Clive Bell's Artistic Formalism

 

Clive Bell's Artistic Formalism emphasizes that the value of pictorial art lies solely in its formal qualities—lines, colors, and their arrangements on the canvas. Bell introduces the concept of "Significant Form," a quality shared by all objects that evoke aesthetic emotions. According to Bell, this significant form is the only common element among diverse artworks that provoke such emotions. This focus on form means that the worth of an artwork is judged by its ability to stir aesthetic feelings through its formal properties alone, disregarding content, historical context, or artist intention.

 

Bell argues that the recognition of a work of art hinges on the viewer's emotional response. The role of the critic, then, is to help others perceive these forms and feel the corresponding aesthetic emotions. This subjectivity is crucial to Bell's theory, suggesting that without a personal emotional connection, one cannot legitimately recognize or judge an artwork. Bell maintains that the aesthetic experience is distinct and separate from other emotional responses, leading to a unique form of "aesthetic exaltation" that transports viewers beyond everyday life.

 

Bell asserts that true appreciation of art involves a pure aesthetic response, untainted by human interests or representational content. He argues that focusing on representation or historical context leads to "impure appreciation." According to Bell, such interests are sociologically contingent and thus cannot be considered true art. He believes that significant form transcends time and place, providing a lasting value that remains stable and unobscure. This pursuit of timeless significance seeks to identify works that provoke an aesthetic emotion independent of historical and cultural context.

 

Critics like Thomas McLaughlin and John Carey challenge Bell's notion of a pure aesthetic emotion. McLaughlin argues that aesthetic responses are intertwined with personal emotional patterns, while Carey questions the possibility of sharing the same aesthetic emotion across different historical periods. Despite these criticisms, Bell's goal is to identify lasting values in art, though his insistence on a purely formal aesthetic emotion remains contentious.

 

Bell contends that true aesthetic appreciation does not require knowledge of art history or the artist's intentions. He differentiates between aesthetic judgments, which focus on formal qualities, and non-aesthetic judgments, which consider historical, political, or personal significance. For Bell, the true value of an artwork lies in its ability to provoke aesthetic emotions through significant form, independent of any external context or representation.

 

Bell's Artistic Formalism is often seen as a defense of abstract art, emphasizing the importance of form over representational accuracy. This perspective dismisses many values traditionally associated with art, such as historical significance or representational content, focusing instead on the formal qualities that evoke aesthetic emotions.

 

Bell's extreme Formalism, which ties the nature of art to formal properties alone, is problematic. It excludes many aspects of art appreciation, such as historical context or representational content, and fails to accommodate the evolving nature of art practices. However, elements of Bell's theory can be salvaged through a more moderate approach.

 

Moderate Formalism recognizes both formal and non-formal aesthetic properties. Formal beauty is determined by sensory and intrinsic physical properties, while non-formal beauty involves broader aspects like content and context. This approach allows for a more comprehensive understanding of aesthetic value, accommodating a range of artistic practices and viewer responses.

 

In this way, Moderate Formalism asserts that while formal properties play a crucial role in aesthetic appreciation, they are not the sole determinant of an artwork's value. By acknowledging both formal and non-formal aesthetic properties, this approach offers a more flexible and inclusive framework for understanding art.

 

 

 

 

 

Twentieth Century Aesthetic Attitudes

 

Edward Bullough, Jerome Stolnitz, and Roger Scruton are prominent twentieth-century aesthetic attitude theorists who aim to provide an intuitive definition of the aesthetic attitude and discuss the relationship between the aesthetic attitude and the philosophy of art and aesthetics. Their theories focus on the concept of psychical distance, which is a metaphorical extension of spatial and temporal distance.

Bullough's theory of aesthetic consciousness involves disinterest, or psychical distance, which is the experience of not being emotionally close to or attached to something and not thinking about its practical role. He uses the example of a fog as an example of how a person can direct their attention to its surface features due to proper psychical distance. This distance is the result of putting the perceived object "out of gear" with our practical interests, allowing us to focus on the object itself rather than our practical concerns.

Emotional response is still intimately involved in aesthetic consciousness and experience, but these emotions need to be generalized beyond individual feelings. Bullough also discusses two ways distancing can go wrong: under-distancing and over-distancing. Under-distancing occurs when we are unable to separate our personal interests from what we experience, while over-distancing occurs when we are too emotionally involved or removed from a work.

