(Definition - Nature and Scope - Aesthetic object - Aesthetic judgment - Aesthetic Art, expression and experience)
A) What is Aesthetics?
Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy devoted to conceptual and theoretical inquiry into art and aesthetic experience. It is the philosophical study of art, beauty and taste. It is closely related to the philosophy of art, which is concerned with the nature of art and the concepts in terms of which individual works of art are interpreted and evaluated. Etymologically speaking, the word "aesthetics" derives from the Greek "aisthetikos", meaning "of sense perception".
In practice, we distinguish between aesthetic judgments (the appreciation of any object, not necessarily an art object) and artistic judgments (the appreciation or criticism of a work of art). Thus aesthetics is broader in scope than the philosophy of art. It is also broader than the philosophy of beauty, in that it applies to any of the responses we might expect works of art or entertainment to elicit, whether positive or negative.
Aestheticians ask questions like "What is a work of art?", "What makes a work of art successful?", "Why do we find certain things beautiful?", "How can things of very different categories be considered equally beautiful?", "Is there a connection between art and morality?", "Can art be a vehicle of truth?", "Are aesthetic judgments objective statements or purely subjective expressions of personal attitudes?", "Can aesthetic judgments be improved or trained?"
The Concept
The term ‘aesthetic’ was first used in the eighteenth century by the philosopher Alexander Baumgarten to refer to cognition by means of the senses, sensuous knowledge. Or in other words, aesthetics is ‘the science of how things are cognized by means of the senses’.
He later came to use it in reference to the perception of beauty by the senses especially in art.
Kant picked up on this use, applying the term to judgments of beauty in both art and nature. Kantian conception of aesthetic perception is disinterested perception, or perception of something without regard for its real existence or connection to one's interests, but just for the appearances it affords. Whereas Schopenhauerian conception of aesthetic perception is objective perception, or perception of something in abstraction from its relation to one's will, and thus merely for the type it instantiates.
Edward Bullough also has a conception of aesthetics. According to him, an account of aesthetic perception is involving psychic distancing of the perceived object, or a disengagement of the practical self in relation to it.
According to Clive Bell, the account of aesthetic perception is focused exclusively on form, or the arrangement of elements in a sensuous medium, independent of all knowledge of the world.
The idea of the aesthetic as marking a distinctively disinterested, objective, distanced, and form-focused manner of perceiving is still controversial.
Aesthetics is applied more fundamentally to attitudes or experiences or pleasures or judgments or evaluations or properties, than to modes of perception.
The concept has broadened once again more recently. It now qualifies not only judgments or evaluations, but properties, attitudes, experience and pleasure or value as well, and its application is no longer restricted to beauty alone.
The domain of the aesthetic remains broader than enjoying aesthetics in art works. We can experience nature aesthetically as well, but understanding the nature of such experience and the properties it encompasses will take us a long way toward understanding how we evaluate and why we value art works. This discussion will focus primarily on aesthetic properties and experience, and on whether a special attitude is involved in the perception of such properties or generation of such experience.
Regarding specific aesthetic properties, Urmson suggests that an evaluation could be considered aesthetic if based primarily on how an object looks or sounds or presents itself to the senses, rather than on how it is actually is.
Aesthetic perception involving such as disinterestedness and distancing, concern only the motivation and not the nature of the perception involved.
How then do we distinguish between two different aesthetic experiences? The differences can be accounted for entirely in terms of objects and degrees of attention. So there is no point of objective aesthetic perception.
There are some personal requirements too. They involve firmly fixed attention, relative freedom from outside concerns, without practical import, exercise of powers of discovery, and integration of the self.
Though people had different views regarding aesthetic attitude and aesthetic experience, yet aesthetics is elaborated often with an emphasis on cognitive elements therein. For instance, Scruton insists that aesthetic experience is necessarily permeated by imaginative thought, that such experience always involves conceptions of objects or their features under certain descriptions.
Pleasure in an object is aesthetic, says Levinson, when it is grounded in a perception of and reflection on the object's individual character and content. In that light, the core of specifically aesthetic appreciation of an object, whether the product of art or nature, might be said to be a focus on the relation between its perceivable form and its resultant character and content.
