Out of the tradition of Schopenhauer there developed "aesthetic-attitude theories." Aesthetic Attitude theories claims to give the correct account of the nature of aesthetic criticism and aesthetic appreciation. One must identify the correct subjective “attitude” to adopt in order to make possible and aesthetic experience. The object of criticism is held to be "the aesthetic object" and it is the “phenomenal object” that appears (arises) when one adopts the aesthetic attitude. (Think of Kant’s disinterested viewing here.) The attitude theories have been challenged by "metacriticism."

Note: If being an “aesthetic object” merely means being the object of someone’s aesthetic attention, then nearly any object could be an aesthetic object so long as it was attended to in the right way by someone. Saying that an object is aesthetic tells you nothing about the object itself (nothing objective), but only how it is being viewed. (The ugliest thing in the world can be an aesthetic object.)[2]

Three Versions of the Aesthetic Attitude Theory

1. Edward Bullough (28 March 1880 – 17 September 1934)

2. Jerome Stolnitz and Eliseo Vivas.

3. Virgil Aldrichs

Chapter 4 is devoted to a discussion and criticism of Monroe Beardsley's metacritical version of aesthetic object.

From the onset, it should be acknowledged that it is not completely clear what "attitude" means. Are they for instance “deliberate acts of conscious will?” Spontaneously arising psychological states of persons? All these views claim that a person can do something (“achieve psychical distance,” “perceive disinterestedly,” or “see as”) that will change any object perceived into an aesthetic object.

1. The Aesthetic State: Psychical Distance

Edward Bullough introduces the concept of psychical distance by using as an example the appreciation of a natural phenomenon rather than a work of art. For instance fog at sea can be an aesthetic object.

“Distance is produced in the first instance by putting the phenomenon, so to speak, out of gear with our practical, actual self; by allowing it to stand outside the context of our personal needs and ends—in short, by looking at it objectively," as it has often been called, by permitting only such reactions on our part as emphasize the "objective" features of the experience.”

Bullough's account here is reminiscent of Schopenhauer's theory of the sublime. Schopenhauer speaks of the forcible detachment of the will (roughly the desires) required for the appreciation of a sublime and threatening object. Not further, adopting such a perspective focuses on some qualtieis of the fof (perhaps its mistiness or mysteriousness) and not other (that it is very dangerous to be at sea if you can’t see what’s in front of you.) An inhibition may be induced by the perceiver or it may be a psychological state into which the perceiver is induced. Once the state has occurred, an object can be aesthetically appreciated.

Bullough suggest that there are two ways in which proper psychical distance can be lost:

1 “under-distancing”

2. “over-distancing”

Under-distancing

An example would be of a jealous husband viewing Othello. He is pre-occupied with his own suspicions about his wife, so much so, that he cannot aesthetically appreciate the play.

Over-distancing

Sheila Dawson, gives as an example of over-distancing the case in which a person is primarily interested in the technical details of a performances. (e.g. the skill of the dancer, or the technique employed by the painter) This is similar to Alison’s critique that art criticism can destroy aesthetic experience.

Problems:

Do we need to postulate a special kind of action called "to distance" and a special kind of psychological state called "being distanced" to account for the fact that we can sometimes can appreciate the aesthetic characteristics of otherwise threatening things? It seems more economical to explain this phenomenon in terms of attention. You are just “attending” to the fog. There is no virtue in being theoretically economical if one ignores actual facts, but is seems that we can give an adequate account of the “facts” of these sorts of appreciations without positing a special kind of psychological state. The issue presumably has to be settled introspectively, but Bullough suggests that to view threatening cases aesthetically requires a mental mechanism to block worries about personal safety. Dickie grants that there is some initial plausibility when invoked to dealing with threatening natural objects. But he claims that it has very little plausibility when it is used to explain our relation to works of art.

The husband who while watching a Othello, preoccupied with his suspicions about his own wife is not failing to achieve the proper state by “under-distancing.” Dickie we could more economically account for this by saying he's simply not paying attention to the play. One might explain the audience member who mounts the stage to save the threatened heroine in the play as one who has “lost psychical distance.” But a better explanation would be that he has “lost his mind” or that he is no longer mindful of the rules and conventions that govern theater situations, in this case the rule that forbids spectators from interfering with the actions of the actors.

