Experiencing Art Austrian Aesthetics between Psychology and Psychologism

Abstract

It is notoriously difficult to define art and there is hardly any agreement concerning the question of what properties should be considered to be aesthetic ones – even the idea to use “beautiful” as shorthand for aesthetic properties seems to have become obsolete in the twentieth century. It seems obvious, however, that we can call only those objects works of art that we can experience as instantiating aesthetic properties or as realizing aesthetic ideals (however these properties or ideals may be characterized and independent of the question of whether or not these experiences are reliable). In order to be a work of art, in other words, an object has to be perceptible. Some theories even suggest that like secondary qualities aesthetic properties depend essentially on the interaction between the object that has the relevant properties and the perceiver, as the old saying that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” seems to confirm. This suggests that our capacity to experience aesthetic properties should be accounted for by every aesthetic theory that aims at being comprehensive. Psychological and phenomenological approaches even go one step further and argue that the notion of aesthetic experience should be considered