Theory of Beauty:
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
The analysis of beauty furnished by the eighteenth‑century
philosophers of taste shifts the basis for objective judgments of
beauty. Such judgements/experiences are now attributed to an alleged
faculty or faculties with which individuals react to certain features of the
objective world.
Theories of
Beauty both reflected and were influence by the intellectual trends of this
period. See Enlightenment and Locke’s Theory of
Perception
Three Main Types of
Theories of Taste:
1. The apparatus of taste is conceived of by some of
them to be a special single faculty (the sense of beauty)
2. The apparatus of taste is composed of several special
faculties (the sense of beauty, the sense of the sublime, and so on)
3. The apparatus of taste is simply the ordinary
cognitive and affective faculties functioning in an unusual or unique way.
Three
main reasons
1. There was a drift away from theories that conceive of the apparatus of
taste as a single sense or a set of special senses specifically related to
certain kinds of objects.
Associationist theories began to appear in which the ordinary cognitive
and affective faculties plus the mental mechanism of the association of ideas constitute
the apparatus of taste. (Thus more economical)
When only the ordinary faculties are involved in a theory of taste, the
mechanism of the association of ideas
is sometimes seen as operating in an essential way with these faculties in the
experience of beauty. Still this gives
us no information about the objective order and is thus non-informing cognitive
process.
These associationist theories propose that it is possible for almost
anything to be beautiful, given the appropriate associations of ideas.
Part of a larger philosophical movement (Locke et alia)
2. Theorists of taste also attempted to specify the objective features
that evoke the experience of beauty. But
neither a reliable nor comprehensive list of features could be specified nor a reliable
formula could be found (such as unity in variety, etc.)
In associationist theories Beauty becomes an exceedingly diffuse
concept and thus does not distinguish one object/ set of formal features from
another. The mechanism of the
association of the ideas provides a means for indefinitely extending the range
of things that can be judged beautiful.
Thus the traditional way of defining (i.e., by looking at all the things
denoted by the term and then finding something common to all) becomes impossible
in the case of beauty since anything, or nearly so, could be a member of the
set. This situation is similar to that
of the present‑day aesthetic‑attitude theories that maintain that
anything can be aesthetic if only it is experienced while in the aesthetic
attitude.
The alternative view that, “beauty” names an indefinable and
transcendental concept or form, was unacceptable to the British philosophers,
who were committed to empiricism.
3. During this period in an attempt to be more specific, other notions
(sublime and the picturesque for example) are distinguished form beauty,
strictly speaking. Thus “the aesthetic”
becomes richer but more complicated.[3] This caused “disunity,” the fragmentation of
beauty with the introduction of notions such as sublimity, novelty, etc. The tension that was resolved initially by
subsuming all such notions under the central concept of taste and later the concept of the “aesthetic.”
"aesthetic
theory" = that which makes the concept of the aesthetic basic and defines
other concepts of the theory in terms of the aesthetic.
Alexander Baumgarten (1714‑1762)
·
Coined the term
"aesthetics,"
·
Baumgarten tries to
work aesthetics into a scheme of this type by conceiving of it as the science
of sensory cognition.
·
Exploited the medieval
tradition of explaining behavior and mental phenomena by attributing each kind
of phenomenon to a distinct faculty of the mind.[4]
·
He thinks of art
appreciation (beauty experience) as a low‑level means of cognition, a
sensuous kind of knowing.
·
Under the domain of both
the sensory faculty and the intellectual faculty as a mode of inferior
cognition.
Note: This contrasts with British philosophers who subsume the experience of
beauty under the sensory faculty alone‑ non‑cognitive.
·
Has the notion of an
internal, reactive “sense” of beauty (or something similar) that supposedly
produces pleasure in response to the perception by the external senses of
certain features of the external world. (Relational property‑ Secondary
Quality- not unlike the idea that a salty taste experience is triggered by
certain objective conditions.)
Third Earl of
Shaftesbury (1671‑1713)
Diffuse and unsystematic views
·
(Not logically
inconsistent. However, few if any of these empirically inclined thinkers
accepted the Platonic doctrine of the Forms.)
1. as a moral sense for making judgments or
2. as a sense of beauty.
