Unit 1: Aesthetics

• Aesthetics - defined as the philosophy of beauty and taste.

• It is closely tied to the philosophy of art.

• Defining aesthetics is challenging, self-definition is a major task.

• Explores beauty, ugliness, the sublime, elegance, taste, criticism, fine art, contemplation, sensuous enjoyment, and charm.

• “What should a philosopher study in order to understand such ideas as beauty and taste?”

Unit 2: What is The Concept of Taste in Aesthetics?

• The notion of the aesthetic originates from the notion of taste. The significant philosophical interest in taste during the 18th century is intricate, yet one aspect stands out: the theory of taste from that era arose partly as a response to the increasing prominence of rationalism, particularly concerning beauty, and the growing emphasis on egoism, particularly concerning virtue.

2.1: Immediacy

• Rationalism regarding beauty - posits that judgments of beauty stem from reason; in other words, we assess things as beautiful through a process of reasoning, often involving deduction from principles or application of concepts.

2.2: Disinterest

• Egoism - concerning virtue, it suggests that deeming an action or quality virtuous entails finding pleasure in it due to the belief that it serves one's interests. 

• Hobbesian perspective - A prominent example prevalent in the early 18th century, asserting that considering an action or quality virtuous stems from finding pleasure in it due to the belief that it enhances personal safety.

Unit 3: The Five Aesthetic Concepts

3.1: Concept One: The Aesthetic Objects

• Artistic formalism - posits that the properties of an artwork that are artistically significant—those that determine its status as an artwork and its quality—are solely formal. 

• Formal properties - typically understood as properties perceivable through sight or hearing alone, are considered the primary factors in determining the artistic merit of an artwork.

• Derived from the immediacy and disinterest theses, which suggest that representational properties and those with practical import are artistically irrelevant.

• Prominent formalist advocates were professional critics like Eduard Hanslick, Clive Bell, and Clement Greenberg, who championed formal properties in music and painting.

• Monroe Beardsley and Nick Zangwill also defended formalism, but the rise of conceptual art challenged its validity, particularly highlighted by Arthur Danto's critique.

• Danto argued that form alone doesn't determine artwork status or value, using Warhol's Brillo Boxes as an example.

• Kendall Walton critiqued formalism, asserting that aesthetic properties depend on the perceived category of the artwork, challenging the notion of solely formal properties.

• Allen Carlson extended Walton's argument to the aesthetics of nature, suggesting that aesthetic judgments about natural items also depend on their perceived categories, undermining the idea of formalism in nature.

3.2: Concept Two: The Aesthetic Judgment

• The eighteenth-century debate between rationalists and theorists of taste centered on the immediacy thesis, questioning whether beauty judgments rely on applying principles.

• Despite disagreement on the existence of beauty principles, both Hutcheson and Hume acknowledged their presence, suggesting they could be uncovered through empirical means.

• The contemporary debate between particularists and generalists in aesthetics echoes the historical rationalist versus sentimentalist debate but lacks clarity due to differing interpretations of aesthetic judgment.

• Particularists - like Arnold Isenberg and Frank Sibley argue against the existence of principles governing aesthetic judgment, emphasizing the role of perceptual experience in guiding aesthetic evaluation.

• Generalists - such as Monroe Beardsley and George Dickie assert the existence of general aesthetic principles, highlighting inherently positive properties like grace or dramatic intensity.

• Sibley's particularism and generalism address different aspects of aesthetic judgment, focusing on the role of descriptive features and inherent positive properties, respectively.

• The immediacy thesis, asserting that aesthetic judgments are non-inferential, is widely accepted but has faced challenges from critics like Davies and Bender, who propose alternative principles for justifying aesthetic verdicts.

• Davies suggests relativizing critical principles to artistic type, while Bender proposes inductive reasoning based on tendencies rather than absolute principles.

• Despite attempts to justify aesthetic judgments through principles, the non-inferential nature of aesthetic judgment remains a central tenet of the immediacy thesis.

3.3: Concept Three: The Aesthetic Attitude

• The Kantian notion of disinterest in aesthetic judgment transitioned to aesthetic-attitude theories in the early to mid-20th century.

