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PHILL 2260 - Midterm Prep

Jan 6

Introduction to course

Beauty, aesthetics, philosophy of art
- Aesthesis - a form of sensibility 9 think sense-experiences)
- Study of senses
- How does sense experience play a role in our appreciation of art - we consider ‘aesthetic’ appreciation
- Is the appreciation of art an appreciation of beauty?
Aesthetics
- The Greek word “aesthesis”, means sensation or perception
- Aesthetics became associated with the perception of art, or the heightened perception of other significant sense objects, in the 18th century when it was used in this way by the German scholars Baumgarten and Kant
Philosophy of art crosses a lot of philosophical terrain
- Metaphysics
- Epistemology
- Axiology
- Three central (and broad) regions through which we examine art in philosophy
Metaphysical terrain
- Metaphysics: what is the nature of reality
- Here: what is the nature of art? How is it related to reality? To existence?
- What is a work of art?
- How do artists work? (I.E what is the nature of art production)
- Plato's first contribution to this discussion comes through the republic
Metaphysics - what is a painting?
- Is it canvas? What about the brushstrokes? Paints?
- The image in the artist's mind, brought outward? (well examine various answers?
- If it is from the artist's mind, is it conscious, or unconscious? (think Freud, Jung)
Metaphysics: how does an art object differ from other objects humans make
- Is it different from an idea? How different from a memory, a thought? A dream?
- How is it different from the word/text we use to describe the work
- Is art distinctively human? Is it something only humans do?
Epistemological terrain
- Epistemology: what is the nature of knowledge? How is it possible for us to know?
- What do we learn (if anything) from a work of art?
- Do we learn about emotions? Ideas? Feelings?
- Do we learn about history? Events? Culture?
- Do we learn about the lives of people?
Epistemological terrain: how do we learn (if we do learn) from works of art?
- Do we learn from the colors used? From the shapes and lines used?
- Do we learn from representations? From events and characters depicted?
- Do we learn from symbolism? From a process of interpreting the symbolism?
Epistemologiucal terrain: what knowledge might we need, to better understand a work of art?
- Should we learn more about the artist ( and what should we learn, if anything, about the artist?)
- Should we learn about the school of art that the artist attended/among which she/he mingled?
- Should we learn about the techniques the artist uses in his/her work?
- Do we need to know more about the artist's nationality, and country of origin? Language? Culture?
- Or do we need to know more about the critics of the artist's work?
Axiological terrain
- Axiology: the study of values
- What is the meaning of the word “good”
- what value does this work of art have?
- Does it have personal value?
- Economic value? Religious value? Inspirational value? Educational value? Practical value? Cultural value? Moral value? Artistic value?
AXiological value in works of art
- Is it possible to have value in one region (say cultural) without having value in another? (say religious, or economic?)
- Can a work have great personal value, but low artistic value?
- Great artistic value but low moral value?
Axiological terrain: if you disagree with someone about the value of a work of art how would you go about changing their mind
- Would you: look at the physical properties of the work? And if so, which ones?
- Would you compare this work to other works?
- Would you explain the hardships the artist overcame to make the work?
- Would you claim it's impossible to debate the nature of taste?
Three terrains
- Most of the time, we will not formally study only one terrain at a time ( it is often impossible to do this discussing a work of art usually requires that we do all three)