Spatial and temporal distance are not just metaphors for psychical distance; being too temporally removed can make it difficult to engage with a work, such as in the case of a brilliant Chinese satire. Bullough argues that being too spatially close to a work can make us unable to engage with it properly, as we have to taste and come into direct physical contact with them.

In conclusion, the three prominent aesthetic attitude theorists in the twentieth century aim to provide an intuitive definition of the aesthetic attitude and explain the relationship between the aesthetic attitude and the philosophy of art and aesthetics more generally. By understanding the concept of psychical distance and the potential for misinterpretation, we can better understand the complex dynamics of aesthetic experience and the importance of maintaining a balance between personal and professional interests.

Bullough's aesthetic attitude theory explains why artists are sometimes censored, ostracized, or banned. Artists are better able to distance themselves than the average person, so they see more objects aesthetically. Non-artists may look at the art and see only hypersexualized youth or sacrilegious depictions of holy figures.

However, many have found these implications implausible. Physical closeness to a work does not necessarily preclude the proper psychical distance or disinterested attitude. There are further worries that Bullough only offers a necessary condition for the aesthetic attitude, but he is still an important figure in the development of aesthetic attitude theory. His structured and explanatorily ambitious view set the tone for the aesthetic attitude theories that follow.

For Stolnitz, the aesthetic attitude involves attending to something (anything) in a disinterested and sympathetic way, doing so for its own sake. When we look at something in a disinterested way, we do not look at it as a means (as an instrument) to some other end. This implies that the attitude of an art critic, either amateur or professional, is opposed to the aesthetic attitude. By including sympathy as a criterion of the aesthetic attitude, Stolnitz introduces the idea that the right attitude must take the artwork on its own terms. One needs to ignore personal conflicts and biases.

Stolnitz understands attention, the third major component of his definition, as a kind of alert state. He agrees with predecessors that it is a kind of contemplation, but says that we have to understand contemplation in the right way. Aesthetic contemplation does not involve simply sitting back, relaxing, and letting the mind wander; it involves mental focus and thought, which can manifest itself in physical manifestations such as tightening muscles during a thrilling scene, a foot tapping to the beat, or a tilt of one's head like the figure in a painting.

Stolnitz is a proper aesthetic attitude theorist who argues that we can adopt the aesthetic attitude toward anything, acknowledging that nothing is inherently unaesthetic. He points out that artists often approach ugly or boring objects with the aesthetic attitude and create something beautiful. Since nothing is inherently unaesthetic, nothing in art is at an aesthetic disadvantage to anything in nature, and vice versa.

He also uses the aesthetic attitude to demarcate the bounds between things that count as aesthetically relevant and irrelevant. Thoughts that are compatible with disinterested, sympathetic attention can be aesthetically relevant as long as they do not divert attention away from the aesthetic object. Certain kinds of interpretation can thus count as aesthetically relevant or be ruled out as irrelevant.

Stolnitz and Scruton are two prominent theorists in the field of aesthetics. Stolnitz is an aesthetic attitude theorist who uses his notion of the aesthetic attitude to define aesthetic objects and explain the aesthetic relevance of external thoughts and facts. He believes that aesthetics should not weaken our attention, pertain to the meaning or expressiveness of the object, and enhance the quality of one's aesthetic response.

Scruton, on the other hand, focuses on three main components: pleasure, enjoyment, or satisfaction. This means that while the aesthetic attitude may not always yield pleasure, it is our hope in taking such an attitude that it will. This view should not be mistaken for aesthetic hedonism, which views aesthetic value solely in a thing's ability to give us pleasure. Pleasure should not be thought of too narrowly either, as sad music can afford aesthetic satisfaction, as can paintings of violent scenes.

Scruton also emphasizes the importance of attention to an object for its own sake. He finds the phrase "for its own sake" strange but tries to find the kernel of insight in it. To be interested in something for its own sake involves a desire to continue experiencing it, not to satisfy another, separate desire. This means that if an art collector has a desire to look at a painting, they are interested in it only when there are no other desires that seeing the painting would satisfy.