(This contrasts with Francis Hutcheson, et alia, who claim that the
faculty of taste, and thus the sense of beauty. is a non-cognitive, reactive
faculty that produces the feeling of pleasure.)
The vastness and incomprehensibility of that creation could only be
described as sublime. (overwhelming in a way that a charming/beauty is not).
Tried to maintain a unified theory by classifying the sublime as one kind
of beauty.
Shaftesbury was reacting to the views Thomas Hobbes[5]
Additionally, Shaftesbury contrasts the contemplation of beautiful
things in the world of sense with the desire to possess them. The contemplation of beautiful things and the
desire to possess them are distinct (though perhaps not incompatible).
Francis Hutcheson (1694‑1746)
·
Best representative of the
eighteenth‑century British theorists of taste.
·
There is no trace of
Platonism;
·
Theory focuses squarely
on the phenomena of sense;
·
Theory contains an
account of the faculty of taste and
the pleasure of taste;
·
Disinterestedness is worked into his
conception of sense.
·
The word
"beauty" does not name any object that is seen, heard, or touched.
·
"Beauty," he
says, names an "idea rais'd in us”
An object in the private consciousness of a subject (a person).
(Note: There is some question as to whether to best understand
Hutchenson as a subjectivist or not. I
do.)
Does believe that the idea (sensation) that is aroused is pleasure and
it is regularly aroused by the perception of certain kinds of external objects.
(Connects it to certain kinds of perceptual objects in the world.)
Therefore, an inquiry can be made as to whether there are any features
of the objects of perception that regularly trigger the experience of
beauty.
(Note: Still
objective characteristics so happen as to cause the beauty response, but the
are not what we mean by beauty nor,
when we attribute beauty to an object, are we predicating formal objective
qualities to the object. This is an
empirical correlation, not an analytic association.)
Hutcheson's answer/suggestion is a formula: Unity in Variety
Uniformity in variety is the objective cause of our
subjective experience of beauty.
"beauty feeling," is a pleasure.
Shaftesbury holds that there is a
single cognitive sense with several functions (moral and aesthetic) yielding knowledge
of the external world.
By contrast…
Hutchenson believes there are a
number of distinct internal senses with single functions and that they are affective
and reactive
in nature, that is, that they function to produce pleasure, not awareness. Their objects are internal to the mind.
Hutcheson's formula (Unity in Variety) excludes simple
ideas/perceptions such as single colors as possible source of beauty pleasure.
(I take this to be a problem for his theory.
After all, simple colors or tones can be beautiful, right?)
Hutcheson also tries to refute Thomas Hobbes's psychological theory
that all behavior is selfish.
Awareness of beauty (the beauty feeling) is immediate (unmediated by
thought), like the taste of salt or sugar and thus free of thought and
calculation. Therefore it cannot be
selfish.
Further since reactive, beauty responses are not subject to rational
deliberation or revision. (If I open my eyes and see a red pencil and I can’t
think myself into seeing something else.)
However, some reprogramming of responses through an association of ideas
(see below) is possible on his view.
Despite being subjective, judgments about beauty are universal in the sense
that, tied as they are to inborn faculties of the human constitution and being
as they are disinterested, taste is an objective aspect of human nature and is
thus we should expect and, in fact, have, broad convergence of judgment with
respect to beauty.
Disagreements, according to Hutcheson result from either physical
defect or the association of ideas.
For Hutcheson, the association
of ideas is a psychological mechanism that can pervert taste from its
natural objects.
Edmund Burke (1728‑1797)
·
published 1757.
·
First to give a full‑scale
theory of the sublime.
·
Treats the sublime as a
category separate from and opposed to beauty.
(Placed a strain on the unity of the “aesthetic.”)
·
Rejects the theory of
special internal senses
·
Tries to make the ordinary
affective phenomena of pleasure and pain the basis for beauty and the sublime.
·
Distinguishes between:
Love
and Beauty:
The pleasure taken in beauty is love
(positive pleasure), related to the passions useful for the preservation of
society. (i.e. SEX… well sex and love, After all, sex will produce kids, but only
love will see that they are raised to adulthood.)
"By beauty I mean, that quality, or those qualities
in bodies by which they cause love, or some passion similar to it."
