The French phenomenologist Michel Henry sees a similarity between the primordial experience of what he calls ‘Life’ and the aesthetic experience occasioned by Wassily Kandinsky’s abstract art. The triple aim of this essay is to explain and assess how Henry interprets Kandinsky’s abstract art and theory; what the consequences of his interpretation mean for the theory of the experience of abstract art; and what doubts and questions emerge from Henry’s interpretations of Kandinsky’s theory and practice. Despite (...) its containing many interesting ideas, Henry’s phenomenological approach is insufficient to describe the aesthetic experience of Kandinsky’s abstract art. For Henry, aesthetic experience is corporeal, primordial, non-intentional, and independent of knowledge and culture.By contrast, I believe that it is possible and more suitable to connect the direct, corporeal, and affective character of the aesthetic experience of abstract art with intentionality and embeddedness in culture and knowledge. (shrink)

Some of our aesthetic experiences are of artworks. Some others are of everyday scenes. The question I examine in this paper is about the relation between these two different kinds of aesthetic experience. I argue that the experience of artworks can dispose us to experience everyday scenes in an aesthetic manner both short-term and long-term. Finally, I examine what constraints this phenomenon puts on different accounts of aesthetic experience.

This paper offers a critical analysis of Robert Stecker’s account of aesthetic experience and its relation to aesthetic and artistic values. The analysis will demonstrate that Stecker’s formulation of aesthetic experience as it stands is incompatible with his arguments for nonaesthetic artistic values. Rather than multiplying the values associated with aesthetic experience, a deeper understanding of that experience will best serve to clarify problems at the core of the discipline.

The aim of this article is to argue that what is distinctive about aesthetic experiences has to do with what we do -- not with our perception or evaluation, but with our action and, more precisely, with our interaction with whatever we are aesthetically engaging with. This view goes against the mainstream inasmuch as aesthetic engagement is widely held to be special precisely because it is detached from the sphere of the practical. I argue that taking the interactive (...) nature of aesthetic experiences seriously can help us to understand some of the most important features of aesthetic experiences and the role they play in our life: their normativity, their crucial role in the ways in which the aesthetic domain looms large in our self-image and in the social dimension of aesthetic engagement. (shrink)

The brain constructs within itself an understanding of its surround which constitutes its own world. This is described as its Double in the frame of the dissipative quantum model of brain, where the perception-action arc in the Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception finds its formal description. In the dialog with the Double, the continuous attempt to reach the equilibrium shows that the real goal pursued by the brain activity is the aesthetical experience, the most harmonious “to-be-in-the-world” reached through reciprocal actions, (...) the aesthetical dimension characterized by the “pleasure” of the perception. Aesthetical pleasure unavoidably implies disclosure, to manifest “signs”, artistic communication. An interpersonal, collective level of consciousness then arises, a larger stage where the actors are mutually dependent. The coherent structure of the brain background state manifests itself in the auto-similarity properties of fractal structures. These are observed to occur also in a large number of natural phenomena and systems. The conception of Nature divided in separated domains is replaced by the vision of Nature unified by laws of form implied by the underlying quantum dynamics of the coherent vacuum, an integrated ecological vision. (shrink)

Richard Shusterman; Aesthetic Experience: From Analysis to Eros, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 64, Issue 2, 18 April 2005, Pages 217–229.

On several current views, including those of Matthew Kieran, Gary Iseminger, Jerrold Levinson, and Noël Carroll, aesthetic appreciation or experience involves second-order awareness of one’s own mental processes. But what if it turns out that we don’t have introspective access to the processes by which our aesthetic responses are produced? I summarize several problems for introspective accounts that emerge from the psychological literature: aesthetic responses are affected by irrelevant conditions; they fail to be affected by relevant (...) conditions; we are ignorant of their causes and thus confabulate in explaining them; our attempts to offer explanations change our preferences; and the preferences we form after explanation are lower in quality. I suggest that by distinguishing introspective awareness of mental processes from introspective awareness of mental states, we can safeguard a worthwhile concept of aesthetic experience. In addition, we should recognize that theoretical, rather than introspective, understanding of our mental processes may play a valuable role in aesthetic appreciation. (shrink)

This article highlights the distinction between the ‘art of nursing’ and ‘fine art’. While something in the nature of nursing can be described as ‘the art of nursing’, it is not to be misunderstood as ‘fine art’ or craft. Therefore, the term ‘aesthetic’ in relation to nursing should not be linked to the aesthetic of modern art, but instead to a broader and more general meaning of the word. The paper's main focus is the aesthetic experience, (...) which is treated in a hermeneutic way and elucidated from classical sources and the philosophy of nursing and from Art. The paper argues that the pioneers used the term ‘art of nursing’ in a metaphorical way to say something more specific on the nature of nursing. The term illustrates the nurse's ability to practise at the highest possible level of excellence. (shrink)

Richard Shusterman; Aesthetic Experience: From Analysis to Eros, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 64, Issue 2, 18 April 2005, Pages 217–229.