Lastly, the aesthetic attitude is normative. Scruton sees himself as taking on Kant's view that aesthetic judgments are universal. He believes that the aesthetic attitude is what we express when we make aesthetic judgments, which means that when we call something beautiful, we make an aesthetic judgment and thus express an aesthetic attitude. This view leads to many different aesthetic attitudes, rather than just one special frame of mind or mode of perception that we are in when we have particular aesthetic experiences.

Stolnitz and Scruton both contribute to the understanding of aesthetics and the role of aesthetic attitudes in shaping our perceptions and experiences. Stolnitz's concept of the aesthetic attitude is more explicit and forms the core of his theory, while Scruton's definition of aesthetic attitudes may come closer to the normal meaning of 'attitude'.

 

Aesthetics and Poststructuralism

Poststructuralism is a collection of influential French philosophers and theorists who emerged in the wake of structuralism, a movement that emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries as a leading methodological approach in human sciences. Structuralism applied some basic tenets of Ferdinand de Saussure's structural linguistics to phenomena other than language, such as the unconscious, myth and ritual, and history. Roland Barthes applied structuralist principles to literary criticism and developed Saussure's suggestion of a'semiology', a study of signs in general, applying this approach to various forms of art and culture.

Poststructuralists argue that meaning is not reducible to static structures and cannot be uncovered using a formal method. They insist upon the necessity of some element of indeterminacy (which accounts for the genesis of the structure) that operates within the structure to generate meaning, and that constitutes an instability which threatens the coherence of the structure and may disrupt it and cause it to change. Poststructuralists have had recourse to highly unorthodox, experimental modes of thinking and writing in theorising and demonstrating those aspects of meaning or effect they believe structuralism misses. Art and aesthetics have been significant topics for all poststructuralists because, as the philosophical tradition attests, aesthetic meaning or effect seems to be a paradigm case of a kind of meaning which is not'scientific'.

Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze are two poststructuralists who have had an enormous influence on literary criticism and some influence as well in the wider arts and aesthetic theory. Derrida's philosophy of deconstruction has had an enormous influence on literary criticism and some influence as well in the wider arts and aesthetic theory. His quasi-transcendental theory of meaning has implications for how meaning is understood to operate in philosophy, literature, and the arts. Derrida's principle of meaning, arche-writing, claims to capture something of these conditions for anything whatsoever being meaningful, rather than writing as such.

Derrida's arguments are extremely complex but can be treated summarily by noting how they draw on the traditions of phenomenology and structural linguistics. In the Husserlean phenomenological tradition, which takes consciousness as the transcendental condition of meaning, Derrida reads Husserl to show that conscious experience requires a synthesis of different temporal moments, such that any 'presence' of something to consciousness is already subject to the passing of time, or temporal difference. From the structural linguistics of de Saussure, Derrida draws the idea that every linguistic meaning only functions because of the possibility of its reiteration, or what Derrida calls its 'iterability'. Every linguistic usage draws from an already-existing store of linguistic meaning, and in that sense is already a reiteration.

Derrida, a philosopher and literary critic, is often seen as collapsing the distinction between philosophy and literature. However, he is drawn to the latter and uses it to complicate the former due to the differences he sees between them. Philosophy traditionally opposes the'merely' literary, claiming truth to be its own exclusive competence and categorizing literature as belonging to the fictional or untrue. Philosophical texts are typically structured according to the metaphysics of presence, deployed in structures of binary oppositions that set up hierarchies of meaning.

Derrida sees all meaning and all texts as to some degree structured by the metaphysics of presence, but he sees the virtue of literature as asserting and developing the ambiguities, contradictions, aporias, and playfulness of meaning that philosophical texts and modes of writing strive to suppress. Deconstruction, for Derrida, is a strategy of reading and writing which aims to identify and subvert the binary oppositions structuring a text, showing how the privileged term is in fact parasitic on the underprivileged one, and opening up the space for a play of meaning beyond simple oppositions by inventing concepts (such as the trace, différance, the hymen) which are 'undecidable' from the point of view of such oppositions.

When Derrida turns his attention to the visual arts, he develops concepts such as the trait, the parergon, and the subjectile which essentially follow the same differential logic as arche-writing. He suspects any supposition of a pure presence of meaning in an image and works in various ways to complicate this, showing that images depend on an ambiguous play between concepts and categories such as the inside and outside of the frame, the visible and the invisible, word and image, single artwork and entire oeuvre, and so on. These playful movements are processes of spatial differing and temporal deferring, working against the metaphysics of presence and underlining a differential form of meaning in the visual which is similar to that which he sees operating in the written text.