But he defines "love" "that satisfaction which arises to
the mind upon contemplating anything beautiful." (So… defines beauty in terms of love and
define love in terms of beauty… so.)
However, he specifies those qualities of bodies that trigger love
(Contra Hutcheson), claiming that there are a number of beauty‑making
properties and sublimity‑making properties.
Offers a "short‑list" theory rather a
single‑formula.
Delight and the
Sublime:
Delights results from the removal of pain or the removal
of the anticipation of pain. Related to
the passions useful for the individual's preservation. These are operating in the experience of the
sublime.
The sublime is whatever excites delight. Objects which ordinarily threaten and
terrorize us contemplated from a position of security.
Disinterestedness
For Burke, it plays a role; illustrates with an example of male love
and desire:
“beauty, and the passion caused by beauty, which I call
love, is different from desire, though
desire may sometimes operate along with it”
Again, while
beauty is distinct, it is not
incompatible with ‘interested” viewing.
“Though it be certain, that beauty and
deformity, more than sweet and bitter, I are
not qualities in objects, but belong entirely to the sentiment, internal or
external; it must be allowed, that there are certain qualities in objects,
which are fitted by nature to produce those particular feelings.”[6]
Beauty
(as it’s opposite, deformity) is not in
objects, but are feelings linked by the nature of our
human constitution to "certain qualities in objects."
Note: Like Hutcheson and other faculty of taste
theorists, he blends subjective and objective elements to account for
judgements of beauty.
Objective
judgements about what is and is not beautiful are possible. These are judgements about what is “such as
to elicit universal agreement among normal competent subjects under ideal
conditions of perception. These are stable and predictable because they
are based on certain alleged stabilities in human nature.
Note:
Because he relativizes judgements to “Ideal Judges,” he moves his theory away
from subjectivism (beauty judgement = a subjective report) towards something
more objective (beauty judgement is an empirical prediction about the responses
of normal perceivers under ideal conditions).
Hume
mentions "certain qualities in objects" that cause pleasure.
Note: Unlike Hutcheson,
he does not try to reduce them to a formula (i.e. uniformity in variety).
Note: Unlike
Burke, he does not try to specify a complete, short list of beauty-making qualities.
Hume
mentions in passing some twenty or so beauty-making qualities (e.g. uniformity,
variety, luster of color, clearness of expression, exactness of imitation[7]).
Hume
does allow for variations of taste.
But since they are due to age and temperament rather then aberrations in the nature of the perceiver, no standard of taste
exists to rate one preference as better than the other. Hence there is an irreducible relativism to
Hume’s realism.
(Young men prefer "amorous and tender images,"
but older men prefer "wise philosophical reflections." Etc.)
Faculty of Taste
"that ... by which we perceive
and enjoy whatever is Beautiful or Sublime in the works of Nature or Art."[9]
By
"perceive" Alison means “awareness” (thus, he could speak of
perceiving (feeling) pain), not a cognitive perception.
Association of
Ideas
There is an
Objective Condition:
Process
Functioning of the Faculty of Taste (A Complicated Story)
Whew!
Upshot of
this Association of Ideas Theory
Any
aspect
of the material world may become associated with a quality of mind and evoke
the simple emotion. Thus, any aspect of the material world can become beautiful
(even ugly ones- Joke… sort of).
This
is because it is not objects' perceptible qualities that cause them to be
beautiful according to Alison, but their associations. [11]
Alison's theory appears to provide a cognitive
basis for explaining the richness and complexity of the experience of art and
nature. Alison's theory, however, claims
that anything in the material world can be beautiful if it has the right
associations.
Disinterestedness
“attention is so little occupied by
any private or particular object of thought, as to leave us open to all the
impressions which the objects that are before us can produce.”[12]
Critique of
Judgment (1790—the same year Alison's book appeared)
·
Theory of Beauty only, his theory of the
sublime is omitted.
·
He is within the tradition of the philosophy
of taste, but differs radically from that of the British Empiricists
1.
That knowledge derives wholly from sense experience.
2.
Hume’s contention that knowledge of scientific laws and causes operating in the
universe was impossible.
Kant
develops a system of the relation of mind to experience which would show how it
is possible for us to have some knowledge that is certain, that is, a priori knowledge that does not derive
from experience (an would justify universal causality).
