Under the umbrella study of Aesthetics, seems to me that ugly and it's many degrees of it,exists. And so is beauty and it' variations. ab On Dec 28, 2013, at 3:25 PM, [email protected] wrote:
> In a message dated 12/28/13 4:08:06 PM, [email protected] writes: > > >> might aesthetic reflection work better - and allow the ecstasy be >> understood as affect >> >> For some it certainly may. For me it doesn't, because I see three different > stages in the kind of aesthetic event I'm addressing. First, the raw-data > encounter with the work -- seeing it, hearing it, reading it. Second, the > almost immediate reaction -- the feeling I'm now calling aesthetic ecstasy. > Third, any subsequent attempt to articulate what just happened, and how I felt, > and (to the extent possible) why. I persist in feeling third stage > amounts to my "reflections". They can go on for a long time after the ecstasy > itself is over. If you go to GOOGLE and enter the two words "Reflections on" you > see a large number of essays with titles that begin that way, and, for me, > that period of reflection is, for me, unmistakably different from the > ecstasy. (Burke's REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION runs to 98,000 words. In > literature-appreciation, there have been "Reflections on" given short stories > that are longer than the story itself, and they are cerebral events, not the > "feeling" itself.) > > But exactly what I've been claiming is that individual "words" do not > "have" "meanings". That second stage -- the "ecstasy" -- is emotional, a > "feeling", and I personally think of "reflections" as something collected in > tranquility. If I burn my hand by encountering flame at the stove, I wouldn't think > of the pain as a reflection on the flame. But that's my own personal > word-use. If a different use works for someone else, there's no way I can call > them "wrong". At most I might claim their use will occasion an unwanted notion > in many readers (I often did that as an editor), but I could be wrong about > that.