A Deweyan account of aesthetic experience countering skepticism about aesthetic experience after George Dickie, art-centered views after Arthur Danto and Noel Carroll, and disinterest theories after Kant. This account of aesthetic experience provides an integrated account of the aesthetic for both art and the everyday. Aesthetic experience is a critical, adaptive felt response, revealing value in the world. It is the live experience of value for human beings. An account of (...) aesthetic experience as revelatory of value is vital in distinguishing human from artificial intelligence (AI). (shrink)

ABSTRACTI discuss three accounts of the spiritual significance of aesthetic experience. Two of these perspectives I have taken from the recent literature in theological aesthetics, and the third I have constructed, building on Thomas Aquinas’s conception of the goods of the infused moral virtues. This broadly Thomistic approach occupies, I argue, a middle ground between the other two, on account of its distinctive understanding of the role of theological context in defining spiritually significant goods. These perspectives are not (...) mutually exclusive, but they do present rather different conceptions of the ways in which aesthetic goods can contribute to spiritual well-being, and provide a focus for religious practice. (shrink)

In his attack on the notion of immediate experience, Hans-Georg Gadamer argues that aesthetic experience should be absorbed into hermeneutics because alone it cannot account for the historical nature of experience ; predicated on an ontological theory of art, the unfathomable, therefore, is the sense we have of these infinite hermeneutic depths. I argue that this account is methodologically and existentially unacceptable: methodologically because it is overly speculative, and existentially because it betrays authentic existence. I critique (...) Gadamer from the perspective of William James’ Pragmatism and argue, inverting Gadamer’s main thesis, that hermeneutics should be reduced to aesthetic experience. The meaning that emerges in aesthetic experience does not ‘rise up’ from the depths but is immanent in what James calls ‘pure experience’. The unfathomable, therefore, is not a glimpse into the metaphysical abyss but a phenomenological insight into the immanent structure of experience. (shrink)

This article highlights the distinction between the ‘art of nursing’ and ‘fine art’. While something in the nature of nursing can be described as ‘the art of nursing’, it is not to be misunderstood as ‘fine art’ or craft. Therefore, the term ‘aesthetic’ in relation to nursing should not be linked to the aesthetic of modern art, but instead to a broader and more general meaning of the word. The paper's main focus is the aesthetic experience, (...) which is treated in a hermeneutic way and elucidated from classical sources and the philosophy of nursing and from Art. The paper argues that the pioneers used the term ‘art of nursing’ in a metaphorical way to say something more specific on the nature of nursing. The term illustrates the nurse's ability to practise at the highest possible level of excellence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Visual Aesthetic ExperienceElisa Steenberg, Independent ScholarMan can shift his attitude to the surrounding world into an experience of its visual appearance. He perceives colors, lines, shapes, etc.—at times denoted as form. Furthermore, these phenomena may be experienced as having various properties. A color may be experienced as warm or cold, as cheerful or somber; a line as soft or hard, as merry or aggressive; a shape as (...) light or heavy. Moreover, such experiences may include pleasure or displeasure, implying that what is experienced is liked or disliked. The individual has a preference value experience. This should not be confounded with an evaluation, a value judgment, which requires cognitive activity and a comparison. The experience described I designate a visual aesthetic experience.Research into processes in the brain may offer explanations of the neurological antecedents to the visual aesthetic experience. To see a color as cold or warm may depend on sense-interrelating processes. To experience a color or line as cheerful, somber, etc., might be explained as due to simultaneous processes in the regions of the brain that are the mainsprings of emotions. The preference valuations might be due to processes in the brain's so-called primary reward-aversion center. It seems most likely that future brain research, with the help of such techniques as PET scanning (Positron Emission Tomography) or MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging)—what has been called "windows into the human brain"—may offer explanations regarding the physiological and biochemical processes that happen when our attitude to the world around us is shifted into what is here designated a visual aesthetic experience.1When did man first evince visual aesthetic experiences and when do they first occur in an individual's life? Certain anthropologists assert that positive visual aesthetic experiences first occurred when man was able to experience form as symmetrical and balanced, colors as bright and possibly shiny. This they claim is due to balance and order being a fundamental condition in man's life, and preferences for bright colors they consider due to man being a daylight creature who feels insecure in darkness.2 We know that so-called primitive people and young children like symmetric patterns and bright colors. The child reaches out for light red and yellow objects rather than for dark and black ones. With increasing age, though, the child's [End Page 89] visual preferences usually change, and this occurs mainly within the framework of his or her manmade surroundings. The child becomes accustomed to seeing certain objects while feeling pleasure and thus comes to appreciate their appearance. However, such experiences are rather vague before the child reaches the age when its personality is formed. Then especially girls often develop a keen interest in the appearance of objects around them.A general survey among adults shows that there are considerable varieties in individuals' inclinations for visual aesthetic experiences. There are those who have them rather seldom. Their attitudes to the surrounding world are primarily cognitive. Their attentions are focused on meanings, the "what" not the "how," in order to understand and to cope with what they see. On the other hand, there are individuals who most frequently hold an aesthetic attitude to their surroundings. They pay attention to shapes, colors, and color combinations of all kinds of objects, natural or manmade. They choose their clothes and their home furnishings under careful aesthetic considerations. This inclination may possibly be claimed to be due to an innate disposition for holding visual aesthetic attitudes, to be compared with, for example, an individual's innate musicality. However, it is undoubtedly also due to certain social circumstances.Visual aesthetic experiences are denoted taste manifestations. As such they may be investigated not only as to their occurrences and changes in an individual's life but also as a changing sociocultural phenomenon.3Verbalizing the Visual Aesthetic ExperienceThe psychic content of a visual aesthetic experience may be revealed to other individuals by application of aesthetic property terms to the appearance of objects. The terms are either what is here called descriptive or they are value terms. Examples of descriptive aesthetic terms are graceful, garish, gaudy, clumsy, elegant, dainty, vivid, flamboyant, etc. These terms may... (shrink)

