Student Thoughts on Edmund Burke's Concept of the Sublime

One aspect of the sublime that is not much discussed but which comes up frequently in my student's comments is the temporal nature of many sublime experiences.  For something to be sublime in Burke's sense it must be both terrifying and delightful.  This particular combination is almost self-contradictory.  If it is terrifying then how can it be delightful at the same time?  One way around this is to see the experience as a whole which has both a terrifying moment at first and then a delightful experience later.  So, for example, you almost have a car crash, but then avoid it at the last second, and feel a rush of delight afterwards.  The delight comes when there is no longer a threat.  But what about experiences in sports, for example in running, in which we are afraid we will collapse from pain and exhaustion, and yet make it and feel delight.  Could this feeling of delight also be seen as an experience of the sublime?  Probably not:  the experience of the sublime must incorporate the prior fear, not simply be a sense of relief after a moment of fear.  Another question is how we distinguish between sublime experiences and ones that are simply thrilling.  If you are just getting an adrenaline hit, for example, in a dangerous situation, are you experiencing the sublime?  It seems to me that there must be some sort of thought of something grand for the sublime to exist, but Burke himself allows us to have sublime experiences in the face of dangerous snakes, and there is nothing grand about that.

Art Review Sin Agua, Sin Vida, Mazatlan, Mexico

From time to time I do art reviews.  Like Arthur Danto, my model in this, I always try to find a philosophical angle.  My latest art review, of a show in Mazatlan, Mexico,“Sin Agua, Sin Vida”: “Without Water, Without Life.”  is posted with illustrations in Erin Goodwin Guerrero's web site here  under "West Coast Art Musings."  The review will also appear in a Spanish version at the current location of the show in Guadalajara.  I am excited to have my first publication in Spanish! 

Some Student Questions to Allen Carlson on the Aesthetics of Nature

Mica:  "Is it really so wrong to appreciate scenery from nature as scenery, even if it is appreciated as part of its environment."  Carlson attacks the Landscape Scenery Model of aesthetic appreciation of nature.  One should not, on his view, appreciate nature as if it were a series of paintings.  But even if this is true, is it wrong to appreciate scenery as scenery?  Carlson and Malcolm Budd emphasize that one should appreciate art as art, impressionist art as impressionist art, and nature as nature:  why not also scenery as scenery?

Sneha asks "How does Carlson feel about the word 'picturesque' being used for scenic places as a positive adjective rather than as degrading the natural ambiance?  Nature is being appreciated through an artistic point of view, but why is it necessarily a bad thing to think of scenery as being captured in a picture?"  Can the term "picturesque" have no role in environmental aesthetics?  

Wadeaa:  "Wouldn't an artist taking the time to articulate each detail of nature in order to paint it be his way of appreciation it?"  Wadeaa raises an interesting question.  Carlson assumes that nature can only be appreciated from a scientific perspective and that artistic approaches to nature do not encourage appropriate appreciation.  But what if that artistic approach is aimed towards realist portrayal?  Couldn't an artist capture aspects of nature through realistic portrayal that a naturalist would fail to see?

 

Recent Debates in Everyday Aesthetics

The Definition of Everyday Aesthetics.  

Melchionne, Kevin. "The Definition of Everyday Aesthetics"  Contemporary Aesthetics  Vol. 11, Jan. 7, 2013.  I reply to Melchionne in this blog. 

Naukkarinen, Ossi.  "What is 'Everyday' in Everyday Aesthetics"  Contemporary Aesthetics  Vol. 11, Sept. 16, 2013.   I reply to Naukkarinen in my blog   Naukkarinen then replied to that blog entry, his reply also to be found on this blog.  

Responses to my book The Extraordinary in the Ordinary.  There have been two reviews of the book and then some further discussions.

Dowling, Christopher.  "Thomas Leddy:  The Extraordinary in the Ordinary:  The Aesthetics of Everyday Life."  Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. May 19, 2012.  I reply to Dowling in my blog.

Forsey, Jane. "The Promise, the Challenge, of Everyday Aesthetics," Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico, 7, no. 1 (2014): 5-2. Available at: <http://fupress.net/index.php/aisthesis/article/view/14608/13652>. Date accessed: 21 Jun. 2014. I reply here.


Melchionne, Kevin.   "Leddy, Thomas.  The Extraordinary in the Ordinary:  The Aesthetics of Everyday Life."  Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.  71 (3):296-298 (2013).

-   "The Point of Everyday Aesthetics." Contemporary Aesthetics 12 (2014) here

Poullaka, Kalle.  "Dewey and Everyday Aesthetics - A New Look,"  Contemporary Aesthetics 12 (2014)  here

Ratiu, Dan Eugen.  "Remapping the Realm of Aesthetics: On Recent Controversies about the Aesthetic and Aesthetic Experience in Everyday Life" Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics  Issue 1,  Jan 1013, to be found here.  

