In this thesis I seek to put forward a theory of art with the help of Borut Ošlaj's diaphoric theory, Ernst Cassirer's symbolic forms, Georg Lukács's theory of the novel, and Richard Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk. I propose that art is one of the primary compensatory activites which humans perform to deal with the challenges of the specific reflexive structure of their consciousness. I claim that art is multi-modal creative imitation of the world which creates surrogate realities that recipients can empathise with and thus find in artworks a totality that is inaccessible in daily life.
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