Defenders see psychical distance as the first and key step of an aesthetic theory, and it is held to have far-reaching implications. If an art work is such as to encourage the loss of or inability to achieve psychical distance it is considered critically flawed. Sheila Dawson and Susanne Langer refer to the scene in “Peter Pan” in which Peter Pan turns to the audience and asks them to clap their hands in order to save Tinkerbelle's life. They claim that Peter Pan's action destroys psychical distance (or the necessary illusion).[3] Arlene Croce refused to view a work by choreographer Bill T. Jones because, as is included many critically ill people talking and dancing about the real-life illnesses, she claimed she was unable to achieve a “psychical distance.”[4] For that reason, she maintained, the work was not really art at all. It has been crafted in such a way and advertised in such a way that made it impossible for audience members to engage with it as a work of art.

Pros:

1. Provides some basis for evaluating works of art.

2. A state of psychical distance can reveal the properties of a work of art that properly belong to the aesthetic object as a aesthetic object (to which we ought to direct our attention). An also what properties we ought to screen off such as historical circumstances of the works creation.

3. Provides substantive guidelines for art criticism and appreciation.

(However. if no such state exists, it’s got problems)

2. Aesthetic Awareness: Disinterested Attention

Jerome Stolnitz suggests that the concept of “the aesthetic” can be defined in terms of disinterested attention. His is an outgrowth of both the theory of psychical distance and the notion of disinterestedness.

"psychical distance" names a special action or psychological state.

"disinterested attention" names the ordinary action of attending done in a special way.

Two pairs of concepts:

1. interested/disinterested and

2. interested/ uninterested

The Former: financial interest, partiality and impartiality, and/or selfishness verses unselfishness

The Latter: Notions of concern and attentiveness verses indifferent and not attentive to it

If the distinction between the two pairs of notions is preserved, it can be seen how a person can be both interested in something and be disinterested concerning that same something at the same time. (For example, a juror.) Similarly if I was reviewing a piece of Real Estate and considering it as a possible investment this would not be a disinterested viewing. This would be interested in the sense that I'm considering practical game. On the other hand if I'm looking at it merely as an example of landscape noting the trees the Hills the topography perhaps a patch of wildflowers in the distance then I am viewing it disinterestedly not for practical game but attending merely to its formal perceptual qualities and the enjoyment such attention provides. But note that I am not uninterested in this patch of real estate. I'm attending to it closely..

Jerome Stolnitz's definition:

"disinterested (with no ulterior purpose) and sympathetic attention to and contemplation of any object of awareness whatever, for its own sake alone."

Eliseo Vivas's Conception:

This is "intransitive" attention. That is, there is no direct object of the action as the crucial mode of attention.

If Ann is listening to some music in order to write an analysis of it, then this is a “non-aesthetic ways of “attending to” etc. (Again, sort of like Allison’s contention that criticism destroys aesthetic appreciation.) Accordingly, a work of art or a natural object may or may not be an aesthetic object, depending on whether or not it is attended to disinterestedly. Central to the theory is the notion that there are at least two distinguishable kinds of attention and that the concept of “the aesthetic” can be defined in terms of one of them.

Problems:

But perhaps we can account for aesthetic phenomena more economically with only one kind of attention. Cases of alleged non-disinterested attention turn out to be cases of inattention according to Dickie. If so, then there is no reason to think that there is more than one kind of attention involved. Also, while it is easy enough to see what it means to have different motives for attending to an object, it is not so easy to see how having different motives affects the nature of attention. Different motives may direct attention to different aspects of the objects, but the activity of attention itself remains the same.[5]

Another Issue arises: The question arises however as to whether a fully disinterested attention can be conceptual or not. The application of concepts such as that the auditory object of my attention is produced by an English horn or a French Horm or that is a violin might one might say, be a interested judgment rather than a disinterested appreciation. One might argue that a fully disinterested appreciation of a phenomenological moment requires restricting one’s attention to the immediately perceptible qualities without going on to make judgments about what was the origins of those phenomenological qualities. But that in turn suggests that disinterested awareness is very rare. It's not clear how to separate listening to music and not interpreting the music as sourced by particular musical instruments could be.

Consider Vivas's contentions about literature as aesthetic object:

Vivas claims that his conception of the “aesthetic appreciation” posits "that The Brothers Karamazov can hardly be read as art," probably because one can hardly avoid reading it as social criticism to some extent, which is one of the ways that Vivas mentions literature is attended to non-aesthetically.