Discussions of Everyday Aesthetics Issues 

Freeland, Cynthia.  review  Jane Forsey, The Aesthetics of Design (Oxford U. Press, 2013).  Freeland provides an excellent overview of some of the issues in the context of discussing Forsey's book.

Leddy, Thomas.  

Di Stefano, Elisabetta. "Estetica e oggetti quotidiani ?".

“ Everyday Aesthetics and Photography.” Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico, 7, no. 1 (2014): 45-62. Available at: <http://fupress.net/index.php/aisthesis/article/view/14610 

Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico,   7 no. 1, (2114): 119-128.  Available at: <http://www.fupress.net/index.php/aisthesis/article/view/14615/13638>. Date accessed: 21 Jun. 2014.  [You can translate this by going to Google translation] Iannilli, Gioia Laura. "Inter-facing Everydayness From Distance to Use, Through the Cartographic Paradigm," Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico, 7 no. 1, (2114):

 

Are there correct categories for perception of art?

An immensely influential work not only in the aesthetics of art but also in the aesthetics of nature is Kendall Walton's "Categories of Art" Philosophical Review 79 (1970) 334-67.  However the article is based on a fallacy, one that has not been previously discussed of taken account of.  The idea is that some sort of objectivity is available in aesthetics if we assure that the aesthetic object is perceived under its correct category (this often taken to mean the correct name for the school or style under which the artist is working).  This seems initially plausible since seeing a cubist painting as confused might be the result of seeing it under the category of painterly realism.  However what sense can really be made of the notion of "the correct category"?  Correctness in category ascription is a very different idea than that of seeing it under a category that works well.  That would be a more pragmatist way of approaching the question, and much more plausible.  Noel Carroll in "On Being Moved by Nature" is a typical user of Walton's distinction.  (The distinction is very popular in the aesthetics of nature.)  Carroll writes: "logically speaking, if an aesthetic judgment is true (or appropriate), then that is a function of the perceived, nonaesthetic properties of the artwork being comprehended within the context of the correct category of art." (Carlson and Lintott, Nature, Aesthetics and
Environmentalism, 178) (I have a problem with the notion that contextualizing non-aesthetic properties has importance in the making of aesthetic judgments, but will not discuss that here.) For example, argues Carroll, one must perceive a cubist painting under the category of cubism.  How does one determine the correct category?  Carroll lists two ways.  One is to ask "which category (genre, style, movement) the artist intended for the artwork" and the other is to look at "whether the category in question is a recognized or well-entrenched one."  Although these are not the only ways of fixing categories, Carroll considers them "fairly decisive."  Consider, then, Picasso in 1907 painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, and consider any visitors to his studio who may have seen it there in 1907.  Neither Picasso nor his visitors would have any notion of the concept of "cubism"!  Picasso, no doubt, would have categorized this painting under other concepts.  Nor was the concept of cubism "recognized or well-entrenched" at the time.  It was not even known.  So it follows, according to Walton's theory, that Picasso and his friends would have misconceived the correct category for the painting and hence could not make any aesthetic judgments about it with any grounding.  This is absurd.  Perhaps you do not accept that this painting is cubist:  sometimes, indeed, it is called "proto-Cubist."  But Picasso would equally have had no idea what "proto-Cubist" meant.  Moreover, the same point can be made about Braque's Houses at L'Estaque, which was said to have been the occasion for Louis Vauxcelles to use the term "bizarreries cubiques." Vauxcelles, too, knew nothing of "cubism" when he made this comment since that term was coined later.  This ignorance of the so-called correct category is not uncommon.  The impressionists did not at first know that they were supposed to be impressionists; the postimpressionists and the fauves ditto.  Movements are constructions created by various events including statements by artists, reviews by critics, major shows, chapters in art history books, etc.  The concept of "cubism," and its boundaries, changes over time.  This is not a "natural kind."  Even Picasso himself, after he started using the term "cubism" or thinking of his art as "cubist," probably meant something different by this in 1914 than in 1910.  So the theory can't be saved simply by observing that Picasso sometimes though of some of the paintings later included by some art historians under the chapter for "cubism" as cubist.  Note that I am not saying that there is no such thing as cubism or that the sentence "Picasso was a cubist" has no truth value.  I am just saying that these things need to be understood as dynamic in a pragmatist way, and that, when they are, the way in which "correct category" guarantees objectivity of aesthetic judgments is pretty much lost.

