On Archibald Alison’s Conception of Aesthetic Experience and Its Selected Sources and Inspirations

Abstract


 The present article is devoted to aesthetic experience as conceived by Archibald Alison. It reconstructs the associationist sources of his views in the form of selected issues from the aesthetics of D. Hume and A. Gerard. In the case of the former, three types of beauty and the general characteristics of experiencing them are recalled. In the case of the latter, a general view of the nature of aesthetic experience is presented, including the role of internal senses, feelings, their accumulation and associative relations. Alison’s conception of autonomous aesthetic experience is laid out based both on the first edition of his works and on subsequent editions, which include quite substantial revisions. Discussed in detail here are the issues of simple emotion and the aesthetic train of ideas, which together constitute an autonomous aesthetic experience. Also, the article provides an explanation of the difference between emotions of pleasure and emotions of taste. Moreover, it outlines the social resonance of aesthetic taste and its manifestations.