Jan 8

Plato

Phil of art manages to cross several terrains at least however
- Most of the time, we will not formally study only one terrain at a time (it is often impossible, as discussing a work of art usually requires that we do all three, during class time
- Plato shapes the representational theory of art - however, we routinely consider art objects not to be representations, given abstract art - non-objective art, minimalist art, cubism, eq
Plato on art
- Plato views art in context with his theory of the forms
- (republic, and some dialogues)
  - Art: skill, craft - representational theory of art
- Plato doesn't have a modern concept of “art” Art and techne (craft) overlap for him
Platos forms
- According to plato, things which fall under a common name, like ‘chair’, or ‘table’, ‘bed’, must have something in common in virtue of which they are called by that term
- The idea that Plato is opposed to art as such is not necessarily the view we should take from reading him
Form as ‘essence’
- This commonality is the essence of that thing of thing, which Plato calls the form or idea of that thing: today such forms would be called ‘universals,’ and can have ‘instances’: there can be any number of instances of chairs, tables, or beds, and that which all chairs, for instance, the share is the essence of chair or chairness
- All objects are ‘becoming’. They change, unlike the forms - in the visible world we are speaking about material things (at level B)
- (shadows of those things, illusions, drawings, at level A)
Platos forms
- A form or universal can be apprehended by the mind, but not by the senses ( senses perceive individual things)
- In apprehending the form of something, the mind is acquainted with the reality of that thing, and knows the truth about it - the truth is, it does not ‘become’
Art and the forms
- A carpenter makes a bed for use in accordance with the form or idea of a bed
  - That bed is a copy of the form or idea of bed (divine)
- Plato calls an instance of a form or universal an ‘imitation’ of that form in being a copy of the original. But he is not a dualist - we’re headed to appearance/reality vs mind/body
The form ‘bed’
- The form “bed” gives rise to instances in the material (visible) world things come into existence and pass out of it
  - Such instances can give rise to copies - Van Gogh ( a painting of his bed, taken from his painting Bedroom at Arles, 1888. For Plato, a painting of a bed represents an imitation of an imitation (so it is a copy of a copy)
- Art and the forms
  - Plato's view is the origination of the view of art as imitation and of the artist as an imitator
  - God is the maker of the form of the bed, the bed the carpenter makes is a 3-D copy of this form, and the painter of the bed is third in line and makes a 2-dimensional copy of the carpenter's copy
- Painting is appearance (not reality) less real than the form - argument reappearance
  - For Plato, objects of experience are instances/copies of the forms, and each comes into existence and goes out of existence, but the form remains.
  - The mind grasps the form of bed, in spite of the apparent differences between beds (water bed, dog bed, carpenter bed, Van Gogh painting of bed)
  - So painting can only provide us with an appearance of an appearance, and not reality; it is philosophy that acquaints us with reality, not art
- Imitation of things as they appear
  - Since art is an imitation of an imitation - like Van Gogh’s bed - for Plato art heads away from the truth. It is through philosophy that we know the truth, not art
  - Painting is not even an imitation of things as they are, but only as they appear. Plato thinks that “the real artist, would be interested in realities, and not in imitations.”
- Questions we might ask
  - Does Plato assume that truth is the only thing that matters, and fail to provide an argument? Does philosophy only have epistemic value?
    - We might argue that literature provides some knowledge of human nature or of human experiences
    - Later: might there be some truths that can only be obtained through the arts is artistic creation different from creativity and invention in other disciplines?
- Could the arts be valuable for something other than ‘truth’
  - Perhaps (we might think) the arts could be valuable for something other than truth; or that the ‘truth’ in art is different from that in philosophy or science
  - Is aesthetic experience separately valuable as an important feature of human life?
  - Could “artistic” truth be culturally valuable in ways other than truths articulated through science or through the forms? Could there not be an aesthetic dimension that philosophy doesn't have, but that is valuable precisely because it is lacking in science or philosophy
  - Suppose Plato is right that art is degrees away from the truth (forms) - could beauty be as valuable to us as truth?
  - Does Plato's theory make humanity seem one-dimensional - a creature who values reason over emotions?
- Disparaging poets
  - At least, many poets of the time - wrote of the gods (Aristophanes, in the Clouds), and such poets disparaged the gods and their actions - opening them up to criticism, and encouraging passion in the viewer, and reader of such plays
  - There is a sense in which Plato indicated though, that there might be ideal poetry that gets to the truth - I.E he incorporates myth and uses poetic tropes throughout his writings
- Plato and the forms
  - Intuition - the highest level on the epistemic side
- Plato representational theory
  - Artwork as a copy of a copy of the form
  - Censorship of poetry of other arts also
  - Unlike craft, poetry is a problem, since it trades on appearances and it has no practical use
  - Ideal city
  - Yet there are some reasons to think of this is at least disrupted by his other practices
- Where poetry doesn't engage reason
  - And where it engages emotions instead, Plato judges the poet/poetry harshly
  - Yet he himself uses poetic tropes, and myth to frame his arguments and his dialogues, in the republic and either writing (which are called dialogues)
- Aristotle - 384-322
  - Platos student
  - Like Plato Aristotle wrote a variety of types of work - biology, physics, politics, ethics, rhetoric
  - Aristotle agrees with Plato
    - That poetry is imitative
    - That it provokes emotions rather than reason
  - However, unlike Plato, Aristotle thinks that these are not necessarily reasons to reject poetry
  - Indeed, poetry (especially tragedies like Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex) has a particular function
- For Aristotle - poetry has a use
  - Note that like Plato, Aristotle would not have had any contemporary understanding of art
  - Imitation theory - which refers to the imitation of action in a play for example
  - But he made a crucial; contribution to our analyses and understanding of tragedy and drama
- For Plato tragedy was confusing for observers
  - A good character might experience a tragic reversal, so this suggests that virtue is not always rewarded (freeland)
  - Therefore we should leave tragic poetry out of the Kallipolis
  - Aristotle argues imitation is something we naturally do 9and other creatures also, and we learn from imitation)
  - So there isn't this other realm of ideas, in Aristotle
- Names
  - Peripeteia - a reversal of fortune
  - Catharsis - ‘purification’, purgation, often the construal - is not clear in his work
  - Plato thought the passions were just aroused watching drama etc, Aristotle thinks that catharsis takes place - which may be more related to the education of the subjects observing
- Human emotions, and beliefs
  - Grief, regret, revenge, shock, hamartia
  - Punishment
  - Every great work of tragedy is a very important source for human education in Aristotle
- Tragedy should generate feelings of pity and fear
  - And that set of feelings also somehow are the result of what happens in the dramatic production
- Tragedy can educate, for Aristotle
  - Shows how someone in a tough situation can confront adversity
  - Thus it cleanses the emotional palate, brings up fear and pity, and follows through on them
  - Oedipus: evil deed but not intentional
  - Imitations can be vertical - don't need to distort reality
- Peripeteia
  - Tragedy is an important form of narrative
  - Pit and fear lead to catharsis and an unexpected change in the situation
  - (in Oedipus, he becomes aware of his own relationships to the tragedy)
  - Early ignorance, followed by peripeteia
- Theatre often references catharsis as purgative
  - It seems though that Aristotle means to have us think about the education of the emotions
  - Aesthetic education
  - We see ourselves in the action on stage, we see commonalities between ourselves and the actors, and we gain insights into ourselves

