On Mar 1, 2009, at 11:15 AM, [email protected] wrote:
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"?
Get rid of that "affords me an experience" phrase. It's flabby,
inexact, and dissimulating. Instead, say, "When I listen to Mozart, I
feel _______." "When I see a Van Gogh, I feel __________." Etc. Or
say, "When I read Dickinson, I react ______________."
Instrumental music is a good example to use here, there being almost
no notional referent to music in the way that words or pictures have
relatively clear referents, AND referents that can be manipulated or
juxtaposed in a way that involves rules of order (syntax, composition,
exposition, perspective, spatial adjustments, etc.) that, when applied
to the words or pictures, themselves give rise a constructed "meaning."
For myself--and I suspect for many others--the feeling I get when I
hear, say, Finlandia or Classical Symphony or Jupiter or other work is
(a) unique to the work and (b) similar to my feeling for any other
piece of music, but (c) distinctly different from *similar* feelings
caused by other, non-musical stiumuli. It's the (a) and (b) parts that
lead to the derivative term, "aesthetic experience [feeling,
response]." Likewise for paintings: the strong feeling I get when I
see Van Der Weyden's "Deposition" is similar, but not identical, to
the feeling I get when I see Cezanne's "View of L'Estaque" or
Motherwell's "Spanish Elegies."
I believe the crucial, the necessary and sufficient, property of an
"artwork" is the truth-conditions to which it is subjected. (And thus,
the 'definition' of "art" is a functional one.) If the object is
offered to us--and received by us--as a documentation or transcription
of the referent, then we judge the work by its fidelity to the
referent and (typically) derive our emotion reaction from the depicted
subject. But if the subject is offered to us--and received by us--as a
provisional portrayal, as a simulation or recreation or contemplation
of the subject, then we judge the work, not by its faithfulness in
representing the subject, but by how well it stimulates our awareness
of its adroitness in making, of the maker's skill and insight, and
that awareness satisfies our perceptions of fitness, relationship, and
other sensory delights.
To say that one gets an aesthetic experience from seeing a WoA, and a
WoA is some thing that gives an a.e. is patently circular. If one
result of perceiving an WoA is to undergo an a.e., then clearly a WoA
must be defined by some other criteria. (But to say that only a WoA
can produce an a.e. in me is not circular, because the definition of
WoA doesn't depend on the a.e. part.)
"I trust I make myself obscure?"
"Perfectly, Thomas."
--from "A Man for All Seasons"
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Michael Brady
[email protected]