Vasily Sesemann’s aesthetics is a transcendental philosophy that seeks to answer the question of how an experience of beauty is possible. Sesemann insists that aesthetics should focus on the study of the aesthetic object itself, and through it go to the problematics of the act of perception and creativity. Sesemann states that not only the relationship between the work of art and the perceiver is important in order to understand the aesthetic object, but also the relationship between (...) the work of art and the creator. The aesthetic object in its sedimented form not only retains indications of the act of creation, but also makes demands on the perceiving subject. Aesthetic objects are sedimented passive structures that can be activated by the performative actions of the perceiver when she discovers the appropriate way of perception. Sesemann, like Moritz Geiger, claims that aesthetics is impossible without an analysis of feelings. He, like Geiger, recognizes the importance of empathy in aesthetic experience. However, Sesemann develops the concept of aesthetic empathy using Max Scheler’s arguments. Empathy is necessary, because the perceiver must be able to understand expressions. The aim of this paper is to analyse the phenomenological aspects of Vasily Sesemann’s aesthetics. Firstly, this paper analyzes the Sesemann’s phenomenology of aesthetic experience. Secondly, it shows that the analysis performed by Sesemann demonstrates why empathy plays a leading role in aesthetic experience. (shrink)

In this article I divide theories of aesthetic experience into three sorts: the affectoriented approach, the axiologically oriented approach, and the content-oriented approach. I then go on to defend a version of the content-oriented approach.

Contemporary philosophy of art generally assumes that aesthetic experience is constituted by a certain ontological-phenomenological structure: the apprehension by a subject of an object. This article explores an underexamined critique of this philosophical model found within the black intellectual and artistic tradition. I will specifically focus on the version of this critique proposed by the similarly underexamined black philosophers Adrian Piper and Fred Moten. This critique, which I dub the subjectivizing concern, takes issue with the notion of ontological (...) distance that I argue defines the subject-object model. I define ontological distance as the removal and alienation of the subject’s fundamental sense of self from that of so-called objects. The subjectivizing concern holds that this distance is not value neutral. Rather, the subject-object model is considered to be directly entwined with projects and practices of aesthetic and extraesthetic racism and antiblackness. After offering Piper’s own model of aesthetic experience—which she dubs catalysis—as an alternative, I propose three possible ways in which the subject-object model can be conceived as tied to antiblack racism. (shrink)

Excerpt from The Aesthetic Experience The enjoyment Of art is ordinarily looked upon as some thing detached from the serious business of life, as an episode in an existence otherwise fundamentally non-aesthetic. Art is conceived as shut up in books, concert-halls, and museums; as, perhaps, a legitimate preoccupation on a trip to Europe; but under ordinary circumstances a relaxation, and if more than that, a distraction or even a dissipation. For a few individuals, writers, musicians, or painters, (...) it is more than a by-play or avocation; but for the mass Of men concern with it is an interlude, and its production is of course out of the question. In this it resembles religion. TO go to a museum and to go to church alike involve a break with our usual habits. Both are expeditions into worlds other than that in, which our every-day Occupations go on. And both worlds are suspect from the point of view of the habitual dweller in the real world. The man who attempts to treat the pre cepts Of religion as applicable to his business or personal relations is as little to be considered fully sane as the man whose life centres about art: both are at least likely to be queer. A book which is thought Of as a work Of art is presumably to be read from a sense of duty, and in a frame of mind both self-conscious and self-congratulatory - a frame Of mind, at any rate, quite different from that of Simple straightforwardness with which we approach the merely enjoyable. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

entry in Oxford Companion to Consciousness (ed.) Tim Bayne, Patrick Wilken and Axel Cleeremans, forthcoming.

In this bold book, Jonas Grethlein proposes a new dialogue between the fields of Classics and aesthetics. Ancient material, he argues, has the capacity to challenge and re-orientate current debates. Comparisons with modern art and literature help to balance the historicism of classical scholarship with transcultural theoretical critique. Grethlein discusses ancient narratives and pictures in order to explore the nature of aesthetic experience. While our responses to both narratives and pictures are vicarious, the 'as-if' on which they are (...) premised is specifically shaped by the form of the representation. Form emerges as a key to how narratives and pictures constitute an important means of engaging with experience. Combining theoretical reflections with close readings, this book will appeal to art historians as well as to textual scholars. (shrink)

Despite a prevalence of articles exploring links between sport and art in the 1970s and 1980s, philosophers in the new millennium pay relatively little explicit attention to issues related to aesthetics generally. After providing a synopsis of earlier debates over the questions ‘is sport art?’ and ‘are aesthetics implicit to sport?’, a pragmatically informed conception of aesthetic experience will be developed. Aesthetic experience, it will be argued, vitally informs sport ethics, game logic, and participant meaning. Finally, (...) I will argue that embodying pragmatic conceptions of art as its ideal metaphor re-opens space to best realize the deep potential of sport as a meaningful human practice. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to examine the practice of describing intellectual pursuits in aesthetic terms, and to investigate whether this practice can be accounted for in the framework of a standard conception of aesthetic experience. Following a discussion of some historical approaches, the paper proposes a way of conceiving of aesthetic experience as both epistemically motivating and epistemically inventive. It is argued that the aesthetics of intellectual pursuits should be considered as central (...) rather than marginal to our philosophical accounts of aesthetic experience, and that our views about the relation between the aesthetic and cognitive domains should be reconfigured accordingly. (shrink)

This essay collection explores the crucial connections between aesthetic experience and the interdisciplinary field of somaesthetics. After examining philosophical accounts of embodiment and aesthetic experience, the essays apply somaesthetic theory to the diverse fine arts and the art of living.

