Description
part one
Hello Class!
For our course this term, we will focus on the principles of humanities! We will learn how to examine, compare, analyze,
evaluate, interpret, and discuss creative works within their cultural contexts. Before we begin, let us introduce ourselves and think about what we currently know about the humanities.
For your initial post :
What is your name and major?
Why are you taking this course? General interest? Graduation requirement? Please share!
Do you have a creative outlet? Do you paint, cook, garden, or create anything? Please elaborate and share pictures if appropriate.
Please define the Humanities as you currently know them. Do not cheat! (Do not look up the definition, use whatever comes to mind)
For your replies :
Please respond to at least two of your classmates, but feel free to comment on more!
You may respond by noting your own knowledge.
Comment if you are interested in learning more.
Respond with any positive comments or constructive questions.
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.part two
Our Brain & Beauty
How the individual thinks is unique, and how the individual sees beauty is unique. What I may think is beautiful, you may not. How do we think this way? Or what makes us think something is aesthetically pleasing?
Neuroscientist Semir Zeki discusses how we interpret beauty in the TED talk video below:
“Have you ever wondered, as you gaze at something beautiful, exactly what it is that makes it beautiful? Do all things which you experience as beautiful have a single defining characteristic? Indeed, could you even write a definition of beauty itself?
The great Irish polymath, Edmund Burke, described beauty as “for the greater part, some quality in bodies acting mechanically upon the human mind through the intervention of the senses”. I will explore Burke’s definition from a neurobiological perspective and show that there is a single fundamental characteristic to the experience of beauty, one which is independent of culture, education and ethnic background. Moreover, a neurobiological interpretation of Burke’s “intervention of the senses” also gives a brain-based explanation for why the search for the nature of beauty has been so elusive.”
Discussion Post 1
Before you begin this week’s post, sit for a minute and think about what you read and watched this week.
We learned a lot about art and interpretation. Let us talk about it.
For your initial post (Due by Jan 07 Sunday 11:59p):
Has your definition of the humanities differed from your Introduction Post pt.2? What has changed?
Based on the video with Semir Zeki, do you believe the processing of beauty is the same for individuals while the experience of beauty is different for individuals? Explain.
Chapters 1 and 2 from Aesthetics Theory and Practice explore how to explain what is aesthetics and what is art. Using this foundation, explain the difference between the two. Use text examples when possible.
See the painting below by Jackson Pollock. Is this aesthetically pleasing to you, is it beautiful? Why or why not? What do you think Pollock was trying to say? Use text examples from Ch. 1 & 2 Aesthetics Theory and Practice when possible.
What was Andrew Marvell trying to say in ‘To His Coy Mistress?’ What was your overall interpretation of the work? (Use close reading here)
For your replies (Due by Jan 07 Sunday 11:59p):
Please respond to at least two of your classmates, but feel free to comment on more!
You may respond by noting your own knowledge.
Comment if you are interested in learning more.
Respond with any positive comments or constructive questions
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Close Reading
Close reading is a method of literary analysis which focuses on the specific details of a passage or text
in order to discern some deeper meaning present in it. The meaning derived from the close reading is
the reader’s interpretation of the passage or text.
Tip:
There is no such thing as the one “true” meaning behind a text, so any
interpretation which can be supported by the text’s specific details is valid.
Don’t worry about arguing for the “correct” interpretation of a text or passage
and don’t be afraid to be creative in your analysis.
Close reading tends to rely on the principle that no details are present in a text by “accident.” The
author’s conscious intentions in writing are often insignificant, as unconscious layers of meaning or
even prejudices may be sublimated into literary works. Regardless of whether an author consciously or
unconsciously constructs a particular meaning in a text, if details are present which support that
interpretation, it is valid.
How to Begin a Close Reading
A close reading should never be your first reading of a text. Before focusing on the details of a text
or passage, it is important to have an understanding of the text as a whole.
Read the text!
Make sure that you understand its plot, who the characters are, etc. For more difficult texts, it
may take more than one read to do this. That is normal. The better your overall understanding
of the text, the easier it will be to focus on its details and/or the details of your chosen passage.
When you are ready to begin your close reading, take your time!
