Abstract
In this paper, we focus on the explanation of the essence of artistic experience presented in texts of french philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas. We are going to elaborate on Lévinas's idea that the problem of home - what should be its proper meaning - is tightly connected with the question of what makes art so extraordinary and important for us.
And we are interested mainly in the fact Lévinas offers not one but two possible and even contradictory answers. Either the works of art affect us so powerfully because they allow us to experience the feeling of being home within our original and non-usual bond with the world or, on the other hand, they precisely destroy these ties.
Nevertheless, only in the second case, Lévinas says, thanks to the art we are able to realize that true sense of "being home" does not refer to our personal inhabitancy but to our relations with others who always teach us that the world is never exclusively ours and therefore is so enigmatic and thus so beautiful.