Kant’s
Insights: (see end of document for overview of Kant’s Metaphysics/Epistemology)
Kant’s
Aesthetic Theory:
For
Kant there are only two kinds of judgments:
1.
Ordinary judgments (apply a known concept to
something in the world).
“That is a rose. (Rose is that.)
What is that? … What is it that all and only those things
have in common?
Since
beauty is not a concept, a judgment of beauty (That is beautiful.) cannot be an
ordinary judgment.
Therefore
a judgment of beauty must be a reflective judgment.
But,
since beauty is not a concept, a judgment of beauty is a reflective judgment
looking for a nonexistent concept.
"Aesthetic"
very broad sense to include judgments about pleasure in general.
For
Kant, all aesthetic judgments focus on pleasure, which is a property of the
experiencing subject rather than of the objective world (subjective).
Therefore:
1.
Judgments of beauty are subjective.
2.
Yet, they are stable and universal in a way that other pleasures are not. The
pleasure felt with beauty is felt to be universal and necessary.
How
to explain?
Theory
of beauty (4 parts)
(1)
disinterestedness
(2)
universality
(3)
necessity
(4)
the form of purpose.
“A judgment of beauty is a disinterested, universal, and
necessary judgment concerning the pleasure that everyone ought to derive from
the experience of a form of purpose”.
Disinterestedness:
He claims (characterization unique to him) to view
something with an interest is to have a desire that that thing actually exist,[14]
but to view something with disinterest is
to be indifferent to its existence.
Note: though the person may not be, in fact, indifferent
to the existence of the object, the judgement of beauty is made without regard
to the actual existence of the object. (Bowl of fruit example).
Universality:
Universality is to follow from disinterest and universal
cognitive faculties. The pleasure is not
in any sense personal and peculiar. It must derive from what is common to all
humanity. Similar to “faculty of taste,”
but not the special-sense version. In judgments of taste (reflective judgments
looking for nonexistent concepts) the cognitive faculties of the understanding
(the faculty of concepts) and the imagination engage in “free play”—an
interaction in which no concept is or can be applied. This exercise
demonstrates the harmonious relation of the cognitive faculties results in the
pleasure felt in judgments of taste.
Necessity:
The felt necessity is
justified because the pleasure derives from faculties inherent in all people
and in conditions accessible to all people.
What gives one person beauty-pleasure must of necessity, give any human
beauty-pleasure (likewise constituted and situated). This is not to say I expect that everyone WILL agree with me (Hume); only that I
know they should.)
Kant denies that we can derive general
rules of beauty- Every judgment of taste is a singular judgment, and no general
rule can be formulated from the whole set of judgments. If Kant's view is
correct, it is easy enough to see why all people ought to agree, but it does
not tell us how we can get such agreement.
Form of
purpose:
The
form of purpose in a work of art—for example, the designed (“just right”)
quality is the result of intelligent agency. The forms of nature have this same
perceived quality. Taste focuses on these forms themselves (without reference
to the actual purposes they realize).
Sadly this would rule out a color
field as a possible beautiful object (which Kant would deem as nor
“beautiful” but as merely “agreeable”)
1.
Beauty is an object's form of purposiveness, but entirely implausible because
it captures many non-beautiful things (e.g. vultures).
2.
Beautiful admit of degree, (X is more beautiful than y) but Kant's theory has no
way accounting for this.
3.
Beauty is a threshold notion. (Most people are ordinary looking—that is, fall
below the beauty threshold.) Kant's
theory has no way of taking account (does not admit of degrees).
4.
Finally, many experiences of beauty depend largely on color (simple and
uncomplex) independently of any formal aspects.
Kant's theory (like Hutcheson's) cannot take account of
this because he makes form the whole story.
Any theory that rules out color as a source of beauty has got to be defective.
Lost
their “taste” for faculties of taste.
(ha, ha)
Faculty
of Taste Philosophies subjectivize beauty, but only partially. Each claimed that some specific feature of
the objective world triggered the faculty of taste. These please the lion’s share or the
responsibility of the beauty experience on the viewer.
A
Neo-Kantian (sort-of)
Adopts
the basic Kantian metaphysics, but believes that we can surmise certain things
about the Noumena (things in themselves).
