Philosophy and the Arts, Lecture 12 :

1. Philosophy and the Arts,Lecture 12 : “Is there an Aesthetic Experience??”

2. I have often thought that if I talked more about sex, I would attract more students. This one may seem tame today, but it was hot stuff as the first major “pinup” in 1943. How about Sex??

3. Some people would say a picture such as this (right) produces in them a religious experience. And we know what a sexual experience is. But what is an aesthetic experience like?? The point??

4. And what about this??

5. My first reaction to the Alpine scene (previous slide) was to exclaim: ”Oh!! My God!!” Was that religious, or aesthetic (sublime?)— or both, and how about this by Michelangelo? Surely both?? “Oh!! My God!!”

6. Another look at the question… • We know what sexual experiences are. • Much of the time, we also think we know about religious experiences. I really don’t think that’s the best way to discuss religion, but that’s another issue. • Also, we can have experiences that we don’t know how to categorize—religious or aesthetic?? Or what?? • And this leads us to ask: is there an aesthetic experience, and, if so, what’s that like??

7. A bit of history:Two must-read books!

8. About those books… • Aesthetics, as we know it today, probably began with reactions to Hobbes, notably those by Hutcheson (1725) and Kant (1790). Hobbes had claimed that all our actions are interested, i. e. self-interested. • Our dealings with art works seem to be a clear case of a disinterested experience.

9. And now the present….. • If you know your people, you know what they will do: Beardsley will make several valiant attempts to state what the aesthetic experience is like; George Dickie (above) will deny that there is an aesthetic experience; and Noel Carroll will make a dozen complicated distinctions—and not improve on Beardsley.

10. First, Beardsley… • Monroe Beardsley made a number of attempts to define the aesthetic experience, perhaps none completely satisfactory. • They usually involved something like disinterestedness, intensity, and unity (though, in the end, he substituted the word ‘wholeness’). • Dickie maintained that with words like ‘unity,’ Beardsley confuses qualities of the art work with our experience of it.

11. Noel Carroll… • In his later papers, Carroll distinguishes 3 types of aesthetic experience: affective, value-oriented and content-based. • He dismisses the affective, because art is rarely disinterested; it is usually made to serve religious and/or political interests. • Value-oriented (“art for art’s sake”) is similarly dismissed. • This leaves only content-based, which Carroll accepts as correct.

12. But is this experience at all?? • Dickie’s complaint seems to apply much more to Carroll than to Beardsley. • And what is so wrong with admitting that aesthetic emotions are so often mixed with other emotions, e. g. religious? • Visit the King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, and see the Rubens near the high altar.

13. Wow!!

14. Or Visit Iona…

15. When I first visited Iona, and walked along the “Road of the Dead,” where, by tradition, Macbeth’s “Wise old King Duncan” is buried—I was euphoric. Look at this gravestone, sandstone; you can just make out the outline of a broadsword… An aesthetic experience? Maybe, but it was awesome!! St Columba came here in 563…

16. Permit one final quote… • Dr. Samuel Johnson visited Scotland in 1773. He hated it, said the only good view from Edinburgh Castle was the road that led back to London. • But when he toured Iona, he wrote: “That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona!” • And he was right. • Someday, we must talk about the Chartres Cathedral!!

17. Whoops! Maybe sex is O. K!! • In a recent (Spring, 2006), article, Richard Shusterman has argued that sex can be aesthetic… • Does that make porn the highest art form?….please, you can’t be serious…