Can a basic sensory property like a bare colour or tone be beautiful? Some, like Kant, say no. But Heidegger suggests, plausibly, that colours ‘glow’ and tones ‘sing’ in artworks. These claims can be productively synthesized: ‘glowing’ colours are not beautiful; but they are sensory forces—not mere ‘matter’, contra Kant—with real aesthetic impact. To the extent that it inheres in sensible properties, beauty is plausibly restricted to structures of sensory force. Kant correspondingly misrepresents the relation of beautiful wholes to their (...) parts. Beautiful form is not extrinsic to sensory force. Sensible beauty is just the holistic impact of agonistically-interacting sensory forces. When sensory forces interact hierarchically, their collective impact is closer to the sublime, in quality if not degree. The simplest sensory experience of sublimity is just the impact of radically intensified sensory forces, similar in kind if not degree to the individual ‘singing’ tones in a beautiful melody. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper explicates Shaftesbury’s idea that we ought to live our lives as though they are works of art. I show that this idea is central to many of Shaftesbury’s most important claims, and that an understanding of this idea enables us to answer some of the most contested questions in the scholarship on Characteristics.

ABSTRACT This paper explores the role of aesthetic judgements in mathematics by focussing on the relationship between the epistemic and aesthetic criteria employed in such judgements, and on the nature of the psychological experiences underpinning them. I claim that aesthetic judgements in mathematics are plausibly understood as expressions of what I will call ‘aesthetic-epistemic feelings’ that serve a genuine cognitive and epistemic function. I will then propose a naturalistic account of these feelings in terms of sub-personal processes of representing and (...) assessing the relation between cognitive processes and certain properties of the stimuli at which they are directed. (shrink)

I argue that Nietzsche’s criticism of the Kantian theory of disinterested pleasure in beauty reflects his own commitment to claims that closely resemble certain Kantian aesthetic principles, specifically as reinterpreted by Schiller. I show that Schiller takes the experience of beauty to be disinterested both (1) insofar as it involves impassioned ‘play’ rather than desire-driven ‘work’, and (2) insofar as it involves rational-sensuous (‘aesthetic’) play rather than mere physical play. In figures like Nietzsche, Schiller’s generic notion of play—which is itself (...) influenced by Kant’s claim that aesthetic pleasure is orthogonal to desire-satisfaction—becomes decoupled from his (further) Kantian view that aesthetic play essentially involves a harmony of sensuous receptivity and rational spontaneity. The result, I suggest, is a self-standing opposition between desires and passions. This motivates a recognizably Romantic vision of aesthetic disinterestedness, as freedom from desire realized in a state of creative determination by passion. (shrink)

For Simone Weil the invocation of ‘rights’ to address extreme human suffering–what she calls ‘affliction’–is ‘ludicrously inadequate’. Rights, Weil argues, invite a response, whereas what the affli...

This paper explores the role of aesthetic judgements in mathematics by focussing on the relationship between the epistemic and aesthetic criteria employed in such judgements, and on the nature of the psychological experiences underpinning them. I claim that aesthetic judgements in mathematics are plausibly understood as expressions of what I will call ‘aesthetic-epistemic feelings’ that serve a genuine cognitive and epistemic function. I will then propose a naturalistic account of these feelings in terms of sub-personal processes of representing and assessing (...) the relation between cognitive processes and certain properties of the stimuli at which they are directed. (shrink)

Aesthetic attitude theories suggest we must attend disinterestedly to the properties of objects to experience aesthetic delight in them: we view them without regard to their use for us. Bence Nanay’s recent revival of the concept explains it through the distribution of our attention over the many properties of individual objects. While agreeing with Nanay’s approach, I argue such perception presupposes certain intentionality towards the object in the Fregean-Husserlian sense. Whether we see the same object as informative or aesthetically gratifying (...) depends on whether we understand it as, say, a map or as a work of design or art. Furthermore, intending an object as aesthetic means we treat it as internally coherent: its properties are defined in relation to one another, rather than the purposes of a subject. This, I conclude, even affects the presentation of historical or moral values that obviously originate outside the object of aesthetic appreciation. (shrink)

The idea of aesthetic disinterestedness has been a central concept in aesthetics since the late eighteenth century. This exchange offers a contemporary reconsideration of disinterestedness from different sides of the question.

No matter how unintuitive it might seem that aesthetic pleasure should be the point where art and morality meet, this is a noteworthy possibility that has been overshadowed by aestheticians’ more visible concerns. Here I briefly survey relevant strands in the literature over the past century, before introducing themes covered in this inaugural issue of Australasian Philosophical Review.