This paper offers a critical analysis of Robert Stecker’s account of aesthetic experience and its relation to aesthetic and artistic values. The analysis will demonstrate that Stecker’s formulation of aesthetic experience as it stands is incompatible with his arguments for nonaesthetic artistic values. Rather than multiplying the values associated with aesthetic experience, a deeper understanding of that experience will best serve to clarify problems at the core of the discipline.

In this article, I relate the demand that Paul Ricoeur suggests mimesis places on the way we think about truth to the idea that the work of art is a model for thinking about testimony. By attributing a work’s epoché of reality to the work of imagination, I resolve the impasse that arises from attributing music, literature, and art’s distance from the real to their social emancipation. Examining the conjunction, in aesthetic experience, of the communicability and the exemplarity (...) of a work reveals how Ricoeur’s definition of mimesis as refiguration relates to the “rule” that the work summons. This “rule” constitutes the solution to a problem or question for which the work is the answer. In conclusion, as a model for thinking about testimony, the claims that works make have a counterpart in the injunctions that issue from exemplary moral and political acts.  . (shrink)

[Richard Glauser] Shaftesbury's theory of aesthetic experience is based on his conception of a natural disposition to apprehend beauty, a real 'form' of things. I examine the implications of the disposition's naturalness. I argue that the disposition is not an extra faculty or a sixth sense, and attempt to situate Shaftesbury's position on this issue between those of Locke and Hutcheson. I argue that the natural disposition is to be perfected in many different ways in order to be (...) exercised in the perception of the different degrees of beauty within Shaftesbury's hierarchy. This leads to the conclusion that the exercise of the disposition depends, from case to case, on many different cognitive and affective conditions, that are realised by the collaborative functionings of our ordinary faculties. Essential to Shaftesbury's conception of aesthetic experience is a disinterested, contemplative love, that causes (or contains) what we may call a 'disinterested pleasure', but also an interested pleasure. I argue that, within any given aesthetic experience, the role of the disinterested pleasure is secondary to that of the disinterested love. However, an important function of the disinterested pleasure is that, in combination with the interested pleasure, it leads one to aspire to pass from the aesthetic experience of lower degrees of beauty to the experience of higher ones in the hierarchy. /// [Anthony Savile] (1) If Shaftesbury is to be seen as the doyen of modern aesthetics, his most valuable legacy to us may not so much be his viewing aesthetic response as a sui generis disinterested delight as his insistence on its turning 'wholly on [experience of] what is exterior and foreign to ourselves'. Not that we cannot experience ourselves, or what is our own, as a source of such admiration. Rather our responses, favourable or no, are improperly grounded in any essentially reflexive, or first-personal, ways of taking what engages us. The suggestion is tested against the case of Narcissus. (2) Glauser interestingly emphasizes Shaftesbury's neo-Platonic conception of a hierarchy of aesthetic experience that culminates in the joyful contemplation of God. That hierarchy must be something that is less unitary and systematic than Shaftesbury himself had supposed, even when his emphasis on the tie between aesthetic pleasure and contemplative experience is allowed to extend beyond perception and to encompass episodes of thought itself. (shrink)

In this volume, a team of internationally respected contributors theorize the concept of aesthetic experience and its value. Exposing and expanding our restricted cultural and intellectual presuppositions of what constitutes aesthetic experience, the book aims to re-explore and affirm the place of aesthetic experience--in its evaluative, phenomenological and transformational sense--not only in relation to art and artists but to our inner and spiritual lives.

What is beautiful or ugly vary from one person another, from time to time and from culture to culture. However, at the same time, people are certain that there are aesthetic properties in the nature, artworks and other persons and, furthermore, they can be perceived by the naked eye. This article argues that experience does not reveal the aesthetic properties of the objects.

The aim of the paper is to examine the possible relationships between the different dimensions of aesthetics on the one hand, and medical practice and medical ethics on the other hand. Firstly, I consider whether the aesthetic perception of the human body is relevant for medical practice. Secondly, a possible analogy between the artistic process and medical action is examined. The third section concerns the comparison between medical ethical judgements and aesthetic judgement of taste. It is concluded that (...) the mutual relevance between the aesthetic sphere, moral judgement and medical practice can be understood only if we recognize these spheres as distinct. (shrink)

"George Hagman looks anew at psychoanalytic ideas about art and beauty through the lens of current developmental psychology that recognizes the importance of attachment and affiliative motivational systems. In dialogue with theorists such as Freud, Ehrenzweig, Kris, Rank, Winnicott, Kohut, and many others, Hagman brings the psychoanalytic understanding of aesthetic experience into the 21st century. He amends and extends old concepts and offers a wealth of stimulating new ideas regarding the creative process, the ideal, beauty, ugliness, and -perhaps (...) his most original contribution-the sublime. Especially welcome is his grounding of aesthetic experience in intersubjectivity and health rather than individualism and pathology. His emphasis on form rather than the content of an individual's aesthetic experience is a stimulating new direction for psychoanalytic theory of art. With this work Hagman stands in the company of his predecessors with this deeply-learned, sensitively conceived, and provocative general theory of human aesthetic experience." Ellen Dissanayake, author of "Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began" and "Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why.". (shrink)

