Key Terms in Philosophy of Art

Tiger C. Roholt

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780826435279
• eBook ISBN: 9781441132468
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Aesthetics in Philosophy

Key Terms in Philosophy of Art offers a clear, concise and accessible introduction to a vital sub-field of philosophy. The book offers a comprehensive overview of the key terms, concepts, thinkers and major works in the history of this key area of philosophical thought. Ideal for first-year students coming to the subject for the first time, Key Terms in Philosophy of Art will serve as the ideal companion to the study of this fascinating subject. Tiger C. Roholt provides detailed summaries of core concepts in the philosophy of art. An introductory chapter provides context and background, while the following chapters offer detailed definitions of key terms and concepts, introductions to the work of key thinkers, summaries of key texts, introductions to philosophy's approach to the major art forms, and advice on further reading. Designed specifically to meet the needs of students and assuming no prior knowledge of the subject, this is the ideal reference tool for those coming to philosophy of art for the first time.

Key Terms

Aesthetic

The term “aesthetics” is often used loosely to refer to the philosophy of art, but it has a more precise meaning, with origins in the ancient Greek word “aisthēsis.” The Greek word denotes ordinary sense perception; “the aesthetic,” as introduced into philosophy in the eighteenth century by Alexander Baumgarten (1714–62), referred to pleasing perceptions of BEAUTY. The eighteenth century was a crucial period for the modern philosophy of art, as this was the period during which the category of the fine arts solidified (see the introduction). “Aesthetic” has a similar sense in common usage even today. When a person points to something, designer stationery (say), and remarks that it is “aesthetic,” he probably means that it is beautiful, pleasing to the eye. However, as beauty has come to occupy a less central role in the arts, the meaning of “aesthetic” in the philosophy of art has changed; it has been common, for some time, to refer to objects or experiences as aesthetic even in cases where it would seem forced or simply incorrect to call them beautiful; for example, one may take a certain demolished building or a punk rock guitar riff to be aesthetic while not considering them to be beautiful. This eliminates a key element of the definition, but philosophers still understand the aesthetic to be perception-centered, pleasing, and valuable (see VALUE OF ART).

Philosophers often seek a more precise understanding of the term by examining related concepts—the aesthetic attitude (see DISINTEREST), AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE, AESTHETIC JUDGMENT, AESTHETIC PROPERTY, aesthetic value, aesthetic pleasure, aesthetic object (see PHENOMENOLOGY), and so on. The thought is that properties, experiences, and so on, which are aesthetic, are special in some way; the hope is that if we can clarify exactly what (say) an aesthetic property is, then we will be able to define aesthetic experience in terms of these properties, and this will help us to clarify the other concepts, as well as the aesthetic itself. Different philosophers have taken different concepts to be primary—some, for instance, claim that a thing is aesthetic primarily because of the experience it affords (see DEWEY; BEARDSLEY) or the properties it possesses (see SIBLEY). Other philosophers believe that the nature and value of art are not elucidated through an examination of the aesthetic (see DEFINING ART, ADORNO, DANTO, DICKIE, HEIDEGGER).

Further Reading

Baumgarten, A. G. (1961 [1750–58]), Aesthetica. Hildesheim: George Holms Verlagsbuchhandlung.

Beardsley, M. (1966), Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present. New York: Macmillan.

Eaton, M. M. (2004), “Art and the Aesthetic,” in P. Kivy (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Goldman, A. (2005), “The Aesthetic,” in D. M. Lopes and B. Gaut (eds), The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. New York: Routledge Press.

Aesthetic Attitude, see Disinterest

Aesthetic Experience

An AESTHETIC experience is a particular state of mind that philosophers attempt to distinguish from other states of mind. At the very least, an aesthetic experience is an experience that is valued for its own sake. John DEWEY takes aesthetic experiences to be unified by an intense, pervasive quality that has been developed and accentuated; aesthetic experiences are complete in the sense that they reach a kind of consummation. In his early work, Monroe BEARDSLEY’s account of aesthetic experience resembled Dewey’s: an aesthetic experience is complex, intense, and unified. Later, Beardsley acknowledges that many experiences have an aesthetic character but lack the unity required to classify them as aesthetic experiences. His account of the broader notion of the aesthetic in experience (i.e., experience with an aesthetic character) is set out in terms of five criteria. He takes the first criterion, object directedness, to be necessary. Any three of the final four criteria are necessary: felt freedom, detached affect, active discovery, and wholeness. Beardsley’s earlier view focused on properties of the experience itself, whereas his later view focuses on the object of experience; recent accounts of aesthetic experience have followed the latter approach.

