On Feb 26, 2010, at 3:32 PM, William Conger wrote: > Why are we limiting this question to "feeling"?
The limit wasn't to "feelings" as such but to the feelings provoked by things other than works of art. > There was a time when aesthetics was more about reason than feeling because it was thought art could be experienced and judged according to immutable laws, proportion, idealizations, etc., independent of individual passions.Of course this is not a common view anymore and it's no longer viable to speak of the mutual exclusivity of reason and feeling. But the term aesthetics remains and carries forth its earlier definitions. Moreover, I don't think any of us would exclude some analytical cognition whenever "that feeling" is experienced. I think it all comes down to feelings, to reactions, to an immediate up-or-down vote. Lots of previous experiences go into preparing one for the next encounter, whether it's much later on or merely the next painting in the gallery. Sometimes, we react with an unambiguous Yes! or No! And then we say about some others, "Maybe, I'll sleep on it." Some we walk away from muttering, "It's really not my cup of tea, but there's something about it that sticks with me." The reaction is spontaneous and immediate, the evaluation is slower and retrospective. I believe that we experience only two emotions, safety and fear. And we experience a few appetites that drive us from emptiness to satiety. We only rarely experience these feelings and appetites completely separately and shorn of cultural trappings-probably the emptiness of hunger and lust more often than the others. For the most part, I believe that all of our common experiences are a mixture of these ingredients. The rest is taxonomy, classifying them, describing them after experiencing them. Our aesthetics, like fashion in general, etiquette and ethics, grammars, proprieties of behavior, and established guides of performances and behaviors--all of these are elaborate and complex interactions of the socializing of safety and fear mixed with the driving force of appetites. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