Can indistinguishable objects differ aesthetically? Manifestationism answers ‘no’ on the grounds that (i) aesthetically significant features of an object must show up in our experience of it; and (ii) a feature—aesthetic or not—figures in our experience only if we can discriminate its presence. Goodman’s response to Manifestationism has been much discussed, but little understood. I explain and reject it. I then explore an alternative. Doubles can differ aesthetically provided, first, it is possible to experience them differently; (...) and, second, those experiences reflect differences in the objects’ themselves. A range of objections to this position is considered, but all are found wanting. (shrink)

This paper joins recent attempts to defend a notion of aesthetic experience. It argues that phenomenological facts and facts about aesthetic value support the Kantian notion that aesthetic experience lies between, but differs from, pleasures of the agreeable and pleasures stemming from cognitions. It then shows that accounts by Beardsley, Levinson, and Savile fail to resolve clear tensions that surface in attempting to characterize such an experience. An account of aesthetic experience—as involving (...) experienced cognitions that are the bearers of value—is presented. The paper ends on a sceptical note as to whether aesthetic experience can be clearly delimited. (shrink)

Introduction. The article is focused on analyzing the aesthetic aspect of A. Kojève’s philosophy, the ability of his philosophy, from an aesthetic point of view, to clarify a number of key problems of the modern political and cultural environment. The purpose of the study is to determine the epistemological attitude of A. Kojève’s philosophy able to clarify the way in which his philosophy problematizes the current cultural and political reality. Methods. Hermeneutics, comparative analysis and deconstruction are used as (...) research methods. Comparative analysis allows us to demarcate A. Kojève’s own line of reasoning, in the context of aesthetic and epistemological theories, as well as Hegelian themes themselves. Hermeneutics is the central method in the work, since the philosophy of A. Kojeve requires interpretation as an aesthetic theory. Deconstruction, formalized to the status of a method according to P. de Man, allows us to detect inconsistencies, the principle of mutual problematization of Kojeve’s philosophy and the current political and epistemological agenda. Scientific novelty of the research. The standard way of interpreting the work of A. Kojève is to evaluate him as an interpreter of G. Hegel. The author analyzes some meaning of A. Kojève’s philosophy, separate from G. Hegel’s explanation of the text. The novelty lies not only in the fact that A. Kojève’s philosophy is defined as theorizing that goes beyond technical hermeneutics (clear presentation), but also as a specific representation of such theorizing as epistemological aesthetic theory. The latter is a rather rare interpretation of the philosophy of A. Kojeve. This allows us to expand the traditional assumption that post-Hegelian epistemesthetics is the property of an extremely limited number of authors (for example, B. Croce). Moreover, such an interpretation of A. Kojève’s theories is a new element in the emerging trend of considering political issues within the framework of epistemological aesthetics. Results. The specific mode of interpreting G. Hegel, which is carried out by A. Kojève, turns the philosophy of the former into a unique aesthetic project. In this project, the category of aesthetic experience comes to the foreground, indicating the empty, formal nature of any discourse. In this regard, any claim to knowledge of reality, to a correct idea of the subject is replaced by the idea of creating the subject of discourse. Consistent treatment of this idea is symptomatic of the philosophy of A. Kojève. This philosophy is a reflection of those historical changes that gave rise to the culture of “aesthetic rationality”: empty and formal. In A. Kojève’s philosophy, one can see how such a culture of the End of History is, contrary to Hegelian ideas, not the era of the struggle decline, but the era of its strange transformation, a symptom of increasing political violence. Conclusions. A. Kojève’s philosophy is considered not as a utopian political project, but as a problematization of the modern cultural and political sphere. The latter is understood as an indication of the inconsistency of ontological discourses of Truth, the discovery in the very essence of discursive practices of an empty, formal principle, and therefore primarily of interest to aesthetics. The modern era of the End of History and the end of the era of persuasive speech gives an idea of the main political paradox (at least for the philosophy of A. Kojève, and at most for the modern political environment). The era of disappointment in discourse should become an era of refusal to fight for discourses, but it becomes an era of maximizing violence, since it is in a situation of disappointment that discourses can only be supported by force. We move from unconvincing speech to convincing violence, but it is possible to understand the origins and specifics of this transition only by considering A. Kojève’s philosophy in the light of such a discipline as aesthetics. (shrink)

Aesthetic experience has been relativized and marginalized by recent social and cultural theory. As less attention has been paid to understanding the nature of aesthetic experience than mapping the distributed social correlates of tastes, its transformative potential and capacity to animate actors’ imaginations and actions goes unexplored. In this paper we draw upon a large number of in-depth interviews with performing arts audiences around Australia to investigate the language and discourse used to describe aesthetic experiences. (...) In particular, we begin with theorizations of the subject-object nexus within object-relations theory to consider the transformative potential of aesthetic experience. Using these literatures, and extending them to others within sociology of the arts and materiality, our focus is on the way aesthetic experience can fuse human subjects with aesthetic objects. We examine how viewers take an aesthetic object into themselves and in turn project themselves into the aesthetic object by various visual and imaginative techniques. Our theoretical and empirical analysis bears out the constructive and productive capacity of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

The purpose here is to give a thorough phenomenological account of the aesthetic experience. The difference between cognitive perception of a real object and the aesthetic experience of an esthetic object is discussed at length. Elements and phases of an esthetic experience are delineated; illustrations of a preliminary emotion of esthetic experience are given, All of which suggest a fundamental change of attitude. From normal perceiving to esthetic perceiving there is a change from categorical (...) structures to qualitative harmony structures, Producing pleasure in the presence of an esthetic object. (staff). (shrink)