Read the text actively. Take notes. You may write on a separate sheet of paper, directly in your
book, or you may even choose to make a photocopy of the text or passage and take notes on
that. Choose the method which works best for you.
Do not be afraid to pause to think over what you read as you read!
Do not hesitate to read and re-read sentences or sections several times before moving on. Take
note not only of the details in the text, but also of the impressions which those details create in
you as a reader. The purpose of a close reading is to squeeze the details from your chosen text
and use those details to formulate an interpretation of a deeper meaning or impression present
in the text.
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Some Details to Consider When Reading Closely
Titles Matter!
Always take a moment to consider the title of your chosen text and its relationship to the content. The
author has chosen the title carefully to represent the text as a whole. Often, titles may point to important
symbols or images which you might then focus on more closely in your reading.
Example:
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Birthmark” or Charlotte Perkins
Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the titles refer to prominent symbols
in the texts. Paying close attention to these symbols, how they are described,
and how they are treated in the texts would be fertile ground for a close reading.
Other titles may help to structure the reader’s understanding of the text’s content.
Example:
Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl” is a list of commands and instructions. The
text does not clearly state who these commands are directed towards, but the
title hints that they are commands for a specific girl, or perhaps girls in general.
Audience and Purpose
Who is the intended audience of the text or passage? What is its purpose? Audience and purpose may
help to contextualize some of the text’s details.
Example:
In Jonathan Swift’s essay “A Modest Proposal,” he proposes that impoverished
Irish communities eat their children in order to limit their financial burdens and
gain a source of food.
Understanding Swift’s purpose, to use an absurd and morally reprehensible
argument to draw attention to the plights of these communities as well as to
criticize the faulty and rather callous logic employed by many English intellectuals
in discussing these issues, helps readers to understand his methods and the
significance of the way he lays out his hyper-rational and fairly horrifying
argument.
Narrative Point of View
The narrator is the voice through which the reader experiences the text. That means that all of the
information a reader receives is colored by the narrator’s perspective. Dissecting this perspective may
help to inform your understanding of how the text relates its information and how that dynamic
influences or constructs meaning within the text.
Is the text or passage narrated in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person? Is the narrator omniscient (does he or she
know all of the characters’ thoughts and actions)? Is the narrator’s perspective limited to one
character’s experiences and thoughts? Is the narrator an impartial observer, a fly on the wall who
simply relates the events of the text or passage without giving insight into characters’ thoughts and
feelings?
Does the narrator seem to make any judgments regarding the characters or events of the text? Is the
narrator completely reliable? If the narrator may be biased, how does that influence the text? What
biases might the narrator possess? Is he or she possibly insane, lying, or mistaken?
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Example:
Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl” is narrated in 2nd person. This means that the
narrator seems to directly address the reader in his or her stream of commands
and instructions.
The reader may feel overwhelmed, defensive, or resentful of the narrator as a
result of the narrative point of view. Those feelings may mirror the feelings of a
girl who is being lectured regarding “proper” or “acceptable” behavior. Therefore,
the narration puts the reader in the position of the “Girl.”
What is the relationship between the narrator and the “Girl”/reader? How might
that be significant?
Imagery and Symbols
Often, a work of literature will emphasize a particular image. Images appeal to our senses, so a text
may include visual images, auditory images, images which involve smell, images which involve taste,
and images which involve touch.
What images do you find in the text or passage? Are there any images which appear to be emphasized
more than others? Why? How does that affect the meaning of the text or passage?
Some images may function as symbols in the text: images which have metaphorical meanings beyond
their literal meanings. Are there any symbols present in the text? What metaphorical meanings might
those symbols carry? If we accept those meanings, how does that influence our reading of the text?
Example:
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Birthmark,” Georgiana, the
protagonist’s wife, has a birthmark on her face in the shape of a small hand. Her
husband sees this as an imperfection, which he then seeks to correct by
removing it. Georgiana dies during this process.
One way to interpret Georgiana’s birthmark is as a symbol of natural human
imperfection. If we accept this symbolic meaning, then how do we read
Georgiana’s death? Does the text seem to be commenting on the whether or not
human perfection is attainable?