Lyotard's Discourse, Figure (1971) stages a significant encounter between phenomenology, structuralism, and psychoanalysis, with the aim of doing justice to the aesthetic event, particularly the visual. He insists that the visual has its own kind of meaning, which differs from and cannot be reduced to linguistic meaning. He compares the kind of meaning proper to perception, as developed in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, with the kind of meaning operative in language according to structuralism.

Lyotard objects to Lacan’s structuralist reading of the unconscious, believing that the latter’s interpretation of art as lodged in the register of the imaginary, acting as a lure for desire, is an affront to the grandeur of art. He develops an alternative view of the unconscious, emphasizing plastic transformations rather than linguistic operations of its contents. He also objects to much of Freud’s explicit aesthetics, arguing that the meaning of an artwork is not to be found in the pathology of the artist.

In his later work, Lyotard reconfigures the traditional aesthetic category of the sublime to account for and defend avant-garde art and the significance of the aesthetic in the contemporary world. He follows Adorno in postulating a crisis of traditional aesthetics, both in relation to the conditions of (post)industrial capitalism and developments in the arts, and tries to update aesthetics in response. For Lyotard, there is a crisis of meaning on the level of perception in the contemporary world, as scientific and technological developments, operating in tandem with capitalism, have mutated the perceptual bearings by which we coordinate ourselves in the world. Sciences and technologies have both extended our sensory capacities (seeing and hearing at a distance, through television and telephones, for example) and revealed a reality beyond our body's capacities for sensory awareness (atoms, microbes, nebulae, etc.). These changes have meant that the basic forms of sensory experience—time and space—have been thrown into uncertainty.

Lyotard sees avant-garde art of the twentieth-century as having pursued an analogous exploration of this crisis of perception. Traditionally, aesthetics has been concerned with the beautiful, understood in the arts as an ideal fit between the form and matter of a work. Lyotard sees avant-garde art, especially minimalism and abstraction, as moving away from a concern with 'good form' and towards an exploration of matter. He characterises the sublime stake of art as 'presenting the unpresentable', because for him the aesthetic event is something which cannot be reduced to a 'presentation', understood in the Kantian sense as a 'good form' given to a sensation. Rather, art-events evoke thoughts and feelings in relation to works which surprise us and leave us feeling moved but lost for words. In his later works, the sublime is the aesthetic which Lyotard thinks best names this feeling.

Gilles Deleuze, both in his writings with Félix Guattari and on his own, made important and influential contributions to the philosophy of film, painting, literature, and music. He sees the level of perception with which phenomenologists are preoccupied as insufficiently deep to provide a full account of reality. Deleuze and Guattari delve deeper to give an account of art and aesthetic experience grounded in a metaphysical description of reality, where'sensation' becomes the key aesthetic issue. They associate Merleau-Ponty's flesh with the lived experience which reveals sensation, but insist on two further, deeper, and necessary conditions for sensation: the 'house' and 'cosmic forces'.

Deleuze and Guattari want to connect the activity of art with things usually considered extraneous to art and the universe as a whole. They claim that animals can be artists through their exploitation of the expressive qualities of materials in marking territory and attracting mates. However, they also insist that art must be considered a form of thinking which thinks with sensations, just as philosophy thinks with concepts and science thinks with functions. This insistence gives art a legitimacy equal to that of philosophy and science, indicating the importance accorded to the aesthetic characteristic of continental philosophy.

 

Aesthetics and Critical Theory

Critical theory, a prominent strand of Western Marxism, is associated with the Frankfurt School and has had a significant impact on aesthetics and art-critical contexts. Its main contributors include Walter Benjamin in his influential essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936), and Theodor W. Adorno in his Aesthetic Theory (1970).

Benjamin's essay suggests that the function of artwork has changed as the conditions of production under industrial capitalism have changed. He suggests that it has taken some time for changes at the superstructural (cultural) level to manifest the implications of the changes at the substructural (economic) level, which Marx analysed in the nineteenth century. The key factor in this change is the technique of mechanical reproduction. Benjamin classifies these techniques as forms of manual reproduction and asserts that with mechanical reproduction, something significantly new has developed.