Beauty is evil, a surreptitious diversion of earthly delights planted by the devil, according to the third century theologian-philosopher Tertullian. Beauty is a manifestation of the divine on earth, according to another third century philosopher, Plotinus. Could these two really be talking about the same thing? That beauty evokes an experience of pleasure is probably the only point on which all participants in the continuing debate on beauty agree. But what kinds of pleasure one considers relevant to an experience of (...) beauty, is the crux of the problem of beauty. In ancient, medieval and eighteenth century philosophy, the problem of beauty was framed by the larger concern of what constituted a good life. The question regarding the nature of beauty was answered with a view to its role in achieving the good life for those who cultivated its apprehension. In the twentieth century, philosophers framed the problem of beauty as a problem for conceptual analysis. The questions asked were: Is beauty subjective or objective? Are there properties in the object that count towards beauty in all cases; that are sufficient or necessary for an object to be judged beautiful? What kind of pleasure is the pleasure we experience of beauty? I will examine how these questions can be seen to have been answered by earlier philosophical traditions and then I will use these questions as a guide to developing an explanatory theory of beauty based on contemporary theories of perception. (shrink)

Rather than reading Shaftesbury in anticipation of later forms of disinterestedness, this essay seeks to unpack the larger significance of his aesthetics by tracing his ideas back to their ancient sources. This essay looks to the venerable tradition of world contemplation. It argues that Shaftesbury advances a specifically Stoic model of world contemplation in The Moralists. The text’s principal concern is not with this or that beautiful object but with the whole of which it and the viewer are indivisibly a (...) part; its aim is not so much to account for how we perceive beauty as to foster a characteristically Stoic orientation toward the world, one in which we overcome our egocentric view of things and align ourselves with the natural workings of the world or universe in its entirety. Far from being ‘autonomous’ from the rest of life, the Stoic world contemplation Shaftesbury advocates entails a robust affirmation of existence, clear-eyed gratitude for being part of the universe, whatever the challenges and however fleeting our time in it may be. (shrink)

This paper explores the significance of Adam Smith's ideas for defending non-cognitivist theories of aesthetic appreciation of nature. Objections to non-cognitivism argue that the exercise of emotion and imagination in aesthetic judgement potentially sentimentalizes and trivializes nature. I argue that although directed at moral judgement, Smith's views also find a place in addressing this problem. First, sympathetic imagination may afford a deeper and more sensitive type of aesthetic engagement. Second, in taking up the position of the impartial spectator, aesthetic judgements (...) may originate in a type of self-regulated response where we stand outside ourselves to check those overly humanizing tendencies which might lead to a failure in appreciating nature as nature. (shrink)

This paper comments on an article by V.S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein (JCS,1999) in which they purport to be identifying the neurological principles of beauty. I draw attention to the way the problem of beauty is construed in the philosophical literature by Mary Mothersill (1984) and Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgment). I argue that Ramachandran and Hirsteins' principles do not address the problem of beauty because they do not differentiate between the experience of beauty and other closely related phenomena. I (...) then show how one might address the problem of beauty within the framework that they have adopted. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Aesthetic disinterestedness is one of the central concepts in aesthetics, and Jerome Stolnitz, the most prominent theorist of disinterestedness in the 20th century, has claimed that (i) ancient thinkers engagement with this notion was cursory and undeveloped, and consequently, (ii) the emergence of disinterestedness in the 18th century marks the birth of aesthetics as a discipline. In this paper, I use the extant works of Epicurus to show that the ancient philosopher not only had similar concepts, but also motivated (...) them in careful and complex ways. I argue that, in the Epicurean theoretical framework, arts belong to the category of ‘merely natural’ desires, and this classification, combined with what we know of Epicurus’ rejection of art criticism, shows he had carefully worked out reasons supporting the idea that art ought to be approached terminally, rather than instrumentally. Finally, I compare the notion of aesthetic disinterestedness with Epicurus’ views on arts and argue that in many ways the latter are not inferior to the former, and therefore ought to belong to the history of aesthetics. (shrink)

Contrary to the view that Francis Hutcheson attempted to expound, defend, and further develop the philosophical system described in Shaftesbury's Characteristics, some contemporaries of Hutcheson considered Hutcheson's differences from Shaftesbury to be at least as profound as the similarities. The clearest descriptions of those differences can be found in William Leechman's preface to Hutcheson's 1755 System of Moral Philosophy, and more elaborately in a review of Hutcheson's System, probably by Hugh Blair, published in the 1755 Edinburgh Review. Examining Shaftesbury's and (...) Hutcheson's moral philosophies in light of these two descriptions reveals that Shaftesbury's defense of virtue as natural to human beings, while a plausible response to Locke, clearly did not escape Hutcheson's censure of Epicurean egoism. (shrink)