Characterization
Who are the characters? Is there one protagonist (main character), in the text? Is there an antagonist (a
character or force which opposes the protagonist)? If so, how does the conflict influence the text?
Which characters are focused on and which characters are treated as secondary? How do we learn
about the characters? Does the narrator tell us about them explicitly through description? This is called
direct characterization. Do we learn about the characters through their actions and dialogue? This is
called indirect characterization. How does the characterization influence the meaning of the text or
passage?
Example:
If you were to read a short story which characterized male characters primarily
through their actions, but female characters through descriptions given by a male
narrator, this might be evidence of gender bias in the text.
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Chronology
How is time treated in the text? Is it linear, a-linear? What span of time does it cover? Does it focus on
a period of minutes, hours, days, years? How do the choices about representing time influence or
construct meaning in the text?
Example:
Toni Morrison’s short story “Recitatif” chooses to focus on short spans of time
spread across several decades in the lives of its two main characters.
What might the significance be of choosing those particular moments in the
characters’ lives to show to the reader? What do those moments have in
common? Why skip so much time in between passages? What effect does the
chronology of the text have on the reader’s experience of the narrative and the
characters?
Form
The literal form of a text can influence the reader’s experience of it. Some details related to form might
include line and paragraph breaks, the physical position of the text on the page, the font style, or even
something as simple as spacing.
Example:
In concrete poetry, the words which make up the poem are manipulated to create
visual images on the page. George Herbert’s poem “Easter Wings” is physically
shaped like a pair of wings.
The overall form of the text is important, but so are breaks in form.
Example:
Certain portions of Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl” are italicized.
Why are these portions emphasized and separated from the rest of the text?
How does that affect the passage?
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Sentence Level: Diction (connotations), Syntax, and Punctuation
“Diction” refers to word choice. What types of words are used in the text or passage? Are the words
formal or informal, simple or complex, monosyllabic (short) or polysyllabic (long)? What do the words
physically sound like? Do the words carry any other connotations beyond their literal meanings which
may be relevant to your reading of the text?
Tip:
Dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) are useful resources in
determining a particular word’s history and connotations.
What do the sentences themselves look like? Are they simple or complex, long or short? Hemingway is
often praised for his simple, short sentences. How does the sentence structure influence your reading
of the text? What kinds of punctuation does the writer use?
Example:
“Girl” happens to be a single, long sentence with many independent clauses
separated by semicolons.
What might the significance be of that choice? One interpretation is that reading
the sentence becomes overwhelming, which may mimic the feelings of a girl
being lectured about “proper” and “acceptable” behavior. Therefore, the sentence
structure helps the reader to sympathize with the title “character” of the short
story.
Patterns
What patterns are present in the text? Consider the significance of the pattern itself.
Example:
In Theodore Roethke’s poem “My Papa’s Waltz,” the meter of the poem is
trimeter. This means that there are three beats in each line.
How might that pattern be significant to the text? Interestingly, a waltz is a dance
which follows a 1-2-3 pattern. Therefore, the pattern established by the meter
seems to mimic the dance which is mentioned in the poem’s title. This has the
effect of emphasizing the “waltzing” of the boy and his father in the poem. How is
that important to the poem’s overall meaning?
Is the pattern established in the text ever interrupted? Interruptions or breaks in firmly established
textual patterns are usually particularly significant. Remember that the author has gone to a lot of
trouble to establish this pattern in the text. If he or she is choosing to disrupt it, there is probably a very
good reason.
Example:
In “My Papa’s Waltz,” there are occasional breaks in the meter.
Why is this significant? If the “waltz” of the poem is imperfect, does it suggest
something about the boy, his father, and/or their relationship?
Contradictions/Inconsistencies
Like breaks in patterns, inconsistencies or contradictions in the text are also particularly worthy of
attention. What inconsistencies or contradictions can you identify? What are the sources of these
contradictions?
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Is there an unreliable narrator? What is unreliable about this person? Are different characters’
perspectives the source of the contradiction? What is the effect or utility of reinforcing the differing
perspectives of these characters? Does the text seem to be purposely confusing or contradictory?
What might the significance of that be?
Example:
In “Recitatif,” Twyla and Roberta, the short story’s co-protagonists, remember
some of the events of their shared childhood differently.