• Kant described aesthetic judgment as contemplative rather than practical, leading to the idea that the aesthetic attitude is disinterested, unconcerned with practical aims.

• Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory shifted focus from disinterested pleasure to disinterested attention, suggesting that aesthetic value lies in will-less contemplation, providing a respite from desire-induced pain.

• Edward Bullough and Jerome Stolnitz developed influential aesthetic-attitude theories, emphasizing disinterested and sympathetic attention to objects for aesthetic appreciation.

• Stolnitz defines the aesthetic attitude as attending to an object with no purpose beyond attending, resulting in a richer experience of its features.

• Bullough, preferring the term "psychical distance", suggests achieving aesthetic appreciation by detaching oneself from personal needs and interpreting subjective affections as characteristics of the phenomenon.

• Critics like George Dickie challenged the notion of the aesthetic attitude, arguing that purported examples of interested attention are cases of inattention.

• Dickie contends that a difference in purpose does not imply a difference in attention, suggesting that the concept of disinterest may not be essential for aesthetic appreciation.

• While the notions of disinterest and psychical distance may not fully define the aesthetic attitude, they remain useful in explaining certain aesthetic experiences, such as the Athenian reaction to Phrynicus's tragedy "The Fall of Miletus."

3.4: Concept Four: The Aesthetic Experience

• Theories of aesthetic experience can be categorized into internalist and externalist theories, depending on whether they appeal to features internal or external to the experience.

• Internalist theories - predominant in the early to mid-20th century, focus on phenomenological features of experience, such as focus, intensity, coherence, and completeness.

• John Dewey and Monroe Beardsley are notable proponents of internalist theories, emphasizing the introspective discovery of common features in aesthetic experiences.

• Beardsley's internalist theory, outlined in "Aesthetics" (1958), identifies focus, intensity, coherence, and completeness as key features of aesthetic experience.

• George Dickie criticizes Beardsley's internalism, arguing that Beardsley fails to distinguish between the features experienced in aesthetic objects and the features of aesthetic experiences themselves.

• Dickie challenges Beardsley's characterization of coherence and completeness in aesthetic experience, suggesting that these qualities belong to the objects rather than the experiences.

• The debate between Beardsley and Dickie shapes the development of theories of aesthetic experience, leading to a shift from internalism to externalism.

• Externalist theories - like Beardsley's later work in "The Aesthetic Point of View" (1970), define aesthetic experience as an experience with aesthetic content, focusing on the object's aesthetic features rather than internal experiential qualities.

• While the shift from internalism to externalism relinquishes the tie between aesthetic meaning and internal experiential features, it retains the ambition of grounding aesthetic value in the value of aesthetic experience.

3.5: Concept Five: The Aesthetic Value

3.5.1: The Aesthetic Question: What makes aesthetic value aesthetic? 

• This question is sometimes referred to as the demarcation question. 

• The prevailing answer to this question is aesthetic formalism, which asserts that aesthetic value derives from objects' perceptual properties. 

• This view rose to prominence alongside artistic formalism during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

• Aesthetic formalism posits that aesthetic value is perceptual and can be attributed strictly to an object's perceptual properties. However, it struggles to account for the aesthetic value attributed to non-perceptual properties, such as those found in literature. 

• Alternative approaches propose that aesthetic value is perceptual because we perceive objects as having it, rather than deriving it strictly from perceptual properties.

3.5.2: The Normative Question: What makes aesthetic value?

• This question is sometimes referred to as the normative question. 

• The prevailing answer to this question is aesthetic hedonism, which suggests that aesthetic value is valuable because it provides pleasure when experienced. 

• This view gained prominence in the 19th century, notably through the work of Schopenhauer. 

• Aesthetic hedonism - asserts that the value of aesthetic objects lies in the pleasure they afford when experienced. However, objections to hedonism have arisen, challenging its ability to explain certain aspects of aesthetic experience, such as instances where pleasure is not the primary response.

Reference:

The concept of the aesthetic (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). (2022, February 28). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aesthetic-concept/