He
maintains that the events we witness are an expression of a "Cosmic
Will." All behavior, human, animal,
even inanimate behavior, is an expression of "The Will."
This
will is a turbulent struggle within itself.
Desire, which each of us experience directly as the most immediate manifestation of our
individual wills, is really the manifestation of the Cosmic dissatisfaction and
struggle. Unaware of the our real
situation, we might imagine that we could satisfy our desire, but in reality,
we are pawns of The Will (i.e. our wills are not of our making, but the manifestation of something beyond our
control) and it will reassert its struggle through our desire almost immediately
after any momentary satisfaction.
The
only way out of the grip of The Will and the ceaseless pendulum swing between
desire and boredom, is to renounce desires.
Schopenhauer adopts the Buddhist belief that desire causes suffering and
that the only way to eliminate suffering is to cease from desiring. (recommends
acetic lifestyle).
However,
he believed that aesthetic contemplation alone (due to its disinterested
nature) permitted an escape from the control of The Will. During aesthetic experience we are without
motive or desire for the object we contemplate.
We cease in our ordinary willing.
According
to Schopenhauer, a thing is said to be beautiful because it is the subject of
someone's aesthetic contemplation.
No
objective criterion
"When we say that a thing is beautiful,
we thereby assert that it is an object of our
aesthetic contemplation...it means that
the sight of the thing make us objective, that is
to say, that in contemplating it we are no
longer conscious of ourselves as
individuals, but as pure will-less
subjects of knowledge."[15]
But
there are limits (obscene and nauseating)
Two
Key Metaphysical Elements:
1.
Reality is merely the manifestation of The Will.
2.
Aesthetic consciousness must have as its object a Platonic Form
Note: No special faculties, rather our
normal cognitive faculties are functioning is an unique way.
Ordinary
consciousness is totally at the service of The Will.
Aesthetic
Consciousness is different and rare. "Knowledge tears itself free from The
Will."[16]
One
does not look at the object in question in terms of its relations to other
things (for that would serve the purpose of knowledge and thus The Will), but
rather as a pure, relationless Platonic Idea.
"[T]he absolute silence of the
will...[is]... required for the purely objective apprehension of the true
nature of things...[Platonic Ideas]."[17]
There
is an absolute antagonism between aesthetic consciousness and interest.
Seems
bizarre on many levels.
Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804)
Note :
Think of it a blank template into which mind pours all
sensory information and thus arrives at a coherent experience.
Alternatively think of my Miallist program that can only
organize records according to one and only one pattern. Thus I have a priori knowledge of how my 100th
record and any other record will look (in broad outline). Though I don’t know what the CONTENT of the
record is, I know the form because when I am referring to this program’s
records, I am referring to products of its organizing function which does not/
cannot change.
Kant is very specific about what these forms and categories of
experience are, but I’ll only refer to a few for illustration purposes.
Space and Time are the two pure forms of experience according to Kant.
Initial Objections:
Objection: Einstein talks about warped space where the shortest distance between
two points is NOT a straight line.
Response: But even Einstein cautions us,
don’t try to picture this.
Objection: We can imagine (may be achieve) time traval.
Response: But our experiences will still be “forward.” (First I did, then I did,
then ....)
Objection: Mystics talk about experience where “space and time drop away and all
is one and time is unreal”
Response: Yes, well, even they claim that such experiences are “ineffable.” They may well be unintelligible as well, just
as Kant suggests. It is a controversial
matter what if any knowledge one can get out of such experiences.
Ramifications:
·
There is
epistemological justification for Causality
Human cognition always organizes human experience of the
world according to the concept of causality therefore we can be certain a
priori that all human experience will have the same basic character since human
cognition can only organize it one way.
In particular, we can be certain the every effect will have a cause
since this is the way mind always puts it together for us.
·
(Traditional)
Metaphysics is impossible.
To conceive of reality (much less talk or speculate
about) reality outside of space and time or "transcendent reality" is
impossible, because, necessarily, any such conception would use human concepts
and thus be mediated by mind.
These mediating concepts are perfectly serviceable for
the constitution and organization of human experience, but inapplicable for
gaining immediate knowledge of things-in-themselves. Hence we cannot have theoretical knowledge of
the way things "really exist" apart from human experience or
consciousness of them.