What is the overall significance of this inconsistency in their memories? Is Toni
Morrison attempting to make a comment about memory itself? Is she trying to
call attention to the differences in the characters’ perspectives? Why might that
be important?
Allusions
Allusions are references to knowledge or events outside of the text itself, often other literary works, but
sometimes current events or politics. Are there any allusions present in the text or passage? To what
do they refer?
If the text establishes a connection to another text through an allusion, then how does a reading of the
second text influence your understanding of the first text? In western literature, direct allusions to
biblical stories can be common. However, some allusions are very subtle and even unexpected.
Example:
Disney’s The Lion King features a young prince whose father is killed by his
uncle, the king’s own brother. When the prince grows up, he must then make a
decision about whether or not to challenge his uncle for the throne.
The plot of The Lion King can be read as a subtle reference to Shakespeare’s
play Hamlet, whose plot follows a similar pattern. In this particular example,
examining the similarities between the two stories as well as the differences and
deliberate changes which Disney has made to the Hamlet tale would be valuable
to your critical understanding of the film.
It may also be helpful to consider the significance of a modern children’s film
borrowing plot from an early modern Shakespearean play, since the two do not
appear to have similar audiences or contexts at first glance.
Research Anything Unfamiliar!
A quick online search (or inquiry to your tutor or professor!) for anything unfamiliar in the text or
passage can point you to allusions or other connections which you would not have made.
Example:
In reading the poem “My Papa’s Waltz,” you may not have known that a waltz is
a three beat dance. However, by doing a small bit of research on “waltz,” one of
the key words in the poem’s title, you might find this information. Then, you might
realize the connection between the dance and the meter of the poem itself.
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Some Tips for Writing Essays Using Close Reading
Like all literary analysis, close reading should produce interpretations of the text which are
debatable rather than factual. This is the difference between an interpretive claim and a claim
which simply relates a detail of the text. For an essay which uses close reading, the
interpretation of the text will usually be stated in the essay’s thesis.
Example:
Pointing out that Twyla and Roberta, the co-protagonists of Toni
Morrison’s short story “Recitatif” are described as being of different racial
backgrounds, one African American and one Caucasian, but that the text
never specifies which character is of which racial background, is an
example of a factual claim pointing out certain specific details of the text.
An interpretive claim which would be supported by those details is that
“Recitatif” challenges the racialized assumptions of its readers by tricking
them into attempting to figure out which character is of which racial
background and by giving them only stereotypes as evidence to support
their deductions.
The latter claim, since it is debatable rather than factual, would be a
stronger, interpretive thesis statement for an essay.
Because close reading focuses on the details of the text or passage and how they work together
to create meaning, it is especially important to support all claims about the text with specific
examples from the text in the form of quotation or cited paraphrase. Quotations are preferable
whenever possible because of their specificity. Close reading essays which are effective should
contain a large proportion of quotations. However, it is also important to remember to connect
all of those details to your central thesis.
Example:
If you are writing an essay about “Recitatif” using the aforementioned
thesis, you may choose to quote the blocks of text which describe the
characters.
It is important not only to quote these passages, but also to explain how
they fail to provide specific details regarding the characters’ racial
identities, how the text tempts readers to make certain assumptions about
the characters’ racial identities with some details, and how it tempts the
reader to make opposite assumptions in other sections of the text. Then,
you would tie this analysis back to your thesis statement by explaining
how specifically tempting the reader with contradictory assumptions about
the characters’ racial identities might serve to challenge the reader’s own
racialized assumptions.
In writing your essay, once you have formed a preliminary thesis statement, it is not necessary
to dissect every single specific detail of your chosen text or passage in your writing. Focus only
on those details whose analysis will best support your thesis. Some essays will include
discussions of a variety of textual details, while others may focus on only a few. Some details
may not be relevant to your argument. Those details are not necessary to include and may
actually detract from your writing.
Example:
In an analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White
Elephants” which focuses on the symbolism of the hills themselves, the
physical form of the text on the page is likely irrelevant.
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CHAPTER 1.
WHAT IS AESTHETICS?