The aura of a work, which is the unique presence of the original exuding a distinct time and place, is lost through mechanical reproduction. This aura gives a work its authenticity and makes it possible to distinguish between an authentic original and a forgery. With arts such as photography and film, it no longer makes sense to draw distinctions between reproductions from a photographic negative, as one reproduction from a photographic negative is no more or less authentic than another.

Benjamin also believes that this change has the effect of extracting the artwork from tradition. The uniqueness of a work means that it is imbedded in a fabric of tradition, and this traditional uniqueness is associated with the anthropological basis of artworks in ritual. Benjamin uses Marx's categories of use value and exchange value to suggest that ritual or cult value is the original use value of an artwork.

With the advent of mechanical reproduction, artworks are finally liberated from this cult value and take on an "exhibition value." Copies are put into mass circulation, exhibited far more widely than would be possible with an authentic original. This accords with a broader social and cultural phenomenon of 'the mass', a sense of the universal equivalence and exchangeability of all things in the social domain.

Benjamin asserts that human modes of perception are historically transformable, and the arts of mechanical reproduction are altering our perceptions of the world. Techniques in photography and film, such as close-up and slow motion, introduce new perceptions and knowledges as they capture things entirely unknown to the naked eye.

Benjamin suggests that as art loses its ritual or cult value, it takes on a political value, and the concepts it develops can be useful for a revolutionary communist politics of art.

Adorno's reflections on art and culture emerged from a disagreement with Benjamin over the democratizing potentials of radio and film. He agrees with Benjamin that contemporary developments in society and the arts challenge modern and romantic aesthetics but has a more pessimistic view of the mass media 'culture industry'. Adorno argues that popular culture is complicit with the contemporary social system of capitalist exploitation, which he analyses as a culmination of the logic of 'instrumental rationality' devolving from the Enlightenment. In this system, human beings are radically alienated from nature through the project of manipulation and control of the natural world, leading to a 'new barbarism' in which we are psychologically dominated by the very system which was supposed to set us free.

The culture industry acts as an ideological support of this system, keeping people blind to the real conditions of their existence. However, Adorno saw more positive potentials in 'genuine' art, particularly experimental modernism. Through extensive writings on musicology, literature, and the visual arts, Adorno contributed one of the most important bodies of work in continental aesthetics, culminating in his last book, Aesthetic Theory.

Aesthetic Theory deliberately employs strategies which resist any easy summation of the work into simply stated concepts and theses. Adorno developed a paratactic style of writing on the model of atonal music, in which sentences clash with each other to dissonant effect, rather than developing a clear line of argument. He deploys his own 'negative' dialectical style of thinking, in which pairs of contrasting concepts 'constellate' around topics of discussion without resolving into static propositions and conclusions.

Several key themes are evident in the context of the broader tradition of aesthetics in continental philosophy. First, Aesthetic Theory is a critical interrogation of the tradition of philosophical aesthetics itself, especially as exemplified by the works of Kant and Hegel. Adorno seeks to rethink such categories critically rather than simply abandoning the legacy of the aesthetic tradition.

Second, Adorno asserts the autonomy of the artwork, insisting that the aesthetic value of an artwork is independent of other values ascribed to it, such as epistemological or ethical value. This claim has often been misinterpreted to mean that artworks should be understood to be entirely unrelated to their social context or political value.

Finally, Adorno sees artworks as'monads', products of the social conditions in which they are created and mirror these social conditions within them. He argues that the most politically relevant artworks are those that best reflect the deeply conflicted conditions of contemporary culture, such as the atonal compositions of Arnold Schoenberg or the absurdist literature of Samuel Beckett.

 

Aesthetic Theory in Continental Philosophy

Aesthetics is a significant area of research in the analytic philosophical tradition, but it often seems to be accorded less value than other areas of value theory such as ethics and political philosophy. In continental philosophy, aesthetics has been given an important place by nearly every major thinker and tradition. This is due to the importance of art in European education and tradition, the French model of the philosophe as philosopher-writer, and the philosophical reasons behind its importance.