Jan 13

Artworld and “IS’

Arthur Danto
- 1924 to 2013
- Art critic and philosopher
- Critic of memetic theory - introduced new ideas about art - popularized these
Plato
- Art history - art doesn't have a task of its own
- Danto calls this the disenfranchisement of art
- Art reflects its own time - mimesis - it is an imitation of…
Danto
- Is art the “mirror” of nature?
- Plato vs Hamlet - on the mirror
- “Is an imitation” - a sufficient condition for art? Not so, argues Danto
Brillo boxes
- Warhol brillo boxes - dantos experience of these suggested the “end of art”
- End of art - where art changes its nature and becomes philosophical - conceptual art requires much more than the perception of our senses - it requires that we think about it
- End of art
Socrates
- Art, on the lowest level, was like a mirror, an illusory reflection of what was already in existence in the natural world
Danto critic of imitation theories
- Is art the “mirror’ of nature?
- Imitation theory versus reality theory
- New strategy: focus on the “is” of artistic identification
- No the “is” of identity
- Not the “is” of existence
Mirroring objects
- Isn't art (Danto)
- Is the history of art like the history of science? Conceptual revolution?
- Theories can be disrupted by threats and the coherence of those theories fails, so there is a new theory?
Post impressionist work
- Need to revise IT, focus on different features
- Accepting post-impressionist paintings, meant other objects could also be included in museums as “beaux arts”
RT
- Replacement theory (reality theory)
- Art is creative (god is the first artist), therefore it isn’t a matter of illusions but of reality
- RT
Testadura
- Someone who “doesn't know” what an art object is, in distinction from any other object
- Identification of meaning in expressions regarding art
- Danto is concerned with a philosophical error
Danto
- The artwork is a bed, not a bed illusion, so Testa Dura's error is a philosophical error
Philosophical error
- Tedtadura just thinks that “Rauschenberg” bed is a bed
- Danto argues it has to do with the copula
“IS”
- In a painting danto says, “That blob of white is Icarus”
- What do I mean?
- The “IS” of artistic identification is different from our usual use of that copula
The is of artistic identification
- That A is B
- A stand for some specific physical property of an object or physical part of an object
- It is a necessary condition for something to be an artwork that some part or property of it to be designable by the subject of a sentence that employs this special “is”
What makes the difference
- A theory of art and art history
- The non-representational couldn't be art
- The ‘bed’ couldn't be art
- The musical works couldn't be periods of silence
- Without art theory and art history
Danto
- A work of art is an object that embodies a meaning: “Nothing is an artwork without interpretation that constitutes it as such” - when Warhol comes along with brillo boxes, they are not included until an interpretation constitutes them as art - art-influenced
- Dickies institutional theory of art: “Art any artifact which has had conferred upon it the status of candidate for appreciation by some person or persons acting on behalf of a certain social institution (the art world)”
Post-impressionist
- Ontological victory
- The works are just as real as the objects they “copy”
- The bed is just as real as a bed
Remember dickie
- He doesn't like these “classificatory” theories that make it necessary for an artwork to have any particular feature at all
Lots of difficulties “defining”
- Even though there is something to be said for the meaning of “is” in the identification of aspects of a painting, some theorists disavow this attention to the object
- Find attention to objects only, as unhelpful in determining the significance of art
Mandate of museums
- To preserve, collect, educate the public, and convey standards about art value, and quality
- Royal collections were often the beginnings of museums (Louvre, Prado, Krakow, Fontainebleau, all over Europe
- Sometimes museums function to provide self-image identity to a country
  - What does our country value? Often the preliminary question for developing the museum
- Some museums house both scientific works and artworks; often archaeological finds in museums
Histories of museums
- Social and cultural values emerge
- British Museum first allowed only gentlemen
Museums, galleries
- Aztecs collected the art of their predecessors
- Art in museums: reasons??
  - 22% of pop attend musuemes, galleries
  - Most of these are from the middle to upper-class
  - A skewed percentage of pop