B) Nature and Scope of Aesthetics
Nature of Aesthetics
It is one of the most difficult tasks to answer the question ‘what is aesthetics’? Aesthetical investigations are directed towards experience of beauty and appreciation of art. The charges against the aesthetics mainly are twofold: (1) that it attempts the impossible, because beauty and art are indefinable (2) that it attempts the futile, in that, even definition not possible, so how can there be an appreciation of an art work. So, an examination and reply to these two charges will reveal to us the nature and objectives of aesthetics as a field of study and investigation of beauty and art and what is beautiful and artful. Aesthetics must definitely, be based on observations about art, about the ideas and feelings that art produces and about the specific interpretations that art communicates. Thus, aesthetics depends on facts from art history, on observations about perception and how we know through our senses, and on reflections on the language that we use to talk about both art and our responses to it. Yet aesthetics is not same thing as art history or criticism. Aesthetics reaches beyond art to nature and perhaps to the nuances of larger picture of sensory awareness.
Scope of Aesthetics
Aesthetics is broader in scope than the philosophy of art itself. It deals not only with the nature and value of the arts but also with those responses to natural objects that are both ‘beautiful’ and the ‘ugly.’ But there is a problem in this conception, because the terms, ‘beauty’ and ‘ugly,’ seem to be too vague in their application and too subjective in their meaning because, by means of which we try to divide the world into two types: beautiful and ugly. Almost anything might be seen as beautiful by someone who is optimistic and at the same time everything would seem ugly for a pessimistic person.
It may also be, however, that the term beautiful has no sense except as the expression of an attitude, which is in turn attached by different people to quite different states of affairs. However, these terms are the most important or most useful either in the discussion or criticism of art.
But Aesthetics deals more widely than the study either of beauty or of ugly, or of other aesthetic concepts. At a very basic level aesthetics involves the knowledgeable appreciation of art, an enquiry toward art for purposes of examination, refinement, and elaboration. To some degree, the study of aesthetics is applicable to all age groups simply because aesthetics is the study of how humans relate and give meaning to a particular type of phenomenon (art).
C) Aesthetic Object (One of the Three Foci of Philosophical Aesthetics)
Philosophical aesthetics has three foci through each of which aesthetics might be adequately conceived. One focus involves a certain kind of practice or activity or object (the practice of art, or the activities of making and appreciating art, or those manifold objects that are works of art.)
A second focus involves a certain kind of property, feature, or aspect of things - namely, one that is aesthetic, such as beauty or grace or dynamism.
The study of aesthetic properties evidently requires some conception of when a property is an aesthetic one. These are perceptual or observable properties, directly experienced, and properties relevant to the aesthetic value of the objects that possess them.
But regarding when an object becomes or what is the measure according to which we judge that an object has aesthetic sense is disputable.
But we have some hallmarks proposed to us; they are: having gestalt character; requiring taste for discernment; having an evaluative aspect; affording pleasure or displeasure in mere contemplation; requiring imagination for attribution; requiring metaphorical thought for attribution; being notably a focus of aesthetic experience; being notably present in works of art
What perceivable properties of things are aesthetic? They are beauty, ugliness, sublimity, grace, elegance, delicacy, harmony, balance, unity, power, drive, elan, vehemence, anguish, sadness, tranquility, cheerfulness, serenity, melancholy, and sentimentality.
And a third focus involves a certain kind of attitude, perception, or experience – one that, once again, could be labeled aesthetic.
Aesthetics is concerned with certain kind of distinctive experience or states of mind. Now the question is: when a state of mind or mental activity is an aesthetic one? Among the marks that have been proposed as distinguishing aesthetic states of mind from others are: disinterestedness, or detachment from desires, needs and practical concerns; non- instrumentality, or being undertaken or sustained for their own sake; contemplative or absorbed character; focus on an object's form; focus on the aesthetic features of an object; and figuring centrally in the appreciation of works of art.
There is close relations between these three foci. An art is a practice through which we would like to make objects which reflect valuable aesthetic properties or which are suitable to give valuable aesthetic experiences.
D) Philosophy of Art (Aesthetic Art)
Generally speaking, art is an expression of thoughts, emotions, intuitions and desires. But yet we can come across different conceptions of art. Let us see some of them:
One conception of art sees it as especially concerned with perceptible form, with the exploration and contemplation of such form for its own sake. This view has roots in the work of the eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who thought that the beauty of objects, artworks and natural phenomena alike, consisted in their ability to stimulate aesthetic emotion.
Another conception of art is that art is essentially a vehicle of expression or of communication, especially of states of mind. Art is a way for the artist to articulate or make clear the exact nature of his or her emotional condition.
A third conception of art sees it as tied to the mimesis, imitation, or representation of the external world. We are going to see about this in the Republic of Plato and the Poetics of Aristotle.
Other important conceptions of art regard it as an activity aimed explicitly at the creation of beautiful objects, including faithful representations of natural and human beauty. It is platform for the exhibition of skill, particularly skill in the fashioning or manipulating of objects that is capable of exciting admiration.
