Philosophical Aesthetics:

1. Philosophical Aesthetics:

2. An Introduction: “Art is the difference between seeing and just identifying” ~ Jean Mary Norman.

3. Section I: Prolegomena Respond to the following Quotes:

4. Respond to the following quotes: “Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization” ~ Lincoln Steffens “A great artist is always before his time or behind it” ~ George Moore “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up” ~ Pablo Picasso

5. Respond to the following quotes: “Art is either a revolutionist or a plagiarist” ~ Paul Gauguin “With an apple I will astonish Paris” ~ Paul Cezanne “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance” ~ Aristotle.

6. Respond to the following Quotes: “Beauty is altogether in the eye of the beholder” ~ General Lew Wallace “Beauty is the promise of happiness” ~ Stendhal

7. Consider the following issues: What did you observe in the classroom responses?

8. A. Ontology: • What is your ontology? Many aesthetic debates at its fundamental level is ontological (what is reality, what is experiential?):

9. A. Ontology: • Do you believe God created reality? • Is “reality” only empirical? • Is “reality” extensional? • Is “reality” created? By whom or what? • Is “reality” conventional? • Does the object itself (creation) possess aesthetic properties? • What is the relationship between creation, judgment perception and aesthetic experience?

10. B. Experience: • Can you separate the interpreter from the aesthetic experience? • How do you define experience? Is it more than perception? What is the functional, participatory role of the perceiver? • Whatever view of aesthetics you have, you have to notice the relationship between the work and the perceiver?

11. C: Epistemology: • What is your epistemology? How do you ground both aesthetic experience and aesthetic judgment? • Do objects have inherent aesthetic properties? Or our values ascribed? • What is the relationship between ontology and epistemology in view of objectivism and subjectivism.

12. C. Epistemology: • Do objects have inherent aesthetic properties? Or our values ascribed? • What is the relationship between ontology and epistemology in view of objectivism and subjectivism?

13. D. Judgments: • What is the relationship between ontology and epistemology in view of objectivism and subjectivism: • How do we handle disagreements? (I prefer chocolate vs. vanilla). • Is experience caused by an “outside object” or “inner reaction”. • Do relativists use normative reasons to substantiate their claims of subjectivity? • Aesthetic judgments (any kind of claim of value needs to be substantiated).

14. E. Hermeneutics: • What is your hermeneutical theory both in meaning and evaluating art? • Can one understand the meaning of art apart from authorial intent. • Is there an objective or subjective criteria for evaluating art? • Should we even articulate a criteria or are we being biased by our sub-culture by establishing binary oppositions of bad vs. good? Should perception, maturity, and experience be counted as criteria for evaluating art?

15. E. Hermeneutics: • What is your hermeneutical theory both in meaning and evaluating art? • Does our perception impacted by our culture, race, gender, traditions, education, and individual psychologies? • Are our judgments of works of art culturally dependent? Or is there an Archimedean point that is outside all cultural value systems that is transcendent.

16. Process: • Is there a process for aesthetic judgment (appreciation) and/or aesthetic experience? • If there is a process: • What goes on? • What does it require? • What does it take to do it “right”? • Can one learn how to do it? • What is the role of culture? • What is the role of personal biases? • What about training?

17. G. Artistic Expression and Psychology: • What is the relationship between image identity or “cult of personality” & artistic expression? • Should art be used to exploit people? • Should art be used to bring psychological identity, meaning, purpose, fulfillment? • Are we amusing ourselves to death by popular art?

18. G. Artistic Expression & Psychology: • What causes high art? • What causes popular art? • What are the sources of animosity between high and low art? • What is the criteria we use to distinguish between high and low art?

19. H. Artistic Expression & Society: • What is the relationship between political & cultural sensibilities and art? • Is there a distinction between popular and high art? • What about the role of community? • What about the role of the “elite”? • What about democracy in art? • Does high art have to do more with form? • Does popular art have to do with meaning? • Are these distinctions?

20. H. Artistic Expression & Society: • What is the relationship between political & cultural sensibilities and art? • Consider mass reproduction vs. uniqueness of art? • Consider transitory vs. permanence art? • Should art be commercialized to be appreciated by the masses or should they be only reserved for the elite? • Should art be privatized? • Should art be open to the community? • What causes high art? • What causes popular art?

21. I. What is the Starting Point? • Is perceptual judgment different from all other judgments? Is there a sense whereby we can consider judgment without a proposition? If we are to do aesthetics, what is our starting point? • Sociologically? • Scientifically: aesthetic values or sense from evolutionary theory or intelligent design? • Emotionally? • Mysticism?

22. I. What is the Starting Point? • Is perceptual judgment different from all other judgments? Is there a sense whereby we can consider judgment without a proposition? If we are to do aesthetics, what is our starting point? • Authority: institutional, religious, or political? • Historical: historical development, cumulative expressions from past? • Innate methodical faculty of perception? • Biological/Acquired cultural habits and

23. I. What is the Starting Point? • Biological/Acquired cultural habits and sentiments (Dewey)? Relative autonomy: distinctive and continued with different areas of life (Pappas) without presupposing an Archimedean point of view? • Reductionism (e.g., psychology = neurons; biology = bio-chemical; cultural/authority = politics)? Reductionism is reducing everything to physiology. For example, the love of your mom is reduced to survival of the fittest.

24. J. Overview of Major Positions on what is aesthetically valuable: • X is whatever is good (aesthetically) is aesthetically valuable (e.g., Plato in view of good being virtue). Certain rhythms produce good thoughts, etc. • X which involves an aesthetic experience has quality-value. • X is beautiful (it was the main category in defining aesthetic quality prior to 20th Century; e.g., Lord Shaftsbury). • X has significant form (beauty is not enough; it is not the main category; rather it is form that which has ultimate significant value (e.g., Clive Bell). Clive Bell reduces beauty to form (a form of reductionism). • X is that which has unity, intensity, & complexity is aesthetically valuable (e.g., Beardsley). Beardsley formulates an objective criteria: Coherent & complete and resists both relativism and Kantian subjectivism. • X is that which is deemed by authority as having aesthetic value (e.g., George Dickie; he has a minimal ontology).