Jan 15th

From Danto to Dewey

Danto RT
- Recall, that we discussed how Plato's denigration of the ‘objects’ at the lowest level of the divided line suggests that artists are creatures of their time, cannot get beyond it
- Their time limits them
- Dantos's view critiques imitation theory - and his replacement for imitation theory is reality theory
- Art creates a new reality
Artwork dislocated from people
- The more we appreciate them, traditionally, the more they are removed from the conditions which brought them about
- The more they are isolated, obtain classic status
- Because humans develop galleries and museums, we develop particular tastes and pleasures of “owning” and “collecting” etc.
- Museums affect our aesthetic perception - they change our ‘pleasures’
Dewey - pragmatism
- Good art is always a means toward some other important end
- Dewey complains: collector as well as the elitism in pushing art into museums, away from our daily lives - and where we ‘consume’ it not by actually engaging but by ‘checking it off’; and just recognizing the artwork and passing on to the next one
- For Dewey, the essence of art is its usefulness in helping us comprehend our lives, and improve them - we shouldn't have this artificial separation of art - art should be continuous with our lives, in the community
The “work of art” is an artificial category
- We separate this set of objects from our ‘ordinary’ life - and then we develop connoisseurs who are the only ones who can determine ‘taste’ etc
- Removes art from the populace - and it shouldn't be
Pragmatism
- Knowledge is instrumental to the ‘enrichment of immediate experience through the control over action that it exercises”
- His is a cognitive account, emphasizing art's contribution to our perception, engagement with reality
- Art has a function - it is a source of knowledge
Aesthetic experience
- Something we all strive for, in our lives
- In Consummatory, a union is involved, and harmony
- Aesthetic experience isn't confined to art galleries and museums
- Experience is not just ‘individual’ - it happens in a context, within the environment we share with each other
Roots of Aesthetic Experience
- Lie in the commonplace
- He argues that experience will also be something that is in the present - our environment provides occasions where our “selves” are part of the moment where we are connected to the world - heightened fashion - as animals can also experience the present - natural
- Non-elitist form of aesthetic experience
- Meaning a significant component of art
Dewey consults Arthur Bentley - and considers experiences as ‘transactional’
- “The epidermis is only the most superficial way an indication of where an organism ends and its environment begins”
- And again, this isn't just about individual compartmentalized subjectivities experiencing art or their environments
Artist vs. audience
- Traditional artist is agent, audience passive in relation to the art
- Not so for Dewey: appreciation is agentic
- Discrimination, comparisons, and integration for aims of action that the audience/subject must also use (not just the artist) - were guided by the artist
Dewey on museums
- He argues that opera houses, galleries, and museums show that a community is not wholly absorbed in material wealth since it is willing to spend its gains in the patronage of art
- But he also argues that museums and galleries artificially segregate people from these objects and so they are problematic
Senses and artwork
- Why is it that works of art are actually “disconnected” from our senses, ask Dewey
- We devalue, and undervalue our sense experience by classifying ‘aesthetic pleasure’ as ‘mental’
- And we focus on the past - when we see art in museums
- Classism, capitalism, and nationalist views are all problematic
Dewey: no autonomous values to the art
- “It is not possible to divide in a vital experience the practical, emotional, and intellectual from one another and to set the properties of one over against the characteristics of the others. The emotional phase binds parts together, ‘intellectual’ is no more than a name for the fact that the experience has meaning and that the ‘practical’ indicated interaction between the human organism and events and objects in her environment”
Deweys account
- Connects art with our daily lives
- Dewey suggests a continuity between aesthetic experience and ordinary life
- What is the aesthetic experience in the common, or “mill run of things”
Art
- What we learn from it depends upon our context, situation, our goals
- Art is a kind of language (different art archive meanings differently though)
- Art can symbolize, refer, and provide meaning
- Through art, we can learn about other cultures
Deweys experience
- Not about ‘interiority;
- The most fundamental form of experience felt immediacy - cognition arises from it
- ‘Sharing social activity of symbolically mediated behavior’
Genius Loci
- Spirit of place
- Works of art express the spirit of a place, time, people; common experience, social connections
Museums as destructive, pillaging
- The great museums of Britain and France represented raids on treasures of ancient Greece, Assyria, and Egypt: Elgin marbles; Parthenon
- Should only the original country where a piece was made, or a building was constructed own or be the repository for the materials which have been looted? E.G: should Britain and France, the BM and the Louvre, and others, return the treasures of ancient Greece, Egypt, and Assyria