·
Freewill
Dilemma:
Curious inconsistency of reason. Theoretical reason
(science) sees reality as a seamless series of causes and effects
(determinism), moral reason does not. Any judgements of praiseworthiness or
blameworthiness require the concepts of free agency and moral responsibility
for personal choices. Moral experience (and corresponding moral judgements)
require precisely the sort of personal free agency that casual determinism
denies.
Resolution:
Unconditioned causes, necessary for moral judgement,
never occur nor can they occur in the world as
we experience it (i.e. the phenomenal reality: reality as
cognized by human minds). However
we have no theoretical evidence (nor could we) for or against the claim that
causal determinism is true of reality independent of human cognition (things-in-themselves, Noumena). For
all we know, causal determinism is not true of things-in-themselves.
Further, according to Kant, we have moral reason to
believe in freewill since necessary moral judgements only make sense on the presumption
of freewill. We therefore have moral
reason to believe a metaphysical, a claim about things-in-themselves
(i.e. that we have free will) since there is no theoretical evidence against
free will and it is the only rational alternative to absurd moral judgements.
But for Kant moral/practical reason is the only vehicle
we have to speculate and draw conclusions about transcendent reality
(things-in-themselves). He believed that
the existence of things like God, freedom, and the soul which could neither be
proved nor disproved by theoretical (pure) reason, were necessary postulates of
practical reason (systematic moral experience).
From a practical (moral law) point of view, it makes much more
sense to accent to the existence of God, freedom and immortality then to deny
them or to remain agnostic.
Opens the
door to Radical Relativism:
Kant believed that our empirical knowledge was universal
(NOT RELATIVE) because the pure
forms or experience and the categories of thought were universal for all humans.
Therefore, he could believe that what is true for one is true for all.
BUT.... If we do NOT all put the world together in the
same way (e.g. woman according to a female template, men according to a male
template) then we are not experiencing the same worlds. We are, in a very real sense, living in
different worlds, and truth must be relativized to groups of cognizers.
Rather than univalent, truth becomes bivalent or, perhaps,
multivalent. This is potentially as
multifaceted as there are minds, and no basis would exist for claiming that any
worldview was privileged among the plurality.
[1] Note that if anything might taste salty given a certain association history, then the salty experience tells you nothing objective about the world.
[2] Given such a diverse domain, it is unlikely that any objective qualities could be found to explain them all.
According to this medieval doctrine, there are:
1.
The vegetative faculty (which
explains nutrition and procreation)
2.
The locomotive faculty (which
explains movement)
3.
The sensory faculties
(which explain perception, imagination, and the like).
4.
The rational faculty (which explains
mental behavior),
[5] Hobbes was an Psychological Egoist who claimed that the only reason anyone does anything is because he or she believes it to be in his or her own best interest. Taking pleasure in something that provide us with no practical reward would suggest Hobbes’s view of human nature is too simplistic. Further, moral action has to be disinterested to indeed be meritorious (as opposed to merely prudent).
[6] David Hume, “One the Standard of Taste,” in Essays, Literary, Moral and Political (
[7] Preview of coming attractions; this seems to anticipate Zeki’s contention that the pleasure we take from great art arises largely from the ability of the artist to render our “archetypes” exactly.
[8] Archibald Alison, Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste selections reprinted in Alexander Sesonske, ed. What is Art? (New York: Oxford U.P., 1965), pp 182-195
[9] Ibid.,p.182
[10] While one COULD remove the theological component, one could develop it as well as does Jacob Fries and Rudolph Otto. Perhaps transcendentalists as well. If the mind quality is only “taken as a sign,” then the experience ceases to be cognitive in the same way, that is, the awareness of beauty ceases to inform one of anything objective and collapses into a quality of the experience, something closer to a non-cognitive emotional response.
[11] Alison concludes that a blind person can have the same experience of beauty of color that sighted person can because both a blind person and a sighted person can form a the associations that color can acquire.
[12] Alison, p.185
[13] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Judgement, trans. N.K. Smith (New York: St. Matain’s, 1965). pp. 334.
[14] This is misleading. Better to concentrate on the “what disinterested viewing is.
[15] Schopenhauer, Author. The World as Will and Idea p. 270
[16] Ibid 178
[17] Ibid 370