ALEXANDER WESTENBERG
It is a notorious characteristic of philosophy that any attempt to define it raises more
questions than it answers: if this is true of philosophy more broadly, it is perhaps even more
true of that branch known as aesthetics. Though in some respects the modern discipline as we
know it today is traceable to eighteenth century European philosophy, the important work
done in that century was not isolated from many centuries of work prior. In addition, this
is to say nothing of the long tradition of aesthetical work in China and Japan, for example,
which can trace its origins at least as far back as the European tradition (and, as we shall see,
there are certain similarities of origin). Finally, though aesthetics is often taken today to be
concerned with works of art, this is both an overstatement today and at odds with much of
historical aesthetics.
The question, then, is not an easy one. In the face of such a dilemma, it is perhaps best to
start etymologically: what does the word “aesthetic” mean on its own, and where does it
come from? Though it was first brought into common use with the work of the German
philosopher Alexander Baumgarten ([1735] 1954), the word is Greek in origin, from the word
αἰσθητικός (aisthetikos: Liddell & Short 1940), which refers to the perception and experience
of the senses. On this understanding, then, the study of aesthetics is the study of something
sensed, in a broad understanding of that word, rather than something imagined or reasoned.
That is, the object of study in aesthetics must be, at least in part, sensorial. Of course, one
might think that this is true of science, but the difference is crucial: science is the study of
the material world in itself, whereas aesthetics—in its most fundamental sense—is about the
experience of things in that world. In particular, aesthetics is about their level of pleasantness,
as in asking whether a particular experience is pleasant or not.
At this point we begin to arrive not only at a working definition of aesthetics, but also
a statement of its most important questions. Perhaps most importantly, we can arrive at
AESTHETIC THEORY AND PRACTICE 13
an explanation of why its questions are worth asking and why it is a useful discipline to
undertake. Our definition, then, might be this: aesthetics is a sub-branch of philosophy that
examines questions of the pleasantness of our experiences concerning things in the world
(where pleasantness is taken in a broad sense to include, for example, the intellectual pleasure
of being challenged or confronted). This is still quite general, but it gives us a framework from
which to build a deeper understanding; though, as suggested at the beginning, any hopes of
narrowing it down further may be futile. Certainly, the immediate benefit of this definition
is that it highlights quite nicely a tension that resides at the heart of all aesthetic work: the
tension between personal, subjective experiences and more universal, objective experiences.
If we place all experiences on a spectrum, those at the subjective extreme, such as a personal
enjoyment of swimming or celery are clearly experiences unique to a particular individual:
though of course many people like swimming (and, apparently, celery), we do not expect
anyone else to share in this enjoyment. At the other end of the spectrum we find objective
experiences, which are so universal as to be applicable to humanity in general—experiences
such as hunger, thirst, laughter, physical attraction, tiredness, physical pain, the experience
of colour, the experience of feeling the water on one’s skin while swimming, and so on.
Objective experiences are not concerned with pleasantness; although we might find the
experience of swimming (for example) to be either pleasant or not, nevertheless the
experiences that make up the overall concept of swimming, such as the experience of feeling
the water on one’s skin, are not in themselves experiences of pleasantness, and so lie outside
the discipline of aesthetics. But so, too, do subjective experiences; although a personal like or
dislike of eating celery, for example, certainly has to do with pleasantness, it has to do with
pleasantness for you, and nobody else. Certainly, one could ask if there is anything that ties
together all people who like to enjoy celery, but if the answer is physical, then it’s a question
for physics, and if mental, psychology.
If we eliminate the experiences at either extreme, we find in between certain experiences that
hold tension between being subjective and objective, personal and universal: experiences like
listening to a song, a symphony, or the sound of the waves; looking at a beautiful sunset, a
painting by Turner or Tensho Shubun, a sculpture, a piece of graffiti or a dance; or reading
a novel or a poem. What’s interesting about these experiences is that they are undoubtedly
personal, and yet, unlike the case of liking celery, we expect these experiences to be universal,
shared by others. Unlike eating celery, which is either pleasant or not, these other experiences
involve a kind of judgment, like “this is beautiful,” making it much closer to an objective
experience like “this is yellow.” And, just as we would expect others to agree that a yellow
object really is yellow, and think their perceptions wrong or faulty if they disagreed, so too
with experiences such as looking at a beautiful sculpture such as the Winged Victory of
Samothrace, we expect others to agree that it is beautiful—in fact, at times we expect them
to agree even if they don’t like it, allowing a tension between saying “this is a good book,
but I don’t personally like it.” And yet, at the same time, these experiences remain deeply
14 WHAT IS AESTHETICS?
personal, subjective. And so we hear and use phrases like “this piece speaks to me about. . . .”
