Brady writes: "I believe the only feelings one gets directly from a WoA (or, by their kind, paintings, sculputes, musical compositions, etc.) are aesthetic feelings."
There you sound a bit like Mallory whose position entails he'd call "aesthetic" any experience of his whatever if someone asked him to describe the experience. If we can accept as WoA's the stuff in the big New York museums, I've often been left bored or cold by various objects in those places. I myself reserve the phrase "aesthetic experience" for stuff that stirs me in special way. If ever I work my way through my mulling of the nature of a.e.'s -- or, at any rate, MY a.e.'s -- I'll be better able to describe what I mean by 'special'. In doing that mulling, I'm focusing on powerful experiences, powerful in the peculiar way that leaves me utterly comfortable calling them a.e.'s. In the end I should even be able to look at stuff that leaves me unmoved and say why that's so. I have sharp doubts I'll ever reach that "end". Brady also asks: "Cheerskep, do you feel any other feeling when you watch a > play? or is it just a long duration of an-aesthetic experiences, > punctuated by one or, if you're lucky, two a.e.'s?" > See, I believe I can be "interested" by something without the moment's engagement ever rising to the peculiar intensity I call an a.e.. I can get very interested in some of the discussions on this forum, but it seems definitely a cop-out for me to call all moments of interest "aesthetic experiences". I feel no doubt in my mind that the engagement with a philosophical problem no matter how intense, is in some essential way different from an a.e.. Compare it to the difference between an olfactory and a gustatory experience. They're much more alike than, say, a visual and an olfactory experience, but they're undoubtedly different. So, to answer your question, I can sit with some interest while watching a play -- or some boredom, irritation, or even anger -- but though those feelings are all reactions to an alleged WoA, I just would not call them a.e.'s, though I know others on this forum would solely because they are "caused by" a WoA. Yes, they're all, let's momentarily call them, "within the skull" reactions to what I'm hearing and seeing, but they're as different from an a.e. as a pinch or a burn are from a pleasant skin-stroke even though those all yield tactile experiences. Brady also asks: > > Or, as a counterproposal, do you feel the entire viewing of a play as > an "aesthetic experience," punctuated by one or two moments of > particularly intense focus? > Agh -- you make it hard for me by showing up the inconsistency between my viewing and what I may say about my view. Also complicating the challenge of being coherent about this stuff is the fact that a.e.'s admit of degrees of inensity. I might say, "Ian Holm's LEAR yielded a great aesthetic experience, and so does Fitzgerald's THE GREAT GATSBY." But I'd only do that because there are so many moments of aesthetic pleasure throughout both those works. But I know of no creative verbal work with a unbroken stream of continuous a.e.'s.. And we often read a eview of a play says the likes of, "Gret first act, bummer second." Still, because of the layered nature of the elements of a play or novel or film or poem, it's difficult to be very tidy in my pronouncements. For example, in a given scene there may be some off-target or threadbare word-choices, or some workaday sentences -- but the scene is so gripping throughout we end up saying -- What a great scene! And, as in many musical pieces, moments of lesser intensity are required in plays to allow the audience to "catch its breath", to "recharge", or to "switch to less exhausted taste-buds", between high intensity passages. Plays and films have been deservedly criticised for starting out with a scene of too-high intensity, because if they have no subsequent scenes to match the opening moment, the play will seem to "go downhill" from there. Directors will often advise actors to tone down their performance early on, or else they will have "nowhere to go". All of which, I admit, shows that in addition to attending to each moment, we do consider the play "as a whole". I spoke of the play's "set-up". Chekhov said if you have a gun hanging on the wall in act one, you bettr have it fired by play's end. The obverse is also true: You mustn't have someone pulling out a gun at the climax unless you have already sneaked into the set-up the existence of a gun in the house. In other words, each part of a play is likely to have an influence on how a later part is received, or on the way an early part is reinterpreted. Still, I feel none of this fatally contradicts my assertion that the "thrill" is not continuous. ************** Wondering what's for Dinner Tonight? Get new twists on family favorites at AOL Food. (http://food.aol.com/dinner-tonight?NCID=aolfod00030000000001)