Some see art as interpretation. Oscar Wilde said, “It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” What does it mean? It means that interpretation is important. And also observe what Nietzsche said, “There are no facts, only interpretations.” That means there is only hermeneutics. This is what exactly said by Heidegger when he proclaimed that hermeneutics is ontological.
Some also conceive art as processual, for the essence of arts is never a closed system, since arts depicts life and life itself is a process. Therefore, art is processual. Life is lived in bits, in moments, from moment to moment; so, there cannot be final theory that can depict life in its multifaceted aspects. At every moment, life is facing a new ebb and flow. E.g., Whitehead
Art is also conceived as moral instruction by some. English drama critic Thomas Rymer (17 cent) coined the phrase poetic justice to describe how a work should inspire proper moral behaviour in its audience by illustrating the triumph of good over evil. Poetic justice is a literary device in which virtue is ultimately rewarded or vice punished.
Art is also used by art therapists, psychotherapists and clinical psychologists as art therapy.
Art is also used for propaganda, or commercialism. Art is often utilized as a form of propaganda, and thus can be used to subtly influence popular conceptions or mood. In a similar way, art that tries to sell a product also influences mood and emotion.
Purpose of Art
Art has a great number of different functions. It has many unique, different, reasons for being created. The different purposes of art may be grouped according to those that are non-motivated, and those that are motivated.
Non-motivated functions of art
The non-motivated purposes of art are those that are integral to being human. They do not fulfil a specific external purpose. Aristotle said, “Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature.” In this sense, Art, as creativity, is something humans must do by their very nature (i.e., no other species creates art), and is therefore beyond utility.
Basic human instinct for harmony, balance, rhythm- Art at this level is not an action or an object, but an internal appreciation of balance and harmony (beauty), and therefore an aspect of being human beyond utility.
Experience of the mysterious- Art provides a way to experience one’s self in relation to the universe. This experience may often come unmotivated, as one appreciates art, music or poetry. “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” -Albert Einstein
Expression of the imagination- Art provide a means to express the imagination.
Universal communication- Art allows the individual to express things toward the world as a whole.
Ritualistic and symbolic functions- In many cultures, art is used in rituals, performances and dances as a decoration or symbol. While these often have no specific utilitarian (motivated) purpose, anthropologists know that they often serve a purpose at the level of meaning within a particular culture. This meaning is not furnished by any one individual, but is often the result of many generations of change, and of a cosmological relationship within the culture.
E) Aesthetic Experience
There are several recent attempts to characterize aesthetic experience, or something closely related to experience such as aesthetic pleasure or admiration. We see some of them.
1. Scruton’s Imagination Theory
According to Scruton, aesthetic experience consists in the appropriate enjoyment of an object for its own sake. However, it is somewhat hard to pin down what the appropriate enjoyment consists in. For Scruton, it is not the appreciation of certain properties – aesthetic properties – of the object. What is appreciated are 'things' not literally possessed by the object but appropriately imagined to be so possessed. For example, Scruton would count sadness in music. We can imagine that some type of music can be attributed with sad emotion.
What we come to know first of all is that it's not clear that Scruton sufficiently justifies that musical sadness is not actual properties of artworks. Second, it is really puzzling how there could be norms of any real strength concerning what Scruton calls aspects – imagined but not real features of objects. Finally, it is not clear that enjoyment is always required for positive aesthetic experience. We may value the experience offered by shocking works of art without necessarily enjoying it.
2. Walton’s Pleasure Theory
Walton proposes that aesthetic pleasure is pleasure taken in finding something valuable or in admiring it. So, aesthetic pleasure is a kind of double pleasure: a) pleasure in an object and b) pleasure in one's admiration or discovery of value in the object. But there may be situations in which we may not find pleasure but they can be right away called aesthetic. For example, someone is using a new sponge for cleaning dishes, and notes its unusual efficiency. He takes pleasure in this property of the sponge and takes further pleasure in the discovery of the sponge's value. But, neither efficiency nor pleasure in the discovery of something's efficiency seems like aesthetic pleasure.
Again consider enjoying a sunset. Someone takes pleasure in the color and luminescence arrayed across the evening sky. This is itself an aesthetic pleasure. Is it necessary that someone has to take a further pleasure in finding value in this in order to experience aesthetic pleasure? No, not at all. The "how marvelous" experience might be relevant to understanding a type of art appreciation, but, since there are lots of experiences we are inclined to call "aesthetic" that the pleasure-criterion doesn't cover, and lots of non-aesthetic experiences pleasure-criterion does cover, it does not seem like an apt characterization of the aesthetic per se.