Plato conceived of the Form of Beauty as quite distinct from the Form of the Good. Beauty was a means to the Good. The ascent theory of the Symposium has suggested to some commentators that Plato envisaged two kinds of beauty, the sensuous and the intellectual, and that to reach the Good we must transcend our sensuous desires and cultivate an appreciation of intellectual beauty. However, in the Laws Plato presents us with a third notion of beauty, which is neither (...) sensuous nor intellectual. To experience beauty we need to cultivate our pleasure in harmonious forms. This is where we find a theory of beauty that resonates in Kant’s aesthetic theory. According to the latter, the feeling for beauty is a feeling for harmony that takes us beyond the confines of a world marked out by self-interest. I conclude that Plato’s aesthetic theory anticipates the role that aesthetic judgment would play in Immanuel Kant’s system of the mind. (shrink)

This paper argues that Shaftesbury differs from other moral sentimentalists (Hutcheson, Hume, Smith) because he conceives of the moral sentiments as partial and first-personal, rather than impartial and spectatorial. This difference is grounded in Shaftesbury’s distinctive notion that moral self-governance consists in the self-examination of soliloquy. Breaking with his Stoic influences, Shaftesbury holds that the moral sentiments play the role of directing and guiding soliloquy. Because soliloquy is first-personal reflection that is directed to achieving happiness, claiming that the moral sentiments (...) direct soliloquy leads Shaftesbury to conceive of the moral sentiments as arising from the internal perspective of an agent focused on her own happiness. This provides Shaftesbury with a stronger framework for understanding moral sentiments, for it avoids the difficulty of explaining why the sentiments of others or those arising from an imagined spectator’s perspective are motivating or authoritative for us. (shrink)

The old, historical concept of ‘disinterestedness’ has dominated the tradition of aesthetics for almost two centuries. In environmental aesthetics, a rather recent branch of aesthetics, some scholars such as Arnold Berleant have criticized disinterestedness, claiming that it is not a satisfactory criterion since it views the environment as an artwork. As an alternative, Berleant proposes a theory of the ‘aesthetics of engagement’. I claim that although his main intention is to introduce a comprehensive perception of nature, ‘appreciating nature as nature’, (...) into the aesthetics of nature, Berleant misinterprets ‘disinterestedness’ and overlooks the fact that it can still be maintained within environmental aesthetics. Disinterestedness can guide our judgements with the notions of non-instrumentality, transparent self, and impartiality. In this sense, I argue that the proper opposite of engagement is not disinterestedness but a dominant concept of aesthetics left over from the eighteenth century, the ‘picturesque’, in contrast to holistic accounts of the philosophers who look for an immersion-of-self-in-a-bigger-Self, disinterestedness provides being devoid-of-any-empirical-self and disinterestedness is not anthropocentric, but anthropogenic, human-generated, which accepts the ‘otherness’ of nature and opens the way for respect and care in environmental ethics. (shrink)

This is an essay on the tasks and capacities of aesthetic theory and the pitfalls that beset it. I want to show that aesthetics can be enlightening by revealing and studying the facets and dimensions of experiences we call aesthetic, experience that is expansive and revelatory. This kind of experience can also clarify the relation of aesthetics to other areas of knowledge, such as cultural studies, and conversely, the bearing of other disciplines on our aesthetic understanding. Aesthetic theory, however, is (...) easily caught up in secondary, unproductive, and false issues, and these are what gives this essay its title. What is important, I want to argue, is not what we label beautiful or call art but where we find the kind of value experiences traditionally associated with appreciating beauty, natural and artistic, and how we can enhance and develop such experiences. However, this also requires recognizing the converse of such values in the loss, the negation, the desecration of this mode of experience. I conclude by proposing a larger philosophical role for aesthetics. (shrink)

We explain that most of the explanations that traditionally have been used to conceptually and ontologically differentiate aesthetic experience from any other are not compatible with a naturalistic framework, since they are based on transcendental idealistic metaphysics, reductions, and on the assumption that the aesthetic is an a priori special ontology in the object and the mind. However, contemporary works that propose as an alternative to apply directly evidence and theory from the science of emotions to the problem of aesthetics (...) introduce Aesthetic Science into a new set of problematic assumptions. We argue that conceptually equating or ontologically reducing the aesthetic to the theory of rewards cannot provide a clear alternative for any Aesthetic Science to naturalize the aesthetic experience as a heterogeneous class of events that are not already explained by affective science. This practice introduces a serious danger of making the term “aesthetic” and the respective scientific field pretty weak or completely redundant and unnecessary. (shrink)