In the analytic tradition, meaning and truth are often thought to be exemplified by logic, science, and the formal structures of language. In continental philosophy, art has often taken this role of exemplifying meaning and truth, making it akin to a philosophical activity insofar as it is thought to produce meaning and truth. Aesthetics takes an important place because it is seen as a branch of philosophy that gives access to some of philosophy's perennially central concerns.

There is no general consensus concerning central topics of debate in continental aesthetics. Instead, this area of aesthetics may be approached according to major traditions and thinkers. Most of these developments have taken place in critical relation with modern and nineteenth-century aesthetics, especially as exemplified by the works of Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgement (1790) has been particularly important in shaping debates in later continental aesthetics, as it stakes out aesthetics as a domain autonomous in relation to other areas of philosophical concern, such as epistemology and practical philosophy.

The importance and scope of aesthetics in continental philosophy can be indicated at the outset by taking the relatively 'canonical' example of Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche on art. Heidegger sets out five statements on art:

1. Art is the most perspicuous and familiar configuration of will to power;
2. Art must be grasped in terms of the artist;
3. Art is the basic occurrence of all beings;
4. Art is the distinctive countermovement to nihilism;
5. Art is worth more than 'the truth'.

These theses indicate that for Nietzsche, art is far more than a pleasant diversion; it has profound ontological, cultural, political, and existential significance, and is even worth more than truth itself. Heidegger expands these theses by stating that Nietzsche's ontology is that of the 'will to power', in which Being as a whole is understood in terms of shifting relations of confluent and conflictual forces, producing the creation and destruction of particular beings.

The fourth and fifth statements give art a practical dimension in Nietzsche's philosophy. Heidegger insists that 'truth' in the fifth statement (and in all of Nietzsche's philosophy) must be understood in a specifically Platonic sense as referring to the supposedly true supersensuous world of the Ideas, in contrast with the untrue sensuous world of mere appearances. For Nietzsche, the old values he associates with nihilism—the decadence of culture and the devaluation of life—are essentially grounded in this Platonic conception of truth through its dominance in the religion, morality, and philosophy of the Western tradition.

In conclusion, aesthetics has had a significant and wide-ranging impact on twentieth and twenty-first-century continental philosophers.

 

Aesthetic Attitude (History)

Aesthetic attitude theories emphasize the importance of the aesthetic attitude in understanding art and its relationship with other values. Some argue that the nature of art is explained by the aesthetic attitude, but this view is generally accepted as insufficient for setting the boundaries of art. Most aesthetic attitude theories offer subtler and more complex accounts of the interaction among the aesthetic attitude, art, and beauty.

The origins of aesthetic attitude theory can be traced back to the eighteenth-century notion of disinterest, which was discussed by a group of British thinkers writing about beauty and taste. Lord Shaftesbury, Immanuel Kant, and Arthur Schopenhauer were among the early to discuss the notion in depth. These philosophers wrote about aesthetics and art, often referred to as theories of taste, because they each essentially involve the notion of a special kind of faculty, the faculty of taste, that we use to determine an object's aesthetic value.

The relationship between the aesthetic attitude and eighteenth-century British theories of taste is a subject of debate. Some philosophers, like Jerome Stolnitz, argue that there is a deep continuity between these two groups of theories, while others, like George Dickie, argue that there is an important divide between the two groups of theories. However, it is hard to deny any connection, as these British philosophers influenced Kant and inspired everyone who has written about the aesthetic attitude since.

Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson, and David Hume were prominent British philosophers who wrote about aesthetics and art. Their theories are often referred to as theories of taste because they each essentially involve the notion of a special kind of faculty, the faculty of taste, that we use to determine an object's aesthetic value. Later British theorists, such as Edmund Burke, argued against such a faculty, worrying that it failed to explain anything.

Shaftesbury argues that aesthetic experience is disinterested, but has a Platonic picture on which beauty is essentially the same as goodness and truth. Aesthetic appreciation is not devoid of any connection whatsoever to other values (ethical and epistemological), despite lacking connection to our personal ends and interests. For him, appreciating something aesthetically involves the same essential feeling as appreciating something morally.

Hutcheson and Hume disagree with Shaftesbury's unified view, rejecting the equivalence of beauty, goodness, and truth and seeing more of a gap between aesthetic value and other values. They all share the central idea of disinterested pleasure as independent from personal interest, which forms the starting point for aesthetic attitude theories.

