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Philosophical Aesthetics:. An Introduction: . “Art is the difference between seeing and just identifying” ~ Jean Mary Norman. Section I: Prolegomena Respond to the following Quotes:. Respond to the following quotes:.
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An Introduction: “Art is the difference between seeing and just identifying” ~ Jean Mary Norman.
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
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.
Respond to the following Quotes: “Beauty is altogether in the eye of the beholder” ~ General Lew Wallace “Beauty is the promise of happiness” ~ Stendhal
Consider the following issues: What did you observe in the classroom responses?
A. Ontology: • What is your ontology? Many aesthetic debates at its fundamental level is ontological (what is reality, what is experiential?):
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?
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?
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.
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?
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).
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?
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.
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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
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.
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).