Jan 20th

Korsmeyer

Carolyn korsmeyer
- The sense of taste is ‘educable’ even though there are universal prefs like sweet, salty, aversion to bitter 30
- Common meanings assigned to flavors
- Can taste experiences be legitimately considered genuine aesthetic experiences?
- Related question - can food be art?

Elizabeth telfer
- Food as an art form - not a big one though
- Food is an object of aesthetic consideration
- Telfer
- Aesthetic eating but simple art not like symph0onies, buildings, poems, or paintings
- Four limitations
  - restricted in arrangements and expression
- Transience
- Food does not have meaning - it does not represent anything
- Food cannot express emotion - a cook can express themselves but food doesn't on its own
- Talks about taste is a minor art - due to not using your mind to appreciate it
- Damien Hirst

Lady Gaga's meat dress
Animals in formaldehyde

Sibley

“Perfumes, and flavours, natural or artificial, are nece

Pleasure - are we after?

Sibley

“Perfumes, and flavors, natural or artificial are necessarily limited, unlike the major arts they have noe expressive connections with emotions, love or hare, death, grief, joy, terror, suffering, yearning, pity, or sorrow, or plot or character development but this needs

Cognitive dimensions of taste and food

Symbolic food - crafted to look like something other than itself
Gummy bears, cinnamon hearts, chocolate kiss, gingerbread people, yule logs,m radish roses, easter eggs, bread and wine of the eucharist
AI - and way more - representational foods
Eucharist wine and bread are exceptional and maybe shocking
Pretzel, brachiate - folded arms
Arms of the monk

Croissants as representational food

Vienna 1683 - crescent moon - by Viennese bakers, defending the city against Ottoman Turks
The crescent moon denotes foreign enemy - and

Some REPS intend to deceive

Kant

Fine art
Theory of Representation
Match between your cognition and the actual world
- Being able to appreciate the rose is beautiful because our cognition

Our appreciation of beauty is our appreciation of the world

Jan 24 - 27th

Kant: analytic of the beautiful

Aesthetic
- What does it mean and what does it reference
- The critics and the experts are going to have significantly more taste than regular people

Kant starts with Hume’s issues but goes beyond him
- Concerned with questions about the universality of judgment
- Kant is more difficult to read than Hume
  - Kant is notorious for being difficult to read
- Doesn't talk much about paintings or sculpture (which are fine art for him, just as they would be Hume)
- We look briefly at the analytic of the beautiful and the analytic of the sublime
- Universal standard of taste
Fine art is a copy of nature
- Kant talks about our experience of entities in the natural world
  - Focus on our lived experience of the natural world
  - Beauty requires you are able to take up the beauty of the rose in your imagination
    - Something you can actually preserve in the free play in your imagination
    - To experience the beauty is free to play with your imagination
- Kant's theory is a major theory of representation (regarding fine art)
- Because fine art is a copy of nature
- Nature is the fundamental ‘creator; of beauty for Kant
- Our ‘artistic’ work is copying the work of the natural world
- But we cannot point to beauty in a flower
- He recognized the subjectivity of feeling but art or beautiful is about communicable pleasures
Singthisizing a claim
- The subject has an experience which is a universal meaning
Kants account
- Is understood as a central theory of representation
  - We represent what nature creates
  - Makes us want to reproduce the beauty of nature
    - Copying nature
- It is also a formalist

