The subjective neurosis:The phenomenology of perception according to Baudelaire and Sarte

Abstract

In this article we shall be examining the ethico-aesthetic complex inherent in the phenomenon of dandyism and examining in particular the Sartrian postulate with respect to the gratuitous existence of Baudelaire whose social sterility and inability to overcome the ontological fissure undermining his being are apprehended in terms of his fundamental Alterity. Although Sartre would appear to fustigate the dandy’s inordinate propensity towards the imaginaire, his engagement in a solipsistic universe disengaged from the realms of the socio-political, his refutation of the dandy’s so-called social delinquency would appear to be invalidated by the ethical dimension of the philosophy of dandyism which postulates a self-reflexive interrogation of society, premise which finds emblematic expression in the dandy-as-moralist who implicitly reflects the moral consciousness of his era.