The Aesthetics of Wounding
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59914/SF.29.2025.4.6Keywords:
aesthetics, grace, wounding, Byung-Chul Han, Roland Barthes, Sándor BékésiAbstract
“No poem without accident, no poem that does not open itself like a wound, but no poem that is not also just as wounding.”
What happens if we ask the same of grace? Can there be grace without wounding?
Starting from the semantic field of charis, grace emerges not merely as a juridical category but as an event of joy, delight, and beauty. Drawing on Byung-Chul Han, Roland Barthes, and Sándor Békési, the text asks how grace, beauty, wounding, and truth become intertwined. At the centre of Christian aesthetics stands the wounded Christ: in him, ugliness and suffering do not mark the disappearance of beauty, but its paradoxical fulfilment. Grace, then, is not a smooth and unbroken surface, but an event that delights even as it wounds, unsettles, and opens us to the perception of truth. What, then, is grace without wounding?
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Copyright (c) 2026 Mona Aicha Masri (Szerző)

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