I feel that when push come to shove , the aesthetic experience
is as broad in meaning as taste in art. Until we all become clones.
human individualism will fuzzy the situation.
mando
On Mar 1, 2009, at 8:15 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Michael -- What you say below is right on! My strategy in putting
together
this "Against "Good Art Exists"" series is to impose an Occamesque
reduction
and
see what happens. If, for example, Ducasse was right and all the
moving
experience in theater is vicarious (remember, Aristotle talks about
pity,
terror,
relief -- all vicarious-seeming emotions) then forget about
"aesthetic".
Occam's point is that if you can "account for" something with
factors X, Y.
and Z,
there's no justification for assuming there's a Q at work.
I suspect -- I almost HOPE -- I can't succeed in this strategic
approach
because our common understanding of certain alleged "aesthetic
experiences" is
so
meager. (I've repeatedly failed to get the forum to focus on "The
Aesthetic
Experience".) The best of Mozart affords me an experience I prize;
ditto the
best of Van Gogh, and best of Dickinson. But am I justified in
calling all of
them instances of a sui generis event called "aesthetic experience"?
I should haul myself back to my "aesthetics" library and reread the
numerous
chapters on "The Aesthetic Experience".
"It seems that you use "aesthetic experience" as an almost exact
equivalent to the name of some other emotion, such as sadness or
mirth, and even to a behavior (laughter). That is, you seem to assert
in the situations you describe that something provokes a feeling of
"sadness," but since that feeling arose from witnessing a play or
seeing a painting, then something else interposes itself, the
"asethetic experience," which mediates between what the person
witnesses (the play) and how he feels (sad). Bill of Occam would
suggest you get rid of the middle man and just say, "The play made me
feel sad [or laugh myself silly, or cry, etc.]."
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