[Richard Glauser] Shaftesbury's theory of aesthetic experience is based on his conception of a natural disposition to apprehend beauty, a real 'form' of things. I examine the implications of the disposition's naturalness. I argue that the disposition is not an extra faculty or a sixth sense, and attempt to situate Shaftesbury's position on this issue between those of Locke and Hutcheson. I argue that the natural disposition is to be perfected in many different ways in order to be (...) exercised in the perception of the different degrees of beauty within Shaftesbury's hierarchy. This leads to the conclusion that the exercise of the disposition depends, from case to case, on many different cognitive and affective conditions, that are realised by the collaborative functionings of our ordinary faculties. Essential to Shaftesbury's conception of aesthetic experience is a disinterested, contemplative love, that causes what we may call a 'disinterested pleasure', but also an interested pleasure. I argue that, within any given aesthetic experience, the role of the disinterested pleasure is secondary to that of the disinterested love. However, an important function of the disinterested pleasure is that, in combination with the interested pleasure, it leads one to aspire to pass from the aesthetic experience of lower degrees of beauty to the experience of higher ones in the hierarchy. /// [Anthony Savile] If Shaftesbury is to be seen as the doyen of modern aesthetics, his most valuable legacy to us may not so much be his viewing aesthetic response as a sui generis disinterested delight as his insistence on its turning 'wholly on [experience of] what is exterior and foreign to ourselves'. Not that we cannot experience ourselves, or what is our own, as a source of such admiration. Rather our responses, favourable or no, are improperly grounded in any essentially reflexive, or first-personal, ways of taking what engages us. The suggestion is tested against the case of Narcissus. Glauser interestingly emphasizes Shaftesbury's neo-Platonic conception of a hierarchy of aesthetic experience that culminates in the joyful contemplation of God. That hierarchy must be something that is less unitary and systematic than Shaftesbury himself had supposed, even when his emphasis on the tie between aesthetic pleasure and contemplative experience is allowed to extend beyond perception and to encompass episodes of thought itself. (shrink)

In response to the mental health crisis in science, and amid concerns about the detrimental effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists, this study seeks to identify the role of a heretofore under-researched factor for flourishing and eudaimonia: aesthetic experiences in scientific work. The main research question that this study addresses is: To what extent is the frequency of encountering aesthetics in terms of beauty, awe, and wonder in scientific work associated with greater well-being among scientists? Based on a (...) large-scale and representative international survey of scientists in four countries, this study employs sets of nested regressions to model the associations of aesthetic experiences with flourishing while controlling for demographic factors and negative workplace and life circumstances such as burnout, job/publication pressure, mistreatment, COVID-19 impacts, other stressful life events, serious psychological distress, and chronic health conditions. The results show that the frequency of aesthetic experiences in scientific work in the disciplines of biology and physics has a very large and statistically significant association with flourishing and eudaimonia that remains robust even when controlling for demographic factors and negative workplace and life circumstances, including COVID-19 impacts. Aesthetic experiences in scientific work are even as strongly associated with flourishing as the presence of serious psychological distress and are most strongly associated with the flourishing domain of meaning in life, thus pointing to a link with eudaimonic well-being. In line with neurophysiological evidence and positive psychological models of flow, self-transcendence, and intrinsic motivation, aesthetics are a key source of flourishing for scientists in the disciplines of biology and physics. While future research needs to test the causal mechanism, the strength of the findings could encourage leaders of scientific labs and research organizations generally to remove obstacles to experiencing the aesthetic dimensions of science. Fostering cultures in which the aesthetic experiences that are intrinsic to scientific practice are fully appreciated might potentially protect or boost flourishing by reducing the impacts of burnout, job/publication pressure, and mistreatment-related experiences in science. (shrink)

Experiencing aesthetics and aesthetic experience has, for a long time, been perceived as the purpose and goal of art. The aesthetic features of a work of art have been the only criteria used in its evaluation. However, these modernist aspects cannot be applied to the conceptual and neo-avant-garde art of the 2nd half of the 20th century that has not only brought a radical change in the artistic form, but, especially, the ontological nature of the work itself. (...) Modernist theories of art and normative rules which apply to perceptual art are no longer able to reflect the changes brought by the art of mind. The traditional history of aesthetics oriented towards the definition of art should, therefore, overlap with, for example, the history of ideas. In the text, I will thus focus on the crucial moments which stood on the border between the old, modernist traditions, and the new, which has brought radical changes into the study of aesthetics as well as the theory of art. The text is focused on three issues: ontological issues of art, the criticism of aestheticism and tautology as a possible problem in interpretation, which will be dealt with from the comparative viewpoint of the art of sense and art of mind. (shrink)

The aesthetic experience, In husserl's language, Brackets or suspends the natural standpoint. Consciousness perceives the work of art not as an object of the factual world, But as a man-Made artifact to be enjoyed just for certain immediately experienced qualities. The work of art is neither a real physical entity nor a real psychical entity, But a purely intentional object, For which the physical object serves as a substratum. The critic must recreate the purely intentional object by completing (...) the schema of the work and by actualizing its merely potential elements. He must experience the ensemble of axiologically neutral qualities, Aesthetic qualities, And aesthetic values as an harmonious whole. A full concretion of the work is the aesthetic object-The object the critic describes and judges. By metaphorical or partly metaphorical language-Never completely adequate-He tries to convey to his readers the experience of its qualities and values. (shrink)

