Cheerskep,
Simply put, i find the aesthetic experience happens when
our individual recollected memory is unconsciously
modified by what we sense anew. It happen everyday,
Capturing it in art, is easier in quick sketches, in one's
medium, be it music,poetry, painting, sculpture etc..
mando
On Feb 28, 2009, at 3:08 PM, [email protected] wrote:
(This, I'm afraid, is the first of several postings on the subject
above.)
I have long suspected that many serious people believe in the
mind-independent existence of what they call "art" because of the
special, prizable
experiences they have when they contemplate certain works. The
argument in their minds
goes roughly like this:
"I get a sui generis sort of experience when I contemplate certain
things.
The vast majority of things I contemplate in life don't give me
that sort of
experience. Since every event must have a cause, obviously those
things that do
give it to me must have something, there must be something 'in'
them, that
the other things lack. That special "something" that gives me the
sui generis
experience I'm talking about is what I mean when I say the word
'art'. In sum,
aesthetic experience is undeniable, it has to have a cause, and
that cause,
which must reside, obtain, BE in only certain things, is art."
In other words, they don't start with "art" or "artness" as a
given. They
start with what they feel is an undeniable -- "aesthetic
experience". It's
clearly an effect. So it must have a cause.
I have many times pouted on this forum that listers should tackle
what is for
me the fundamental puzzle in philosophy of art -- the experiences
that are
often called "Aesthetic experiences".
In fact, in phrasing it that way, I've advanced beyond some of the
dimness of
my past exhortations in this way: I used to say the subject is "the
aesthetic
experience". I've now dropped the 'the', and I've used the plural.
Which implies I was muddled when I asked questions like these about
"the
aesthetic experience": "What is it?" "What's happening when we get
it?" "Why does
it happen when we contemplate some things and not others?"
I was muddled because the "it" I used hasn't been justified. I
cannot just
assume at the outset there is a single sui generis experience --
"aesthetic
experience" -- as generically unique as, say, the taste of "sweet"
is, or of
"bitter" (both of which are registered by separate taste buds.)
For example, some aestheticians of the past have insisted the alleged
"aesthetic" experience we get in theater is not aesthetic at all,
it is "vicarious".
Other aestheticians may have asked, "Why not call the experience
occasioned
by comedians 'aesthetic'? We say a sad soliloquy or poem is
'aesthetic' because
it moves us 'emotionally'. But a comic can move us to laughter.
Isn't mirth
an emotion? Why not call them both 'aesthetic'?"
(Playwrights of comedies are as a rule assiduously avoided by
professional
aestheticians. Goldsmith, Congreve, Sheridan, and Wilde almost seem
like an
embarrassment to them. When have you ever read an academic paper
about Jack Benny,
Fred Allen, Mike Nichols, or even Lenny Bruce? Evidently none of
them has
ever done anything "aesthetic'; they are not "artists".)
But if that point is conceded, why don't we call "aesthetic" the
experience
from witnessing any event in "real life" that moves us to sadness
or laughter
?
And what about those real life events that have prompted
sophisticated,
sensible people to say, "It was a real life drama unfolding before
our eyes"?
Drama?
Then there is that vexatious word, 'beautiful', and even 'sublime'.
Many
brave sophisticated folk have admitted the pleasure they have
derived from a
sunset, a sunrise, a Hudson Valley scene "in the flesh", a nude
woman, has afforded
them a pleasure as powerful as that from any comparable painting --
and they
have admitted it is indistinguishable in feeling from the experience
occasioned by renderings of effectively identical subjects by
certain revered painters.
Oh, but a real sunset is not something executed by the hand of man (or
woman)! No, it isn't. Nevertheless many people have called the
experience of
contemplating such not-made-by-human- hand objects "aesthetic". To
use an old-world
phrase, "where is it written" that one cannot get an "aesthetic
experience"
from such things? Remember: at this juncture we are talking about
the various
experiences that have been called "aesthetic". Can anyone point to
an aspect of
THE EXPERIENCE FROM CONTEMPLATION that is different when the object is
human-made?
Where am I going with this? I'm going on to ask this: Why do we
assume that
all the experiences that have been called "aesthetic" (by one
sophisticate or
another) must, in some "sui generis" way, be "the same"?
And how would our answer affect the argument that the existence of
a sui
generis experience entails the existence of a sui generis cause --
"art"?
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