A number of philosophers, including Dewey, emphasize that aesthetic experience is active, not passive. R. G. COLLINGWOOD, for example, maintains that a spectator has imaginative work to do in order to perceive an artwork correctly. Roman Ingarden holds that the unfinished aspects of works of art must be “concretized” by spectators (see PHENOMENOLOGY).

One kind of definition of art is a functional definition; one kind of functional definition is based on aesthetic experience: an artifact that affords an aesthetic experience is a work of art (see DEFINING art, BEARDSLEY). Consider two commonly cited reasons that such a definition fails. First, we occasionally have aesthetic experiences of objects that are clearly not works of art, such as a waterfall, a designer stickynote, or a scientific theory. Another problem with aesthetic definitions is that many works of art seem not to have to do with aesthetic experience at all, such as CONCEPTUAL ART and ready-mades (see DANTO, DICKIE).

Many accounts of aesthetic experience involve a certain detached perceptual approach to experiencing works of art (interestingly, John DEWEY’S does not). Philosophers have referred to this detachment with different terms (and there are differences in the details of how this detachment is specified); it is, perhaps, most commonly referred to as DISINTEREST, but one also finds “psychical distance,” the “aesthetic attitude,” and so on. The main idea is that in order to perceive works of art correctly, they must be approached with this sort of detached perceptual comportment. Immanuel KANT developed a notion of disinterest in the context of his account of AESTHETIC JUDGMENT. For Arthur SCHOPENHAUER, disinterest has relevance even beyond art. FORMALISTS typically invoke some notion of disinterest in order to make sense of a perceiver’s focusing only on a work of art’s design. Edward Bullough’s “psychical distance” involves putting “out of gear” the practical aspects of a situation. An influential twentieth-century view is Jerome Stolnitz’s account of the “aesthetic attitude.” For the details of these views, see DISINTEREST. See also, VALUE OF ART. For a criticism of disinterest, see PHENOMENOLOGY, BOURDIEU.

Further Reading

Beardsley, M. C. (1970), “The aesthetic point of view,” in H. E. Kiefer and M. K. Munitz (eds), Contemporary Philosophic Thought, vol. 3. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 219–37.

Bullough, E. (1912), “ ‘Psychical distance’ as a factor in art and an aesthetic principle.” British Journal of Psychology, 5: 87–98.

Carroll, N. (2001), “Four concepts of aesthetic experience,” in his Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dickie, G. (1964), “The myth of the aesthetic attitude.” American Philosophical Quarterly, 1.1: 56–65.

Ingarden, R. (1973), The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, R. A. Crowley and K. R. Olsen (trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Stolnitz, J. (1960), Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art Criticism. Boston: Riverside.

Aesthetic Judgment

An aesthetic judgment (a.k.a., a judgment of taste) is a judgment that a work of art is good, beautiful, powerful, and so on. Strictly speaking, the term should be reserved for judgments that are grounded on aesthetics-centered views of art; some philosophers believe that the nature and value of art do not turn on aesthetics (see DEFINING ART, ADORNO, DANTO, DICKIE, HEIDEGGER). (For a survey of some grounds of evaluation that do not turn on the aesthetic, see VALUE OF ART.)

There are a number of old adages that advance the notion that aesthetic judgments are subjective: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” “There’s no disputing taste,” “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Perhaps such a view seems unproblematic in relation to taste and judgments of foods, beverages, and so on; I do not resist the claim that my distaste for curry is a mere personal preference. But when I assert that Van Gogh’s The Bridge at Trinquetaille (1888) is beautiful, is good art, or that The Pied Piper’s version of Johnny Mercer’s “Dream” (1945) is aesthetically pleasing, I do resist the claim that I am merely stating a subjective, personal preference. In other words, I am prepared to argue about it, to provide reasons to support my conclusion. The fact that I take this tack shows that I intend my judgment not to be merely subjective. Such observations are taken to show that, at least initially, we tend to understand aesthetic judgments as more than mere subjective preferences. We then turn to aesthetic theories to substantiate this position.