It is these kinds of experiences which are the central focus of aesthetics, and so we call these
experiences “aesthetic experiences.” This tension between the personal and the universal,
then, is the driving principle of the study of aesthetics.
If aesthetics is concerned with experiences such as these, then it becomes clear that to restrict
it to any one type of experience or to one tradition is unjustifiable, even ridiculous. And
so, though much of the work done by contemporary aestheticians has its roots in only the
last few centuries, the ancient world was no stranger to aesthetics. Plato (428/427–348/
347 BCE) famously thought the impact that the experience of art could have on people
was so powerful as to be dangerous, and that art did not have anything to offer philosophy
since it merely imitates reality, whereas philosophy seeks true reality ([380 BCE] 1974,
1
bk. X, 595a–605c). Thus, art is a form of deception, so to speak. In contrast to this, the
Epicurean philosopher Philodemus (c. 110-30 BCE) wrote a work dedicated to examining
2
the philosophical import of the Homeric corpus (see Asmis 1991), and Augustine (354–430
CE) ([386–87] 2007) claimed that the study of poetry was an important introductory step into
philosophy (2007). In China, Confucius (551–479 BCE) shared Plato’s suspicion of art, yet he
valued appreciation of beauty for the sensibilities of the self and for its moral qualities also
3
(1938), while his contemporary in India, Bharata, taught a theory of rasa as the end of the
4
arts, a concept not too dissimilar from the Aristotelian notion of catharsis (1950-1961; see
Gerow 2002).
This brief overview of the kinds of experiences we call aesthetic, however, raises another
issue that is often overlooked. Put simply, it suggests that the usual restriction of aesthetics
to artworks and to natural phenomena is incomplete. After all, it is not uncommon for a
mathematical equation to be termed “beautiful,” or for aesthetic concepts and terms to be
used in contexts such as social interactions, military maneuvers, and even politics.
AESTHETICS AS AN 18TH CENTURY DISCIPLINE
Nevertheless, it is a fact that, as I have said above, the discipline as we know it today has
its origins largely in eighteenth century Europe, and so a brief overview of this lineage
is not out of place. This section, therefore, provides an historical overview of the origins
of aesthetics as a modern philosophical subject in the 18th century, and notes its journey
1. There have been a number of recent arguments, however, that Plato has been strongly misinterpreted on this
point (Levin 2001; Planinc 2003; Pappas 2012; Sushytska 2012).
2. For further discussion of the Epicurean view that the arts could be philosophical, see Westenberg (2015).
3. Estimates of Bharata’s life range from 500 BCE to 500 CE, but most put him between 500 and 200 BCE.
4. Catharsis is a notion famously introduced in Aristotle’s discussion of tragedy. Simply put, it is the purgation or
purification of one’s emotions, achieved through a quasi-experience of those emotions during the performance
of the tragedy. See Aristotle’s Poetics ([335 BCE] 1996, 1449b21–29).
AESTHETIC THEORY AND PRACTICE 15
through engagement with fine arts to modern interest in pop culture. The discussion here is
not meant to be an exhaustive historical outline, but a demonstration of the central questions
of aesthetics through the last three hundred years. This will provide the impetus for a
discussion of aesthetics as the study of beauty.
In Paul Guyer’s (2005, 25) turn of phrase, aesthetics
was not baptized until 1735, when the twenty-one-year-old Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, in
his dissertation “Philosophical Meditations on some matters pertaining to Poetry,” introduced the
term to designate “the science for directing the inferior faculty of cognition or the science of how
something is to be sensitively cognized.”
