Abstract
Anosmia is a sensory disability that consists of the inability to perceive odours. The sense of smell can be lost at any time during life, but people suffering from congenital anosmia, as I do, have never had any experience of smelling. My question is whether such an impairment of olfaction impoverishes aesthetic appreciation or makes it different in any way. I hypothesize that congenital anosmia entails two different kinds of loss in aesthetic appreciation. In order to test my hypothesis, I address modern and contemporary aesthetic theory. Finally, I claim that congenital anosmia constitutes an impoverishment, but also ask whether it can be compensated for by dialogue and imagination. I further inquire as to whether it can foster a more self-critical aesthetic appreciation, more conscious of the powers and limits of our senses.
Highlights
CONGENITAL ANOSMIA AND AESTHETIC APPRECIATION My first attempt to answer this question is based on my personal experience
I have taken the case of aesthetic appreciation of natural environments, which is a multisensory appreciation, and have compared my appreciation of some particular environments with the appreciation of people who can smell and have described to me their experiences of these same places
It involves a qualitative loss: the anosmic person cannot experience the environment from the perspective of olfaction, which is very different from the perspective that the senses of sight, hearing, taste, or touch can offer
Summary
The sense of smell can be lost at any time during life, but people suffering from congenital anosmia, as I do, have never had any experience of smelling. Does congenital anosmia have any kind of influence on aesthetic appreciation? Anosmia is a sensory disability that consists of the inability to perceive odours, and it is estimated that some two per cent of the world‘s population suffer from it. The sense of smell can be lost at any time during life due to a wide variety of causes, but people suffering from congenital anosmia, as I do, were born without the ability to smell, and we have never had any experience of smelling. The article is structured in four parts: first, I present my hypothesis as an answer to the question, and offer examples that support it.
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