The two key figures to consider on the traditional notion of aesthetic judgment are David HUME and Immanuel KANT. Neither philosopher believes that BEAUTY (or the aesthetic) is a quality of objects. Notice that if it were, an aesthetic judgment would be a simpler matter; it would primarily involve looking to see if the object in question possesses the quality at issue. In the eighteenth century, philosophers began to argue that beauty, the aesthetic, and thus evaluations of works of art, involve a reaction on the part of a spectator; beauty is defined in a way that depends upon a sense for beauty, taste.

Both Hume and Kant acknowledge that aesthetic judgments are based on subjective experiences of pleasure, yet these judgments are put forward as stronger than mere subjective opinions or preferences. Hume sets out to find a standard of taste by means of which to make sense of this claim to objectivity (or something close to it). Hume claims that a “standard of taste” can be found in the consensus of experts (“true judges”) whom we can identify via their qualities. The kinds of qualities that matter in such a critic are perceptual acuity, familiarity with many works of art, experience in judging many works of art, good sense, lack of prejudice, and so on (for more detail about this view, see HUME, “OF THE STANDARD OF TASTE”). Kant’s view is very different. To put it in very simple terms, the objectivity of aesthetic judgments rests on the fact we all have the same kind of perceptual-cognitive apparatus. The point is not that we all cognize and perceive with the same precision but that our mental equipment is basically the same. When I perceive something in a certain manner (DISINTERESTEDLY), and if the object has certain formal qualities, it sends the perceptual and cognitive components of my mind into a pleasing, harmonious relation—this pleasing feeling is the ground of aesthetic judgment. (For more detail, and the Kantian terminology, see KANT, THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT.)

An interesting line of criticism directed against traditional accounts of aesthetic judgment and taste is sociopolitical in nature. MARXISTS, and those influenced by that tradition, often maintain that the judgments and principles of taste deemed objective on the traditional view are not objective at all; rather, such norms of taste are a mere creation of culture, a product of sociopolitical forces. Pierre BOURDIEU, for example, criticizes Kant’s view specifically: “Kant’s analysis of the judgment of taste finds its real basis in a set of aesthetic principles which are the universalization of the dispositions associated with a particular social and economic condition” (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 493). Bourdieu’s criticism has political implications; he claims that taste is used by the bourgeoisie as a tool of domination. See ADORNO, BENJAMIN.

Further Reading

Bourdieu, P. (1984 [1979]), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, R. Nice (trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Korsmeyer, C. (2005), “Taste,” in D. M. Lopes and B. Gaut (eds), The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. London and New York: Routledge Press.

Zangwill, N. (2010), “Aesthetic Judgment,” in E. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 edn). http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aesthetic-judgment

Aesthetic Properties

(Aesthetic properties are occasionally referred to as aesthetic qualities.) A painting may be BEAUTIFUL, ugly, garish, or balanced; a piece of music may be joyful, clumsy, powerful, or somber. These are what some philosophers have called AESTHETIC properties. Contrast these properties with others that are considered nonaesthetic: a painting may weigh five pounds, it may be rectangular, or it may consist of mostly blues and greens; a piece of music may be 20 minutes long, or it may be in the key of C. Aesthetic properties do not form a homogeneous group; notice, for example, that a property such as joyousness is emotive (see EMOTION) whereas a property such as balance is a FORMAL property. Some philosophers deny that there is a distinction at all between aesthetic and nonaesthetic properties (Ted Cohen, for example). Following Frank SIBLEY, the discussion occasionally turns on “aesthetic concepts,” where the issue is couched in terms of correct or incorrect application of one or another aesthetic concept to a work of art; for example, if a work of art is not graceful, it would be incorrect to apply th...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• Detailed List of Sections
• 1 Key Terms
• 2 Key Thinkers
• 3 Key Texts
• 4 The Arts
• A Guide to Further Reading
• Index
• Copyright