Philosophical Aesthetics: A Way of Knowing and Its Limits

Abstract

When art teachers are encouraged to add aesthetics to their classroom instruction, one of the questions they most commonly ask is, what is aesthetics? In this essay I shall try to answer this question in a way that can be applied to the work of young people at various stages of development. I shall also indicate some of the limitations that I believe should be straightforwardly acknowledged. But perhaps the easiest way of answering this question is by reassuring teachers that, when they do aesthetics with students, they will know it. Philosophical aesthetics is the study of the nature and components of aesthetic experience. This simple statement is, of course, a not-very-helpful gloss, for it immediately provokes the question, Just which experiences are aesthetic and who has them? And, in particular, Do children have them and, if they do, can they recognize them sufficiently to study them? I think there is ample evidence that children do have aesthetic experiences (though, of course, they may not call them that). A much tougher question is how we decide which experiences are aesthetic, that is, which experiences we want to study. Perhaps the easiest way to distinguish aesthetic experiences from nonaesthetic ones is by considering the objects of those experiences rather than by trying to discover some commonalities in the experiences per se. Individuals and social groups, after all, respond and behave in very different ways when they have what they identify as aesthetic experiences. Is there some one way you always feel and feel only when you have what you identify as an aesthetic experience? Or think about what goes on when people listen to music. Some sit quietly with their eyes closed; others sit erectly on the edges of their seats; still others tap their feet, shake their shoulders, and generally exhibit lots of movement-all in response to the