There is another problem with the Waltonian theory.  Many movements of art share similarities.  Was Jean Metzinger a cubist (as was said in 1912) or a fauvist?   What if one saw one of his paintings as a fauvist, rather than as a cubist painting?  Would this be a category mistake?  But look at his paintings from this period:  they can be seen easily as either.   Similarly, what if someone read Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, no. 2 (1912) as a futurist rather than a cubist work?  Who is to say what the "correct" category is in this case?  Let's take this a bit further.  Although on a multiple-choice exam in an art history class it would be incorrect to call this work a dadaist work since dadaism in the history books is supposed to have started in 1916, might it not be interesting or useful to see it as such?  Walton and his followers might concede this much and yet would refuse to abandon the idea that there is one correct category.  But how valid is multiple-choice-exam-knowledge of this sort anyway?  Isn't the "correct" answer whatever the teacher said the correct answer is?  If you mark "cubist" and the teacher had said "fauve" in the class then you are "wrong," and this even though there may be books defending the idea that the work is cubist.  But this is the way of conceiving knowledge that Walton's idea of "correct category" leads us to. 

Moreover, isn't it interesting that whenever someone has a major insight into the nature of something it is posed not in terms of correct category ascription but in terms of a metaphor that violates category dimensions.  It would appear that deep knowledge of anything is always impossible for correct aesthetic judgment on Walton's view.  In On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, Nietzsche refers to "the rigid regularity of a Roman columbarium" and this is what we have here.  It is worth quoting his sentence:  "Whereas each perceptual metaphor is individual and without equals and is therefore able to elude all classification, the great edifice of concepts displays the rigid regularity of a Roman columbarium..."  But, Nietzsche argues, concepts are merely residues of metaphors.  If so, then concepts have lives:  they begin as metaphors and end as rigid categories that need to be superceded.  The Waltonian approach to objectivity in art judgment (and aesthetic judgment generally) relies on the dying end of the life-span of the concept.          

Is good taste elitist?

Some have said that "taste" is no longer a relevant concept.  It certainly had its heyday in the 18th century.  Moreover, there was a reaction against the idea of taste in the late 20th century.  It is often associated with elitism and is sometimes criticized for being undemocratic.  However we can distinguish between good and bad forms of elitism.  Surely there is nothing wrong with saying that there is an elite group called mathematicians who understand math far better than anyone else in our civilization.  Similarly, there are people who understand Abstract Expressionism better than others because they have studied it.  Although the word "elite" has negative connotations, all it really means is a small group of specialists, and no one denies that there are such things.  Elitism is a problem only when certain groups are told that they cannot belong to the elite because of some innate or cultural characteristics, or are excluded for other reasons that are irrelevant to the skills required to belong to a true elite.  One should not feel bad for being excluded from an elite group one has no business belonging to in the first place.  If we go by Hume's idea of taste, the group of good judges would certainly form an elite, but this would not be an elite in the bad sense of the word.  Bear in mind that I am interpreting Hume's good judges as only being so in certain areas, in particular in those areas in which they have practiced and compared, for example in Reggae music.  So this form of elitism is not based on wealth or ancestry.  It is based on experience, although it also requires that the members have "good sense" (capacity to reason) and be determined to avoid prejudice.  These qualities may be relatively rare when developed, but most people can develop them.  Nor does this form of elitism say anything about who is best able to govern:  we are just talking about aesthetics here.  One dictionary (dictionary.com) gives its first definition of elitism as "practice of or belief in rule by an elite" and this is not of concern here.  A second definition is "consciousness of or pride in belonging to a select or favored group."  This too, may not be relevant since the charge of elitism against the idea of taste is usually a charge against the very idea that there exists an elite in some area.  The further act of pride in belonging to an elite may or may not be a good thing.  Again, if one belongs to an elite group because one is a good judge in Hume's sense there seems to be nothing wrong with that, nor even with pride in belonging to such a group.  It is often thought that such elitism is anti-feminist or anti some other group.  Yet although most elite groups of good judges in the past have not included women or some other groups (racial, ethnic, gender, etc.) this should not be a reason for questioning the very idea of such an elite.  Women (etc.) just didn't have the opportunity to pursue the skills that would allow them to belong to these elite groups, or they were excluded even if they had the skills because of prejudice.  (And this is still true today in many places.)  There is nothing about elitism as such that excludes women or other oppressed groups from forming parts of elite groups or even entire elite groups, as for example in the case an elite feminist reading group.  Again, I am not advocating elitism in the traditional sense of that term, since that means advocating social dominance by the particular group:  rather I am simply arguing that basically Humean idea of taste does not entail elitism even though it does indicate a kind of elite and does not preclude pride in belonging to such an elite (assuming that there are no moral problems with such membership).  Belief in taste can be consistent with belief in even fairly radical or progressive forms of democracy.   