3. Levinson’s Aesthetic Form or Quality Theory
"To appreciate something aesthetically is to attend to its forms, qualities, and meanings for their own sakes, and to their interrelations.”[1] For Levinson, we are appreciating real features of objects and this enables him to avoid the normative slippage that plagues Scruton's view.
This is a complex account requiring attention to, or apprehension of, several distinct elements, their interrelations to each other. But if we say that the aesthetic quality of one's experience arises from a structural base, then we have a question to answer. The question follows: What does such a base consist in when one aesthetically experiences a sunset? Apart from the qualities of color and luminescence in the sunset, there seems to be nothing as formal structure.
Looking back over these various proposals, and our criticisms of them, we can get a sense of an approach to identifying aesthetic experience that preserves their best features and avoids their problems. Aesthetic experience is object oriented. It can be directed toward a broad array of features of objects – forms, perceptual qualities, meanings. This sort of experience is valued (valuable) for its own sake.
4. Internalist and Externalist Theories
Theories of aesthetic experience may be divided into two kinds according to the kind of feature appealed to in explanation of what makes experience aesthetic. Internalist theories appeal to features internal to experience, typically to phenomenological features, whereas externalist theories appeal to features external to the experience, typically to features of the object experienced. The distinction between internalist and externalist theories of aesthetic experience is similar, though not identical, to the distinction between phenomenal and epistemic conceptions of aesthetic experience drawn by Gary Iseminger.[2] Though internalist theories predominated during the early and middle parts of the 20th century, externalist theories have been in the ascendant since. Beardsley was against internalist view and advocated externalist one. Generally, aesthetics was moving from internalism toward externalism.
According to the version of internalism, Beardsley advances in his Aesthetics (1958), all aesthetic experiences have in common three or four features. These are focus (“an aesthetic experience is one in which attention is firmly fixed upon [its object]”), intensity, and unity, where unity is a matter of coherence and of completeness.[3]
Coherence, in turn, is a matter of having elements that are properly connected one to another. This is a kind of orientation towards an object (accumulation of energy towards object). When we say that there should be completeness in aesthetic experience, what we say is that the whole stands apart from its elements. This says that every aesthetic experience must be complete. If someone is watching a movie, he/she must involve all his/her senses into the movie.
We must distinguish between the experience of features and the features of experience. It seems there is confusion between these two. George Dickie says that the three features which Beardsley talks about as the features of aesthetic experience are only the features of the objects we experience. So, there is no reason to think of aesthetic experience itself as having any such features.
As there were different opinions regarding this dispute, there was a shift from internalist theory to externalist theory. Internalism gave up the aesthetics that speaks about the features peculiar to aesthetic experience and retained the ambition of accounting for aesthetic value to aesthetic experience. But now the question is: where does the aesthetic value in a aesthetic experience lie? The answer is the object. An object has aesthetic value insofar as it affords valuable experience when correctly perceived. This has come to be called empiricism about aesthetic value, given that it reduces aesthetic value to the value of aesthetic experience.
Aesthetic experience aims first at understanding and appreciation of aesthetic properties of the object. The object itself is valuable for providing aesthetic experience. The value of aesthetic experience lies in experience of the object in the right way.
F) Aesthetic Experience
Expression is a kind of objectification or objective manifestation of whatever is said to be expressed. Certain elements objectify certain other elements. For example, we understand the mind-set or characteristics of people by their gestures such as, modulation of voice, walking style, facial expression, etc. these gestures become expressive of the inner side of the people. Therefore, an expression is a system explicitly suggestive of other factors and its expressiveness is a function of its suggestiveness of the other factors.
The expressiveness of the object is objectified by the perceiver. The expressiveness is not imputed to the object by an observer. It is in the expressive object. Whether what is expressed is literally there or not is another question. For example, when a person is angry, his anger is expressed through various expressions such as, speech, gestures, colours, etc. this is the case in any artistically expressive work. For example, in music, by tempo, rhythm, volume, harmony of the sound and etc., are developed in such a way that they are impregnated with suggestions of aesthetic emotions. If we say that music expresses fervor and compassion, what are there literally are traits which are suggestive. Thus, aesthetic expression occurs, and even communication is established by suggestion. Therefore, there is no need to assume for aesthetic properties.
[1] Levinson, J., The Pleasures of Aesthetics. : Cornell University Press, 1996), 6.
[2] Iseminger, G., “Aesthetic Experience,” in The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, J. Levinson (ed.), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 100.
[3] Beardsley, M.C., Aesthetics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1958), 527.