This book addresses how Plato, Kant, and Iris Murdoch view the connection aesthetic experience has to morality. While offering an examination of Iris Murdoch’s philosophy, it analyses deeply the suggestive links between Plato’s and Kant’s philosophies. Meredith Trexler Drees considers not only Iris Murdoch’s concept of unselfing, but also its relationship with Kant’s view of Achtung and Plato’s view of Eros. In addition, Trexler Drees suggests an extended, and partially amended, version of Murdoch’s view, arguing that it is (...) more compatible with a religious way of life than Murdoch herself realized. This leads to an expansion of the overall argument to include Kant’s affirmation of religion as an area of life that can be improved through Plato’s and Murdoch’s vision of how being good and being beautiful can be part of the same life-task. (shrink)

What is it to experience the sardonic quality of Mingus' music, the nostalgia of a street-scene, the evanescence of a light installation, or the flowingness of Virginia Woolf's prose? Aesthetic experiences make artworks what they are for us--expressive, enlightening, enjoyable. They ground aesthetic value. How can we best account for them? ;The traditional view of aesthetic perception describes a mode of disinterested contemplation, free from the cognitive and utilitarian strictures conditioning ordinary awareness. Philosophers have challenged this (...) view on analytical, marxist, feminist, pragmatist, and postmodernist grounds. Through interrelation and contextualization requirements, aestheticians have attempted to salvage the notion of an aesthetically appropriate mode of appreciation . But the nature of this kind of appreciation depends on the nature of the small-scale experiential states that form its substance, namely, the experiences of aesthetic properties. ;These experiences are peculiar. Conceptually complexer than pure sensations, and phenomenally richer than sheer imaginings and cognitions, aesthetic experiences exhibit significant parallels and differences with other states of mind. They display a rocky distribution over various sense modalities, a selective sensitivity to contextual factors, and a striking interconnectedness among themselves. Current analyses in terms of cognition, imagination, metaphorical understanding, nonaesthetic sensation, and counterfactual perception have trouble accommodating their coherence and stability. With the assistence of theoretical work on categorization, perception, and qualia , I propose to locate a more fine-grained attitude at the basis of aesthetic experience, involving perceptually driven conceptualizations, arising through processes of progressive phenomenal differentiation. I substantiate this proposal by considering a number of pertinent phenomena in aesthetics, namely the role of imaginings in pictorial and musical perception; the function of artistic categories, and the experience of seeing objects in depictions. ;This view, call it the conceptualizations view, allows us to identify the distinctive artistic functioning of aesthetic experience--its role as an intermediary between different domains of artistic meaning--while respecting its variety and its relations with other forms of mentation. Thus we can clarify its formative role within the aesthetic sphere at large, and, most importantly, its connection with value. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to suggest how the kantian conception of aesthetic experience of nature can illuminate some demands posed by the actual ecological consciousness. Main topics of our exposition would be the reversible analogy Kant supposes between art and nature, the kantian concept of a "technic of nature", the recognised priority of aesthetic experience of natural beauty within kantian Aesthetics and the function that she plays in the whole architectonics of the Critique of (...) Judgment, namely making possible the transition from aesthetic judgment of nature to the teleological appreciation and representation of nature as artist and as a great system of ends.O objetivo deste ensaio é propor uma interpretação daquilo que para muitos intérpretes constitui o enigma e a dificuldade maior da terceira Crítica de Kant: o fato de o filósofo remeter para a mesma faculdade do espírito e para o mesmo princípio transcendental de apreciação o fenômeno da arte humana e os fenômenos da natureza organizada - a estética e a teleologia. Na leitura que propomos, tentamos perceber a fecundidade dessa estranha associação precisamente para permitir pensar alguns dos problemas que coloca atualmente a racionalidade ecológica, não aquela que visa excluir o homem da natureza como seu inimigo, mas uma consciência ecológica que defenda uma natureza viva com homens sensíveis, com seres humanos tais que não pensam já a sua relação com a natureza como sendo uma relação de meros "senhores e possuidores" frente a um objeto inerte e destituído de valor e de significação por si mesmo, mas que são capazes de contemplar e apreciar a natureza como valiosa por si mesma, de reconhecê-la como um sistema de sistemas finalizados e de colaborar na sua preservação, que têm até perante ela genuínos sentimentos de admiração pela sua beleza, de respeito pela sua sublimidade e de gratidão pela sua exuberância e favores. Em suma, propomo-nos mostrar a nova atitude perante a natureza que se deixa pensar a partir da Crítica do Juízo, considerada esta obra na sua complexidade sistemática. (shrink)

