What does aesthetic mean, and what are we talking about when we talk about aesthetics ?

1. Introduction to Aesthetics and Aesthetic Theory • What does aesthetic mean, and what are we talking about when we talk about aesthetics? • Do you think that there are universal standards/values of beauty? How can these be proven, justified, or explained?

2. Introduction to Aesthetics and Aesthetic Theory Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Burke’s distinction of the beautiful and the sublime (1757): “By beauty I mean that quality or those qualities in bodies, by which they cause love, or some passion similar to it.” “Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.” The sublime and the beautiful “are indeed ideas of a very different nature, one [the sublime] being founded on pain, the other [the beautiful] on pleasure”

3. Beautiful? Sublime? The sublime and the beautiful are both aspects of aesthetic experience – two faces of the same aesthetic coin.

4. Introduction to Aesthetics and Aesthetic Theory Kant (1724-1804) • Kant’s was arguably the first major contribution to aesthetic theory and philosophy. • He was influenced in part by Burke’s distinction of the beautiful and the sublime. • Beauty is a problem for Kant: it is an immediate experience “in” us, and yet we perceive beauty “in” things; therefore, we act as if “x is beautiful” is universally true. • Beauty appears to be in other things, and yet it is justified by our own immediate experiences – so what guarantees that something really is beautiful? • Pure aesthetic pleasure should be free from concepts; e.g., the experience of a “something” greater than oneself when looking out over, say, the Grand Canyon is not a representation of any thing or concept, whereas as photograph of me is.

5. Introduction to Aesthetics and Aesthetic Theory Kant (cont.) • Pure aesthetic experience should allow the “free play” of the imagination – it should allow us to make links and leaps, without the need of concepts, and without being “for” anything else. • Aesthetic contemplation should lead us to a point of disinterested reflection – not uninterested; “disinterested” means free from concerns to do with my, or anyone’s, advantage; disinterested here means contemplating the aesthetic object for its own sake. • Pure aesthetic experience indicates a harmony between us (our rational faculties) and the world/aesthetic objects. • Aesthetic experience should give us a sense of a “beyond” that we can neither know nor explain, but of which we have glimpses and are given clues. • In this sense, aesthetic experience is moral, for it makes us realize we are part of a grander design than ourselves, one we can never truly understand. • It is also linked to morality because in aesthetic experience, as in our dealings with others, we learn to view things as ends in themselves, not means to other ends.

6. Introduction to Aesthetics and Aesthetic Theory John Dewey (1859-1952) • When we experience anything, we do so through our bodies (our 5 senses) • So, if aesthetics is a science/study/theory of the senses, then it must in some ways be a science/study/theory of experience • For the artists, aesthetic experience proper involves a deliberate organization (narrating/painting/sculpting) of something that in its original form DID NOT have such organization or “authorship”: • E.g., the original experience of falling off my bike becomes an artistic and aesthetic experience in the picture I paint of it, or the poem I write of it. • For the audience/consumer of art, there is still a similar imposition of order onto the artwork itself – what is this a picture of; what does this image/word/sound make me think/feel; what does it “mean”? • Artworks, then, are experience externalized (as a piece/work of art) and “distilled”/“concentrated”/deliberately organized

7. Introduction to Aesthetics and Aesthetic Theory Dewey vs. Kant • Note that for Kant it was important that the aesthetic object did NOT refer to anything other than itself (e.g., a tidal does not “mean” anything other than itself; it just is). Therefore, for Kant, art would always be inferior to nature. • For Dewey, however, genuinely aesthetic objects had to be made, because they had to involve the deliberate organization of (aesthetic) experience. Therefore, works of art were in many ways the best examples of truly aesthetic objects and of deeply aesthetic experience. For Dewey true art could not be separated from experience.

8. Introduction to Aesthetics and Aesthetic Theory Marxist/Historicist view:Art is part of the superstructure, and therefore offers clues/information about the society in which it was produced (e.g. classical vs hard-boiled detective stories). Therefore, we might be able to talk about the ways in which writers create, say, a “working class” aesthetic. Brecht and alienation/distancing Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) formulated the“distancing effect,” “which prevents the audience from losing itself passively and completely in the character created by the actor, and which consequently leads the audience to be a consciously critical observer.” George Orwell “I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in — at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own — but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. … In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties. … What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. … The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.”

9. Introduction to Aesthetics and Aesthetic Theory Can literature make us “better” people? Richard Rorty liked the idea that reading lots of books and being more aesthetically sensitive people would make us morally better people, but he could not, ultimately, believe it. For him, one of the most important novels of the C20, one which demonstrated this point, was Orwell’s 1984 and the character O’Brien. Rorty believed that 1984 would remain publically important until society solved and progressed beyond the social problems the novel dramatizes.

10. Why might discussions of aesthetics be problematic?

11. Discussions • What aesthetic experiences have you had (that you are willing to share)? • Would you count them as “beautiful” or “sublime”? • Discuss the extracts that have been handed out: Can you discuss them in aesthetic terms?

12. How do make aesthetic judgements? Is English Literature worth studying? Or, can reading books make us better people? Richard Rorty, and the test-case of Orwell’s 1984 Richard Rorty (1931-2007) said that people, philosophers in particular, often wanted to “hold self-creation and justice ... in a single vision.” However, he concluded that “there is no way in which philosophy ... will ever let us do that. The closest we will come to joining these two quests is to see the aim of a just and free society as letting its citizens be as privatistic, ‘irrationalist,’ and aestheticist as they please so long as they do it on their own time – causing no harm to others and using no resources needed by those less advantaged.” Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989) Rorty liked the idea that reading lots of books and being more aesthetically sensitive people would make us morally better people, but he could not, ultimately, believe it. For him, one of the most important novels of the C20, one which demonstrated this point, was Orwell’s 1984 and the character O’Brien. Rorty believed that 1984 would remain publically important until society solved and progressed beyond the social problems the novel dramatizes.