Kant on the communication of beauty
- When we try to reproduce the beautiful we are trying to copy nature
- The communication of beauty as an experience
- His theory of the beautiful focuses on communicable pleasure
- Aesthetic judgments: must be disinterested
  - Disinterested in the fact it exists/owning it
  - We try to copy nature but we cannot possess the rose and think that part is beautiful
  - Just noticing the beauty
- They must be based on form and must be universal, and necessary
- Natural beauty provides his paradigm
Judgements of beauty
- For Kant, they are universal and necessary
- In fact we don't act as though beauty is in the eye of the beholder
- There is no objective feature of an object that makes it beautiful
- Kant says necessity and universality are products of the properties of our mind (human mind): the “common sense”
- What we mean though, is that everyone will find it beautiful (he is not an empiricist, not everyone actually has to find it beautiful)
Purposiveness without purpose
- Beautiful objects have no purpose
- However, they affect us as though they do, even if there is no purpose
Art has no instrumental value
- As a theory of artistic value, Kant's view should tell us in some detail how and why art does matter to us, and why it should
- A beautiful rose does not serve us in any instrumental way, it isn't a practical thing, like a hammer, or a ladle. It doesn't have a “use: for Kant
- A work of art for Kant is an aesthetic semblance, it is something we create that is meant to be looked at. Valued non-instrumentally
- “In itself” - autonomously?
- Without our vested interests
- We try to reproduce beauty “copy the beauty in nature”
- Trying to imitate nature since that's what we find beautiful

Cognitive and reflective
- A beautiful object somehow matches up with my free play of the imagination and is a kind or species of mental pleasure, unlike any other pleasure
- Not like physical pleasure, which is purposive
- This is how it can be universal and necessary
- My experience of the rose doesn't have a purpose
- Finding dissatisfaction with finding something beautiful and not acting upon it
According to Kant
- In judging the painting as beautiful, I do not according to Kant, have any partiality toward it
- Indifference to real existence
- Beauty is an experience I have, provoked by an object (which I am not “interested in” - for example, owning, collecting, selling)
Kant's theory of beauty
- Concentrates on the natural world and on free beauty
- Free beauty is subject only to a judgment of taste (which asks to be universally accepted) since Kant claims it appeals to a common sense
- But if the claim of taste isn't accepted by some person, that doesn't refute this
Kants account
- Artworks are made for a purpose
- We recognize them immediately as serving that purpose
- But artworks cannot ‘serve” another purpose than being a work of art
Disinterestedness
- Aesthetic pleasure is disinterested for Kant
- This means there is no vested interest in the object; a kind of pleasure that is without a “domination of nature”
- “Disinterestedness” doesn't mean we aren't interested in the object/flower etc
- We can be fascinated by, focus upon, the thing
“Free play of my imagination
- I'm not thinking about the “end: of the flower (reproduction)
- I'm not using concepts of objects
- I’m allowing my imagination and other faculties to roam about the object
- I cannot “point to” beauty through
Kants account
- Nature as a source for the sublime
- Oceans, mountains
- Power of Reason over nature for Kant
- Reason exceeds imagination re infinite
Beauty vc sublime
- For Kant
- Beauty: pleasure
- Sublime: fear, terror - an “agitation of the mind”
- For Kant, E.G, in nature we call that which is “absolutely large” or vast, “sublime”
- What is sublime extends beyond the ability to use the free play of the imagination
Sublime
- The experience of the sublime involves astonishment
- Ocean is sublime - extends vastly far beyond what we can take in, in one “perception”
- Fear the might of the ocean, even if it is not targeting us as prey
Kant
- The sublime refers to that which I cannot represent, it is vast, awesome, the sublime is natural
- We cannot represent it in artwork
- It is unrepresentable
- For example the Himalayas: cannot be represented in one thought/artwork
Romanticism
- Romantic poets: concerned with the sublime in nature
- Awe-inspiring
- Awe connected with fear (being overwhelmed) - the ocean can inspire awe, even when you're not immediately afraid (of drowning, say)