Kant's aesthetic attitude theory focuses on our judgments of taste, also known as judgments of taste or judgments of the beautiful. These judgments involve four important aspects: disinterestedness, universality, purposiveness without purpose, and necessity. Disinterest is the quality of our judgments of taste, which are subjective and come from our feelings rather than objective facts.

Kant argues that there are three kinds of satisfaction: agreeable, beautiful, and good. The agreeable gratifies some desire, while the beautiful is disinterested pleasure. The agreeable pleasure serves our purpose, and our finding it depends on our psychology. We cannot change what we desire simply by willing to.

The good is esteemed and approved, with objective value set on it. We find being generous good when we set objective value on generosity or generous actions. Pleasure in the good is also interested, as reason determines what we find good. This is still a personal interest because each person has an interest in bringing about the good.

The beautiful is disinterested pleasure, and the art collector who enjoys her artwork for its monetary value enjoys that work in an interested way, and thus has not taken the aesthetic attitude toward it. Consequently, any positive judgment she produces will not be a judgment of taste. Kant takes this idea further, arguing that anyone who really approaches something with a contemplative, disinterested attitude and finds it beautiful (that is, takes the aesthetic attitude toward it) will not even be interested in whether the object in fact exists. To want the object to exist is to have an interest wrapped up in it, or in other words, to have something be at stake in its existence.

There are three other conditions of judgments of taste: they must be universal, which means they feel as though they apply to everyone. Calling something beautiful means feeling like everyone should recognize it as beautiful (even if we realize that it is not a fact about the object that it is beautiful). The objects of these judgments also exhibit what Kant calls purposiveness without purpose, or alternatively, finality without an end. This may sound complex but just means that while there may be no actual purpose of the object (or at least not one of which we are aware), we are struck by how it seems to be made for a purpose.

Lastly, these judgments are necessary in the sense that it feels like we judge according to some unspoken universal rule, from which our judgment necessarily follows. Disinterest, a notion first brought to the fore by the eighteenth-century British philosophers, continues to be a central notion in Kant's aesthetics. However, Kant does not seem to have a true aesthetic attitude theory in the sense defined above. It is a matter of interpretation, but it looks as though he does not think that any object we approach with this frame of mind thereby becomes an aesthetic object. Many argue that it is not until Schopenhauer, for whom disinterest is even more important, that we see an actual aesthetic attitude theory.

Schopenhauer's aesthetic attitude theory, which he introduced in his book "The World as Will and Representation," is a philosophical approach that focuses on the world as a representation rather than a Will. Schopenhauer's philosophy is characterized by a focus on the Will, which is a unceasing desire that forms the basis of human suffering. He believes that experiencing the world as Will leads to boredom and deeper suffering.

Schopenhauer's aesthetic attitude theory suggests that we should not look at things in the ordinary way, which involves both perceptual meaning and non-perceptual one. Instead, we should pay attention to the surface features of an object and its relationships to other things. This relational viewing is absent in the aesthetic attitude, where we only pay attention to things themselves.

Schopenhauer also emphasizes that we should not have abstract thought or reasoning, but instead focus on the perception alone. This approach fills our mind with calm contemplation, allowing us to stop thinking about the will and no longer sense a difference between ourselves and the object perceived. This means that we can see through the object itself to its Idea, which are eternal and unchangeable.

Aesthetic contemplation allows us to know the Ideas, which are eternal and unchangeable. Anything can become the object of the aesthetic attitude, as everything represents Ideas and manifests the will in some way. This means that Schopenhauer's aesthetic attitude theory has profound practical import, as it can release us from the cycle of constant suffering and help us deal with difficult situations.

However, it is important to note that taking the aesthetic attitude is not easy and comes naturally to everyone. While some artistic geniuses can actively adopt the aesthetic attitude, others may remain in that state for longer than the typical fleeting moment. Schopenhauer answers that the aesthetic attitude is a mix of these, with some people being more adept at engaging it actively while others are a transient and happenstance state.

In Schopenhauer's view, attention and perception take center stage, and aesthetic contemplation involves intense focus where the perception completely fills the mind. The aesthetic attitude plays a crucial role in the larger theory, helping us know Ideas and by doing so, releases us from endless suffering.

