Abstract
This paper offers a critical analysis of Robert Stecker’s account of aesthetic experience and its relation to aesthetic and artistic values. The analysis will demonstrate that Stecker’s formulation of aesthetic experience as it stands is incompatible with his arguments for nonaesthetic artistic values. Rather than multiplying the values associated with aesthetic experience, a deeper understanding of that experience will best serve to clarify problems at the core of the discipline.
Highlights
This paper offers a critical analysis of Robert Stecker’s account of aesthetic experience and its relation to aesthetic and artistic values
Our confident and often facile use of such notions as aesthetic experience, aesthetic value, artistic value, and so on, belies a great deal of confusion about what they mean, or what we mean when we use them
While the details of his formulation of artistic value in particular have been the subject of some cogent criticism by Dominic McIver Lopes and Julian Dodd,1 his broader account of the relation of these values to our experiences has not yet been
Summary
Stecker begins with what he terms a ‘minimal conception’ of aesthetic experience, which is scant in detail but is presumably meant to leave room for elaboration. If aesthetic experience is conjunctive – the ‘and’ – it implies that we attend to all three constituents of the minimal conception (to forms, qualities and meanings of an object) in the way that a description of dessert as strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla would lead us to expect all three flavours of ice cream when ordering what, as children, we called ‘Neapolitan’. If the minimal conception is meant to be disjunctive – the ‘or’ – a different set of problems appear It suggests that we could perhaps choose which feature we attend to, as when offered chocolate, strawberry, or vanilla for dessert. It suggests that perhaps something in the object dictates the terms of our response – for example, that it is an artwork, as opposed to a sunset. If, for instance, we attend to meaning alone in an object, this seems to overly expand aesthetic experience to include all experiences that focus on meaning, from
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