But this seems a counter-example; any theory that claims this (i.e "that The Brothers Karamazov can hardly be read as art.") must surely be suspect. Now we might be willing to accept a theory which has counter-intuitive results (such as claiming that The Brothers Karamazov can hardly be read as art), but only if it were the only way to explain the facts of art/aesthetic experience. This does not seem to be the case here.

Another alleged example failing to have aesthetic attention would be using a work of fiction to diagnose the author's neurosis. But this seems better described as a way of being distracted from the work rather than failing to attend to it in the right way.

Another alleged example failing to have aesthetic attention is (mistakenly) reading a fictional work as, history. But Dickie counters, “So?” The historical or socially critical content, if any, of a literary work is a part of the work (although only a part), and any attempt to say that it is somehow not a part of the aesthetic object when other aspects of the work are, seems strange.

Therefore, Dickie maintains, there remains therefore serious doubt that such a species of attention exists.

Alternative (more economical) explanations of alleged Non-Disinterested Attention.

· Ann's attention to the music turned out to be just like that of any other listener.

· Bob's "interested attention" to the painting turned out to be a case of not attending.

· Free associating and diagnosing the author's neurosis turned out also to be cases of not attending.

· Attending to historical or socially critical content turned out to be simply attending to one aspect of literature.

#3 Aesthetic Perception: "Seeing As"

Virgil Aldrich developed an aesthetic theory out of one of the central notions of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Claims it is something that a subject does or something that happens to the subject that determines whether an object is an aesthetic object or not. Aldrich's view concludes that there is an aesthetic mode of perception.

Wittgenstein called attention to ambiguous figures.

Most famous is "the duck-rabbit":

A black and white image of a duck

Description automatically generated

(see: http://faculty.ccri.edu/paleclerc/existentialism/perc_figure.shtml)

A black and white drawing of a bird

Description automatically generated

Three things can be distinguished

1. the design the lines make on paper

2. the representation of, say, a duck

3. the other representation of, say, a rabbit.

Note this phenomenon requires a more complicated model of perception then is commonly appreciated:

Object

(Distal Stimulus) à

Retinal Image

(Proximal Stimulus) à

Active Mind

Percept

(Duck or Rabbit, depending on #3; that's the only variable.)

Note that whether one sees a duck or a rabbit is the result of something the perceiver does, consciously or unconsciously.

Three things can be distinguished in the case of such figures.

1. the design the lines make on paper

2. the perception of, say, a duck

3. the other perception of, say, a rabbit.

Aldrich claims that aesthetic theory parallels the perceptual phenomenon of ambiguous figures. He argues that earlier theorists were mistaken in thinking that there is only one mode of perception. There are two: the aesthetic mode of perception and the non-aesthetic mode of perception.

1. Non-aesthetic ("observation")

2. Aesthetic mode ("prehension")

Observation and its object ("physical object") parallel the “seeing of, say, the duck.” Prehension and its object ("aesthetic object") parallel the seeing of, say, “seeing of the rabbit.” The parallel of the ambiguous design made on the paper itself Aldrich calls a "material object."

Thus we have (paralleling the above):

1. Material Object

2. Physical Object (Observation and its subsequent perception)

3. Aesthetic Object (Prehension and its subsequent perception)

Thus a material object is seen as a physical object when observed and as an aesthetic object when prehended. A neat solution to the problem of aesthetic object.

Pros:

1. It avoids any commitment to disinterested attention or psychical distance, which were seen to involve difficulties.

2. It purports to be a development out of one of the most powerful and influential philosophical movements of the twentieth century, the philosophy of Wittgenstein.

Problems:

True?

Is there any good evidence for his contention that there really are two modes of perception? (There doesn’t seems to be.) The fact that a single design can function alternatively as two representations gives no evidence for two modes of perception. For example, the seeing of the duck representation is exactly like the seeing of the rabbit representation so far as “the seeing: is concerned. The notion of “seeing as” may be useful in providing an analysis of the concept of representation (interpretations), but that is clearly another matter.

The only evidence that Aldrich gives is this alleged example:

a dark city and a pale western sky at dusk, meeting at the sky line.

The sky is closer to the viewer than are the dark areas of buildings.

This is the disposition of these material things in aesthetic space.