This article contributes to the scholarly analysis of impartiality in the early modern period. While previous studies have focused on impartiality in law, history, philosophy and aesthetics, this article analyzes impartial and cold or even cold-blooded self-examinations and self-observations, primarily in the work of the eighteenth-century German philosophers and writers Georg Friedrich Meier and Karl Philipp Moritz. The article is particularly concerned with the relation between the therapeutic and epistemic meanings and functions of these concepts. Without suggesting a linear development, (...) it details how, over time, therapeutic connotations tended to be challenged and partly replaced by epistemic ones. It further argues that this development was intimately connected to the culture of sensibility and, in particular, to the growing interest in the unique, individual and often sensual experience. (shrink)

In an essay published in 1918, Walter Benjamin sets forth a task that will concern him for the rest of his life: The task of a future epistemology is to find for knowledge the sphere of total neutr...

This paper aims to define what competitive perception is. Using Dufrenne's phenomenological analysis of the art spectator's experience, namely the concept of aesthetic perception, I will claim that it is useful to apply this phenomenological approach to the experience of watching sport events. I will argue that the concepts of uncertainty and auto teleology, being two main features in sport competition, are helpful to define competitive perception.

Shaftesbury has long been celebrated as the early Enlightenment pioneer in English and European aesthetics. His aesthetic innovation, however, has hitherto been explained as merely a new way of saying or appreciating old things within his inherited European cultural traditions. To read him differently, it is crucial to pay attention to a spiritual crisis which he began to experience in the late 1690s. Both before and during it, he was influenced decisively by Pierre Bayle into utilizing information about China in (...) his works, particularly the Chinese monistic idea of tianren heyi or humanity’s unity with heaven. Fundamentally different from the Platonist and Neo-Platonist monism of his inheritance, that liberating conceptual framework from China can and should be seen in hindsight as what made possible Shaftesbury’s aesthetic breakthrough in The Sociable Enthusiast. (shrink)

Menninghaus et al. distinguish art from fiction, but no current arguments or data suggest that the concept of art can be meaningfully circumscribed. This is a problem for aesthetic psychology. I sketch a solution by rejecting the distinction: Unlike most animal communication, in which signals are either true or false, art and fiction consist of signals without determinate truth values.

This essay cross-examines both the correlation and the disjunction between art philosophy and political reason in the thinking of the French Jewish art philosopher, Kant specialist and socialist politician Victor Basch. Two interwoven lines of questioning will be in play. One considers the extent to which Basch's theory of beauty, which was primarily grounded in a psychological theory of Einfühlung, was a corollary to his political ideas and practices. The other line of inquiry raises questions about how Basch's political position, (...) namely his anti-facist defending of republican values, became influenced by his work on aesthetics. By answering both questions, this article challenges the traditional historiography of interwar aesthetics. The esaay shows how conceptual debates of aesthetics were not just sterile theoretical products, but to a large extent offered an apparatus to diagnose and orientate a rapidly changing world. Therefore this essay develops a reflection about the gaze needed to take in the complex historical situations from which aesthetic reflections grew, and which in turn they addressed. (shrink)

This dissertation studies the shift that occurs in German aesthetic theory between Kant's Critique of Judgment and Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation , with Schelling's System of Transcendental Idealism forming the pivot. This shift is actually part of a much larger movement, and I have chosen aesthetic theory because it mirrors so well the changing focus of the essence of the self which takes place as post-Enlightenment German philosophers delve deeper into the question of what it means to (...) be human. ;Kant remains firmly rooted in the rationalist tradition, and provides for his successors both a foundation and the means to undermine it. He gives an explanation for the individual's response to a great work of art which relies on an account of how the mind functions. Schelling and Schopenhauer are deeply influenced by Kant, but regard the human self as containing some inexplicable mystery, an unconscious mythic unity with all other selves, for Schelling, and an irrational desiring will, for Schopenhauer. Although Kant, too, unwillingly points to the evidence which suggests a non-rational basis for aesthetic response, as well as for an account of the self, he tries to avoid stating this result. By contrast, Schelling and Schopenhauer make this inexplicable aspect a basic premise of their respective works. ;In this work, I rely mainly on the three primary texts, with the intent of making the complex arguments, in particular those of Kant and Schelling, more accessible to the reader. I examine first the cognitive theory of each thinker, and then study each one's aesthetic theory in relation to their respective theory of mind. In this way, I show how a decisive shift in focus has occurred in the period under consideration. In addition, I refer to a cross-section of recent literature to clarify and support my position. ;The conclusion I draw is that philosophic self-understanding attains a completely new vantage point as the result of Schelling and Schopenhauer's work, a perspective which irrevocably changes the lines of debate about the nature of the self. (shrink)

A free copy of the review can be obtained by following this link: -/- http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/pKdJUN4BCKP7z8SneF6X/full .