether psychological, sociological, or formal, and highlights his emphasis on the plurality of perspectives, which are frequently mutually incompatible within these theories. The aim of the paper is to highlight the significance of the historical-critical approach in Zurovac’s aesthetics, as well as his attempt to establish aesthetics as an autonomous philosophical discipline capable of encompassing the complexity of the artistic phenomenon without reducing it to partial scientific explanatory models.