Baumgarten, however, was himself working in a field begun some twenty years earlier, with
the work of the Earl of Shaftesbury (Characteristiks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, 1711),
and his two followers Joseph Addison (“The Pleasures of the Imagination” in The Spectator,
1712) and Frances Hutcheson (An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and
Virtue, 1725) in Britain, and the work of Jean-Baptiste Du Bos (Critical Reflections on Poetry,
Painting, and Music, 1719) in France. Shaftesbury (1671–1713) made the important
distinction, still upheld today, between enjoying something for the benefit it brings
one—whether that be physical, mental, emotional, or any other kind of benefit—and enjoying
something for its own sake, simply because it is worthy of being enjoyed ([1711] 1999,
318–319).
Shaftesbury’s answer to the fundamental question of aesthetics—how is it that our experience
is both subjective and yet in some sense objective and universal—claimed, in a rather Platonic
fashion, that the beauty of the natural world and the created works of humanity lead one’s
mind “higher,” to an appreciation of the beauty of the entirety of creation, and ultimately
to its creator, the source of all beauty (Shaftesbury [1711] 1999, 322ff). This explains how
it is we make aesthetic judgments, since we have an objective standard of beauty to which
we can refer, though we can only come to know this standard through our experience
of its instantiations, thus leading the way to a need for refinement. David Hume, though
he discarded the notion of a creator of beauty and instead argued that we move with the
imagination to a recognition of some form of utility—whether real or not ([1739–40] 2009,
463–470)—understood the need for some kind of standard to explain our use of aesthetic
judgments, and so introduced the idea of an ideal critic whose senses were perfectly refined
5
to the reception of aesthetic experiences (Hume [1757] 2000).
Another important influential distinction of the eighteenth century was made by the British
philosopher and statesman, Edmund Burke (1729–1797), who distinguished between the
beautiful and the sublime. For Burke ([1757] 2005), beauty is a social quality, “where women
5. Hume here takes aesthetic experiences to be experiences of works of art.
16 WHAT IS AESTHETICS?
and men, and not only they, but when other animals give us a sense of joy and pleasure in
beholding them (and there are many that do so), they inspire us with sentiments of tenderness
and affection towards their persons” (part 1, sec. 10). The sublime, on the other hand, is
the deeper experience, the more profound, “the strongest emotion of which the mind is
capable of feeling” (part 1, sec. 7). The sublime is oriented towards what is beyond our
comprehension, whereas the beautiful, for Burke, has no apparent end. So, for example, if, in
listening to “If Love’s a Sweet Passion” by Henry Purcell, one is moved to a surge of emotion,
even to tears, Burke would consider this a sublime experience, because of its power to call up
strong and passionate emotions. What is notable about this distinction is that Burke’s concept
of the sublime allows for “negative” aesthetic experiences, such as the experience of Jordan
Wolfson’s virtual-reality artwork “Real Violence,” to be considered sublime, and therefore
positively appraised. Such an artwork is capable of inducing “the strongest emotions” which,
for Burke, can ultimately lead us beyond the artwork to something greater, and thus the
experience of it is sublime.
Probably the most important philosophical work on aesthetics in the eighteenth century,
however, was written by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), namely the
Critique of Judgement (1790). As is evident from the title of his work, Kant took the question of
aesthetic judgment as paramount, making it the focus of the first half of his book. A complete
discussion of Kant’s work is outside the scope of this chapter, but a few points are worthy of
mention here.
First, Kant’s formulation of the faculty of judgment is influenced by Shaftesbury’s and
Hume’s, with its most well-known characteristic being a disinterestedness in the object of
judgment. What this means is that the observer, the person having the aesthetic experience,
has no vested interests in the thing experienced, and so the judgment is outside of any benefit
to them (Kant [1790] 2015, sec. 2).
Kant kept Burke’s distinction between the beautiful and the sublime, but modified it in a
way that draws together threads from Shaftesbury as well. For Kant, beauty is present when
we discern the intelligibility of what we experience without any apparent ultimate purpose.
Thus beauty is present, for Kant, at a paradox of being purposive—that is, appearing to have
been in some way designed—and being without an actual apparent purpose. As an example,
when looking at a flower that we call beautiful, its beauty seems to be designed, to have a
purpose. And ye