While many aspects of Schopenhauer's view have resonated with subsequent philosophers of aesthetics, to fully adopt his view, one must adopt much of the rest of his philosophy, which includes his theory of Ideas, representation, and the Will. Later aesthetic attitude theorists often preserve some key aspects of the view, but they are generally unwilling to do so.

 

Aesthtic Attitude

The aesthetic attitude is a frame of mind that can be adopted by individuals when they choose to. It involves focusing on the aesthetic features of a situation, rather than simply looking at its beauty or ugliness. This attitude is not just about finding something beautiful, but also about evaluating it for artistic effect. For example, if we are asked to adopt an optimistic attitude, we may focus on features of the situation that can be positively viewed, such as the silver lining in a bad situation. On the other hand, if we are asked to adopt an aesthetic attitude, we may focus on features of the situation that we think are relevant aesthetically, such as the plot and character development of a play being performed.

The aesthetic attitude is not just an artistic attitude; it is broader than that. We can take the aesthetic attitude toward anything at all, making it an aesthetic object. For example, a street scene could be approached aesthetically, even if it is not described as art or nature. This means that we can take the aesthetic attitude toward things that are not beautiful, as well. Some art is ugly, and some artworks even flaunt their ugliness for artistic effect. In fact, calling something ugly is giving it an aesthetic evaluation, which in turn requires taking the aesthetic attitude toward it.

In adopting the aesthetic attitude towards a sunset, we start to look at the aesthetic features of the scene, such as the visual composition of the landscape and view, or the soft color gradations. If we find these elements unsatisfactory, we might conclude that it was an ugly sunset. This conclusion could only be reached by looking at the scene aesthetically, or adopting the aesthetic attitude toward the scene.

While taking the aesthetic attitude toward something is not the same as finding it beautiful, it is a matter of debate whether it involves some kind of pleasure. While it does not necessarily involve straightforward aesthetic enjoyment or positive aesthetic evaluation, it might involve a broader kind of enjoyment, pleasure, or satisfaction. The specific aesthetic attitude theory will determine whether it involves pleasure and what kind of pleasure it involves.

The term 'aesthetic attitude theory' refers to the theory that distinguishes aesthetic objects from non-aesthetic objects by our ability to take an aesthetic attitude towards them. While there is consensus on this classification, aesthetic attitude theories have experienced waning popularity in recent decades due to criticism or other alternative accounts of the distinction.

The term 'aesthetic' is applied to various aspects of life, including aesthetic attitude, aesthetic objects, aesthetic experience, aesthetic evaluations, aesthetic judgments, aesthetic features, aesthetic contemplation, and aesthetic emotions. Different theorists have different views on how these notions relate to each other and which is the most basic, but all aim to discuss the special sphere of the aesthetic.

There are two ways of thinking about the aesthetic attitude: one is a special kind of disinterested attitude, where the person who adopts the aesthetic attitude does not view objects with personal interest, such as what they can do for them. For example, a collector might view an expensive painting and praise herself for owning it, but she fails to think about it aesthetically. If she were instead viewing the painting contemplatively, she would be thinking about its composition, meaning, and so on.

For many, disinterest is only a necessary condition of the aesthetic attitude, and having this kind of disinterest does not guarantee that it is an aesthetic attitude. Something else may have to be present. For example, a court judge might approach a trial with disinterest, trying to be impartial and not let any personal feelings or goals cloud his judgment.

Having a disinterested attitude toward something does not necessarily preclude finding it interesting. If the collector finds the interactions among a certain cluster of figures especially meaningful, she can describe her as interested in those figures. However, this does not mean that she is interested in them for some external purpose. Disinterestedness does not indicate complete lack of interest, but a lack of personal investment or goal-directed interest.

Appreciation for its own sake is another traditional way of characterizing the aesthetic attitude. This means that we want to experience the work, not because it fulfills some desire for something else, but just because we want to have that experience. For example, a museum-goer may spend time in Egyptian art galleries to make her son happy, or in Islamic art galleries simply because she wants to see the objects for their own sake and not for anything beyond or outside of them.

To understand the nature of the aesthetic attitude, we can turn to the development of the aesthetic attitude in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, then examine the three main twentieth-century aesthetic attitude theories and some of the criticisms made of them.