The methodological principle of aesthetics as a philosophical problem

This paper examines the problem of method in aesthetics as an insufficiently thematized yet constitutive philosophical issue. It is evident that aesthetics has historically developed at the intersection of various philosophical domains, most often adopting general philosophical approaches without clearly determining its own methodological foundation. Within this context, particular attention is devoted to Mirko Zurovac’s attempt to interpret method as an internal principle of aesthetic thinking. Proceeding from the thesis of the inseparability of method and object, the paper analyzes the metaphysical implications of understanding method as the „soul of being,” whereby method ceases to function as an external instrument of cognition and becomes the very mode through which the aesthetic phenomenon is disclosed as an object of thought. In this sense, Zurovac’s effort to define the method of aesthetic inquiry as its inner, constitutive principle occupies a distinctive place in contemporary aesthetics. The paper concludes that Zurovac’s methodological principle represents one of the rare systematic attempts to provide aesthetics with its own philosophical grounding, thereby reaffirming its status as an autonomous philosophical discipline oriented toward the understanding of the essence of beauty and art.