 

An interesting article that develops an idea of elite experience and the elite art that generates this kind of experience is Steven Skaggs and Carl R. Hausman "Toward a New Elitism" Journal of Aesthetic Education 2012 46:3 (83-106).   Skaggs and Hausman, like me above, veer away from the traditional definition of "elitism."   

 

Is there such a thing as good taste?

This is the big question in aesthetics, but it is surprising how seldom philosophers attempt to answer it.  Like many aestheticians I am attracted both to the approach of David Hume and to that of Sibley.  So it seems to me that Hume is right that the standard of taste cannot be anything totally objective.   Rather than explicate Hume or Sibley here, I am more interested in developing some sort of combination view, at least one that works for me.  I'll start by rejecting any sort of science-based standard of taste.  Although it might be the case that the golden rule or a certain curve tends to produce things that look good there is enough variation in taste to preclude any conclusive objectivist theory of taste.  Taste must be based on something like what Hume called "the good judge."  This would be someone who has practiced and compared a great deal in a particular field of interest, for example Rap music, or perhaps even some narrower field such as West Coast Rap.  If a person with good sense (which is to say, the capacity to think and analyze rationally) and lack of prejudice (or at least relative lack of prejudice, since an absolute absence of prejudice would seem impossible) has practiced and compared a lot (had a lot of experience in this field of interest) then that person will have positive aesthetics experiences when confronting objects of beauty or objects of some other positive aesthetic quality (and negative experiences when confronting objects with negative aesthetic qualities.) However, we want to avoid some of the difficulties in a Humean approach to taste.  Hume says that the standard of taste is the joint verdict of the good judges, but we all know that the people who come closest to what we would call "good judges" often disagree.  So, the best we can do is speak of the ideal good judge and the verdict of such an ideal as being the standard of taste.  Also, Hume's emphasis on what he calls "delicacy of sentiment," which he usually treats as coming from practice and comparison, seems, in the end, too mechanical.  It is just a matter of determining which parts of the object appreciated are good and which parts are not so good.  His key example of the two critics of wine saying that the wine is good but for a piece of leather in one case and the piece of metal inn the other, leads us to believe that a good critic is someone who is able to tick off good and bad parts of an object of taste and then give a summary account in the end.  Yet taste is more holistic than that.  I tend to see objects of taste, including works of art, as organic wholes in which each part has characteristics that partake of the characteristics of the whole.  On this view, although a part may, in isolation, be seen mechanically as bad-making, in reality even such parts probably contribute to the goodness of the whole in some way.  Nonetheless there is some truth in Hume's account of delicacy of sentiment.  Certainly someone who is practiced in a field of art can make distinctions and see things that others cannot:  this is an indicator that someone is likely to have good taste.  But it is here that we might bring in Sibley.  In many respects Sibley's views on taste seem quite similar to Hume's.  However, unlike Hume, Sibley stresses the interrelationship between the good critic and what Hume would call the bad critic, but I would rather call the student.  The good critic (Sibely seems to suggest) is only known as a good critic if he or she is able to get the less tutored one to see an aesthetic quality.  This is a process that requires being present to the work in question.  So let us imagine both the critic and the student as standing before a painting.  The good critic is able to get the student to see that the painting has certain aesthetic qualities, say "grace" and "tragic character" through pointing out various things.  The critic might, for example, point out certain non-aesthetic qualities upon which the aesthetic qualities of the object "depends."  The word "depends" is used oddly here, since none of these qualities serves as either a necessary or a sufficient condition for whether or not the object in question has these qualities (here I would agree with Sibley).  Rather, experience has simply shown us that by making certain statements about the painting (including statements both about aesthetic and about non-aesthetic qualities) or by asking the student to note certain things in the painting, one can eventually get students to experience it as having certain aesthetic qualities.  If one does this, then one is a good judge.  This might cause some problems as it is always possible that someone can get people to have aesthetic quality experiences without these experiences being the ones one wants them to have, or even without actually having had those experiences oneself.  So perhaps we should add the condition that the good critic is one who gets students to experience the aesthetic qualities he and at least some other good critics have had.  In any case, this dynamic teacher/student relationship adds an important element to the Humean base understanding of the nature of good taste.   So, yes, there is good taste, and good taste can be passed on from teacher to student through various strategies, and we know that this happens because students can attest to "getting it" sometimes, i.e. in experiencing the object as positively aesthetic or even as negatively aesthetic in the case of negative criticism.   This does not indicate however that the aesthetic qualities are objectively independent in the object.  Rather they emerge in the processes of interaction between observers and objects and also between observers and observers (i.e. between teachers and students and between experts as well).  Anyway, that's the thought.