The fact, however, that things look different and that visual relations appear to alter under varying conditions of lighting is no reason for thinking that there are two modes of perceiving that a person can switch off or on. Aldrich writes that aesthetic perception "is, if you like, an 'impressionistic' way of looking, but still a mode of perception."

But, Dickie counters:

1. Does it makes sense to speak of an “impressionistic way of looking?”

2. It is not the case that all the experiences we call aesthetic are impressionistic, although perhaps some are. (What is impressionistic about watching Hamlet?)

Another example: Watching illuminated snowflakes falling at night.

· Does not serve as evidence for the theory that there are two ways of perceiving.

· Aldrich has given us no reasonable evidence for the truth of his theory.

Dickie’s Concluding Remarks

Aesthetic-attitude theories grew out of such nineteenth-century theories with roots in

the eighteenth-century notion of disinterestedness and the view that a psychological analysis aesthetic experience is the key to a correct theory. But they reject the eighteenth-century assumption that some particular feature of the world such as uniformity in variety triggers the aesthetic, or taste, response. Instead, the aesthetic-attitude theories share with the nineteenth-century aesthetic theories the view that any object (with certain reservations about the obscene and the disgusting) can become an object of aesthetic appreciation. Still, they reject the nineteenth-century assumption that aesthetic theory must be embedded in a comprehensive metaphysical system, (e.g., Schopenhauer's philosophical system).

Theories of aesthetic attitude have three main goals.

1. Isolate and describe the psychological factors constituting the “aesthetic attitude.“’

2. Develop a conception of aesthetic object as that which is the object of the aesthetic attitude.

3. Account for aesthetic experience by conceiving of it as “the experience derived from an aesthetic object.”

Aesthetic-attitude theories held that these works of art contain elements that are not only aesthetically irrelevant, but positively destructive to aesthetic values. But to make this case, they must define “aesthetic properties” (those relevant to aesthetic appreciation) in a non-question begging way. The danger is that they seem to be defining/explaining aesthetic experience in terms of aesthetic properties in terms of aesthetic attitude in terms of aesthetic experience. (Viciously circular and, as such, pseudo-explanations.)

For these theories, an aesthetic object has the function of being the proper locus of appreciation and criticism (with criticism understood as including description, interpretation, and evaluation). But while this seems counterintuitive and out of step with actual practice, they offer no compensating explanatory power.

Jerome Stolnitz et al. attempt to explain the class of experiences referred to as “aesthetic” by a certain frame of mind: the "aesthetic attitude." Stolnitz' definition: the aesthetic attitude is "disinterested and sympathetic attention to and contemplation of any object of awareness whatever, for its own sake alone." "Disinterested" means "no concern for any ulterior purpose," "sympathetic" means "accept the object on its own terms to appreciate it," and "contemplation" means "perception directed toward the object in its own right where the spectator is not concerned to analyze it or ask questions about it."

But Dickie suggests that no successful argument has been given for believing these accounts. It is not clear that there really is any such thing or that the target experiences cannot be explained without positing such.

Further, Dickie suggests that the very notion of “disinterested attention” is incoherent. Once one considers the motivations that exist is considered,, there is no reason for suggesting that b the attending to a thing makes no perceptual difference. An unique way of kind of paying attention. But there's no reason to claim this. One of the other paying attention or not and the elements to which one is paying attention might be directed by certain motives or others but that doesn't suggest that there is a unique way of paying attention to the object. The idea of "disinterested attention" is only sensible if "interested attention" can be distinguished from “disinterested attention.” But it cannot Dickie maintains, because in all cases, "interested attention" is not really a special kind of attention, but rather, perception with different motivations or intentions>> The “attention” remains the same.

Thus Dickie argues against the idea of the aesthetic attitude in all its forms.

[1] Introduction to Aesthetics: An Analytic Approach

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; 1st edition (January 9, 1997)

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0195113047

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0195113044

[2]This, it seems to me, is a reductio of the whole theory.

[3] Ironically, many have described that as one of the highlights of their experience of the movie.

[4] See Croce, Arlene “DISCUSSING THE UNDISCUSSABLE,” The New Yorker, December 18, 1994

[5] I would suggest that the properties of the object to which one attends can be specified in terms of motive. Some motives are aesthetic while others are not. If so, then understanding the motives may go some way towards identifying what properties are and what properties are not “aesthetic” and thus the proper object a aesthetic criticism.