[Richard Glauser] Shaftesbury's theory of aesthetic experience is based on his conception of a natural disposition to apprehend beauty, a real 'form' of things. I examine the implications of the disposition's naturalness. I argue that the disposition is not an extra faculty or a sixth sense, and attempt to situate Shaftesbury's position on this issue between those of Locke and Hutcheson. I argue that the natural disposition is to be perfected in many different ways in order to be (...) exercised in the perception of the different degrees of beauty within Shaftesbury's hierarchy. This leads to the conclusion that the exercise of the disposition depends, from case to case, on many different cognitive and affective conditions, that are realised by the collaborative functionings of our ordinary faculties. Essential to Shaftesbury's conception of aesthetic experience is a disinterested, contemplative love, that causes (or contains) what we may call a 'disinterested pleasure', but also an interested pleasure. I argue that, within any given aesthetic experience, the role of the disinterested pleasure is secondary to that of the disinterested love. However, an important function of the disinterested pleasure is that, in combination with the interested pleasure, it leads one to aspire to pass from the aesthetic experience of lower degrees of beauty to the experience of higher ones in the hierarchy. /// [Anthony Savile] (1) If Shaftesbury is to be seen as the doyen of modern aesthetics, his most valuable legacy to us may not so much be his viewing aesthetic response as a sui generis disinterested delight as his insistence on its turning 'wholly on [experience of] what is exterior and foreign to ourselves'. Not that we cannot experience ourselves, or what is our own, as a source of such admiration. Rather our responses, favourable or no, are improperly grounded in any essentially reflexive, or first-personal, ways of taking what engages us. The suggestion is tested against the case of Narcissus. (2) Glauser interestingly emphasizes Shaftesbury's neo-Platonic conception of a hierarchy of aesthetic experience that culminates in the joyful contemplation of God. That hierarchy must be something that is less unitary and systematic than Shaftesbury himself had supposed, even when his emphasis on the tie between aesthetic pleasure and contemplative experience is allowed to extend beyond perception and to encompass episodes of thought itself. (shrink)

This essay discusses certain problems raised by Edmund Husserl’s conception of meaning with regard to the analysis of aesthetic experience. By referring to Jacques Derrida’s critique of phenomenological idealism I show that the metaphor of “stratification”, adopted by Husserl in his “Ideas” to a problem of discursive expression, if applied to the analysis of a work of art i.e. painting, allows to avoid the objection of “metaphysics of presence” commonly raised towards the phenomenological method.To present the major issue (...) from the perspective of artistic practice, I interpret Honore de Balzac’s short story “Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu”. In conclusion I show that aesthetic consciousness establishes an affective and receptive dimension that is no longer logocentric. This is the main reason why modern phenomenology should focus on the problem of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

This essay discusses certain problems raised by Edmund Husserl’s conception of meaning with regard to the analysis of aesthetic experience. By referring to Jacques Derrida’s critique of phenomenological idealism I show that the metaphor of “stratification”, adopted by Husserl in his “Ideas” to a problem of discursive expression, if applied to the analysis of a work of art i.e. painting, allows to avoid the objection of “metaphysics of presence” commonly raised towards the phenomenological method.To present the major issue (...) from the perspective of artistic practice, I interpret Honore de Balzac’s short story “Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu”. In conclusion I show that aesthetic consciousness establishes an affective and receptive dimension that is no longer logocentric. This is the main reason why modern phenomenology should focus on the problem of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

This dissertation provides a theory of the nature of aesthetic experiences on the basis of a theory of aesthetic values. It results in the formulation of the following necessary conditions for an experience to be aesthetic: it must consist of a representation of an object and an accompanying feeling; the representation must instantiate an intrinsic value; and the feeling must be the recognition of that value and bestow it on the object. Since representations are of intrinsic (...) value for different reasons, there are different kinds of aesthetic experiences . By means of certain conceptual links, it is possible to extend this account to other aesthetic entities thus enabling the formulation of a general theory of the aesthetic in non-aesthetic terms. In particular, aesthetic values are identical with subjective dispositions to elicit aesthetic experiences under normal conditions. Accordingly, I endorse anti-realism about aesthetic values: their existence, nature and exemplification are mind-dependent, while their ascriptions to objects have genuine truth-values. I back up this account by arguing against the alternative positions that either take aesthetic values to be objective or deny the truth-aptness of their attributions. Furthermore, I put forward a relativist variant of anti-realism according to which ascriptions of different aesthetic values to a particular object are all correct, given that the aesthetic experiences involved are made under normal conditions and concern the same aesthetically nonevaluative features of that object. For there is no specifically aesthetic norm by means of which one of the faultless aesthetic experiences can be picked out as the only appropriate one. That aesthetic values nevertheless show a normative dimension is ensured by their conformity to a general account of values as capacities to satisfy, or dissatisfy, rational desires. (shrink)

What possesses aesthetic value? According to a broad view, it can be found almost anywhere. According to a narrower view, it is found primarily in art and is applied to other items by courtesy of sharing some of the properties that make artworks aesthetically valuable. In this paper I will defend the broad view in answering the question: how should we characterize aesthetic value and other aesthetic concepts? I will also criticize some alternative answers.

The paper seeks to defend the following view. Aesthetic experience is historically contingent. Each of us is situated at a unique point in space and time, from which standpoint we continuously imagine our personal, and our collective, history. Our experience of any object of aesthetic intention is susceptible of being influenced by associations, that is by our locating the contemplated object in relation to some part or parts of this imagined history. We should not be embarrassed (...) by the role that such contingent associations play in our aesthetic life. In contemplating a work of art, as in loving or desiring another person, we focus intently upon the single object, but its value to us is enhanced by our seeing it from and through and in the light of our personal and collective 'historical' imagination. (shrink)

Since the second half of the twentieth century, the influential concept of aesthetic experience has been strongly criticized by powerful voices both in analytic philosophy and in continental theory, sometimes to the point of rejecting its significance for art or even to denying its very existence. Nonetheless, it stubbornly reasserts itself as central to understanding art's meaning and value. Philosophical critique of aesthetic experience takes multiple forms. Theorists seeking a definition of art generally reject aesthetic (...) experience as inadequate for this task because it is both too wide and too narrow. Aesthetic experience surely occurs beyond the limits of art, as in our encounter with natural beauty, but it... (shrink)