Jan 29

Hume on Taste

Moving on from the institutional theory of art (Danto) and Dewey’s alternative
- Aesthesis - Baumgarten meant “study of artistic experience or sensibility)
- Baumgarten 1714 - 1761
- Hume
  - Born 1711
  - Didn’t use the term “aesthesis” - rather he used “taste”
Hume - 1711 - 1776 - Scottish
- Empiricist philosopher who was also a historian
- In our reading, Hume considers the question of whether there can be standards of taste, or if such there could be judgments that are purely subjective
- Hume argues judgments have to do with real-world objects
Hume seems to think there is a consensus on what makes good art
- Las Meninas, diego velazquez
- 1656
There is agreement that some works are better than others
- Hume suggests that we need a standard of taste to judge if something is better than something else
- He differentiates between judgment and sentiment
Sentiment is subjective (judgment is not)
- No sentiment represents what is really in the object
- (this is a bit like saying your emotions or feelings cannot be wrong in themselves, they just are what they are)
- But it is different when it - comes to judgment
Is taste subjective
- Dont we make judgments about good and bad art regularly
- Taste isn't developed for all of us - says hume
Is everyone's opinion on a work of art equally justified
- There might not be an ideal form of beauty, for Hume, but that doesn't mean everyone's views are equally justified
- We might be talking about all sorts of different things when we listen to the piece or watch the film
- No objective form of good art doesn't mean that everything is just equally justified
- Someone's opinion of what food music is might be better than others
Judgments of taste
- For Hume, aesthetic properties depend on judgments of taste, but the judgments about aesthetic properties are objective
  - They are about something in the object
- Just as vision can see that an object is red, so the faculty of taste can judge that an object is aesthetic
  - Hume says it's like a faculty of perception
- Agreement among people with taste
  - Experts, and aesthetes - form the foundation of the objective standards of taste
Why don't we recognize why some works are better than others
- There are qualities in objects that produce sentiment and we must attune ourselves to these qualities
Hume on taste
- Hume argues that aesthetic taste is a human faculty analogous to the senses (taste, smell, vision)
- Judgments of taste are connected with the objects we experience, our judgments must be confirmed by our experiences (or refuted by them) - about the object
Aesthetic sense of taste rather than culinary (or literal)
- Hume does think we can learn something about how to judge art over time, through many experiences of art, and also many experiences of even the same work of art
- We have to learn how to see the work of art - we learn how to do this by comparing works of art, in part - and by revisiting works as well
- The critic, though, has to be someone who doesn't have prejudices
The antinomy of taste
- ‘Natural equality of tastes’
- And yet, once people begin to compare ‘objects’ to each other, there is a complete forgetting of the ‘equality of tastes’ and we argue about X being better than Y
- If taste is just subjective, then we aren’t arguing about anything
- But if there is content or meaning (about an object) there is something we’re arguing about (a basis for disagreement)
Practice and comparisons help us all, but especially the art critic
- The true standard he says needs
- Good sense - allows us to see beauty in design, etc - checks our prejudices
- Practice - refine your taste (or delicacy) - check our specific works more than once
- Comparison
- Delicacy - of taste (to recognize beauty, etc) - we need to be attuned to qualities in objects
- Lack of prejudice

And we can be persuaded by the reasoning
- If it's possible to be argued into a different position, it seems there is something that is objective about the topic
- We may work things out and develop some views about what is good when it comes to film, E.G
- Perhaps we need to think (according to Humes's account) that taste is both subjective and objective
We don't have to accept one extreme or the other
- “Ideal form” or “every taste is equally justified”
David Hume
- On the other hand, Hume notes that these judgments are made on sentiment and that sentiment is subjective
Hume -Judgments of taste
- If such judgments are based on taste, they are purely subjective
- ‘There is no disputing taste’ actually MEANS that all judgments would be correct
Objects VS sentiment
- Sentiments don't represent anything in the object, so they cannot be objective
- If people argue taste is only about sentiment, then taste is subjective, and nobody can argue about art - judgments aren’t made and people cannot be wrong
- Artistic taste is subjective, Hume says, this is a common view, but art is not subjective, art is about things in the world

Jan 31

The Sublime

Critique of judgment extract
- Kant's critique of judgment (1790) on the beautiful and the sublime
  - Remember for Kant, the human mind is an agent in the construction of reality (space and time)
- Question regarding the sublime in this agency