Aesthetic Facts Research Articles

The rationality of solidarity

In this article we contend that, given the aesthetic fact of human imperfection, it is possible to imagine that rationality emanates from the value of solidarity. We identify an evolution of the principle of good faith towards the principle of solidarity. Thus, dignity, the foundation of all rights, reaches its highest expression.

On Wittgenstein’s Notion of a Surveyable Representation: Rituals, Aesthetics, and Aspect-Perception

ABSTRACT I demonstrate that analogies, both explicit and implicit, between Wittgenstein’s discussions of rituals, aesthetics, and aspect-perception have important payoffs in terms of understanding his notion of a ‘surveyable representation’ (übersichtliche Darstellung) as it applies to phenomena that are not exclusively grammatical in nature. In particular, I argue that a surveyable representation of various anthropological and aesthetic facts allows us to see, qua form of aspect-perception, internal relations and formal connections, so that the inner nature of a ritual or the solution of an aesthetic puzzle is exhibited. This particular form of seeing both explains why Wittgenstein thought that hypothetical explanations about the origins of a ritual are irrelevant to appreciating its meaning and elucidates his understanding of rituals, which involves seeing ‘internal relations’ and ‘formal connections’. The upshots of the account for work in anthropology are discussed.

How to be an aesthetic realist

AbstractThis paper develops a form of realism about aesthetics that is stronger than typical versions of aesthetic realism. As I conceive of it, aesthetic realism is the view that there are some response‐independent aesthetic facts. This kind of realism is unpopular in aesthetics and is often viewed as a non‐starter. Against this pessimism, I argue that the prospects for this realist approach are more favorable than commonly supposed. I offer some reasons to prefer my brand of aesthetic realism to competing realist and anti‐realist positions. I also defend this aesthetic realism against what I call the ‘overly objective worry’ and correct misconceptions about what realism's commitment to response‐independence involves.

ОТ ИДЕАЛИЗМА К НЕОМАРКСИЗМУ. ЧАСТЬ 2. БОРИС ВИППЕР

Boris Vipper’s project, which authoritatively substantiated the order of operations of the art historian when dealing with various material, was part of an intellectual quest to overcome the contradictions between the formalist understanding of the visual and the neo-Kantian variation of the Ding an sich. These searches in the GAKhN art criticism uncovered two other contradictions: between individual interest in an aesthetic fact and collective experience as the basis of empathy, and between interpretation as a principle of isolation and thematization of social experience and art’s own dynamics as a manifestation of its autonomy. Wipper's early works deal with these contradictions, but unlike the GAKhN colleagues, he asserted the autonomy of artistic worlds, bringing sign and character together. The rejection of the recognition of the autonomy of the social in his later works did not go beyond this convergence, but allowed him to defend the autonomy of art, not directly, but in some terminological caveats. The way of reasoning of the late Vipper is based on a different concept of style than that of the formalists, which allows him to accept Marxism without accepting the ideology of genius, and in his discussion of the causes of art evolution to approach the neo-Marxist understanding of practices and institutionalization not through a change of theoretical optics, but through a reduction of terminology and overcoming the inertia of common turns of phrase.

ДИНАМИКА ВОЗДУШНЫХ ПОТОКОВ КАК ПРОЦЕСС МУЗЫКАЛЬНОГО ЗВУКООБРАЗОВАНИЯ

The article discusses the functioning of musical sound as a complex of air waves. The definition of musical sound is formulated, it is emphasized that musical sound, unlike many sounds existing in nature, belongs to human consciousness and is an aesthetic fact. The concept of sound paint is introduced, which appears to be one of the most important qualities of musical sound. The illustrations given are drawn from the spheres of vocal, symphonic and piano music.

AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE AND AESTHETIC JUDGMENTS: THE FEATURES OF THE RELATIONSHIPS

The article examines the essence and relationship of aesthetic experience and aesthetic judgment. It is argued that philosophical aesthetics deals with constants that are fundamental to aesthetic experience. Such constants are phenomena and characteristics that have a fundamental ontological status in the aesthetic sphere. It was found that the ontological characteristic of aesthetic experience is that it is not reducible to “pure” rationality, that is, it is not something that is “adapted” to complete and final comprehension by the mind alone. Therefore, a complete “absorption” of aesthetic experience by a certain semantic structure is impossible: such experience always goes beyond any discursive boundaries and simultaneously opens them. In addition, aesthetic experience serves as one of the means of a person’s “contact” with the world and society. Forming on the material of sensations, aesthetic experience extends from the most general ideas about the universe to the inner life of a person. The analysis also showed that the formulation of an aesthetic judgment is based on the concepts of the perfect and the imperfect. In turn, the mastery of such concepts is carried out in the process of correlating a certain aesthetic fact with the existing value scale. That is why aesthetic judgments have signs of normativity. They also create the basis for a common worldview and attitude, lay the foundation for mutual understanding between people of a certain culture. The study showed that the process of aesthetic assessment is a constant correlation of the existing state of affairs with something ideal (within a certain value scale), this is a permanent “demand” for perfection, as well as a tireless search for an opportunity to fulfill this “demand”. At the same time, ethical experience is dissociated from “pure” pragmatics, which personifies vital necessity, because the aesthetic sphere is always associated with a certain “redundancy” in human existence. Also, the results obtained in the course of the study suggested that philosophical aesthetics, which takes into account and investigates the specificity of the phenomenon of corporeality, as well as such phenomena of human existence as affective sensitivity and sensitive rationality, is able to overcome the limitation of “an-esthetic” naturalism in aesthetics.

Rutinas de la experiencia común. El artista Spinoziano como productor

El presente trabajo explora el estatuto del arte en la filosofía de Spinoza (aspecto poco estudiado por la crítica), en el marco de la inversión copernicana que da origen a la estética (las “cualidades secundarias” no son propiedades de los objetos sino efectos en los sujetos que perciben) y del barroco holandés. Si bien el pensamiento spinozista se inscribe en la conversión antropológica, en virtud de la cual lo bello resulta ser un efecto en el sujeto y no una cualidad de los objetos, su comprensión del arte es inasimilable a la “estética” como ámbito diferenciado y autónomo que se consolida en el siglo XVIII, y más bien concibe el arte integrado a la vida y a la experiencia común –a la vez que, en cuanto praxis de origen corporal al alcance de cualquiera, presenta puntos de contacto con las vanguardias históricas del siglo XX–. Spinoza, según se propone en este texto, concibe la producción de “obras de arte” menos como un hecho estético que como una actividad corporal éticamente orientada a la vida buena.

The Facts of Mahur Maqam With Respect to Musical Creations of Abdulbaki Nasir Dede, Hasim Bey and Huseyin Sadettin Arel; Intellectual and Historical Projections

The Mahur sound which is one of the determinative colors of today’s Turkish music has been an aesthetic fact, towards which musical composers, who lived in different societies and periods, approached with their own specific manners. The motives forming the shape of this aesthetics are individual existences establishing relationships with the said social-periodical facts. Abdulbâki Nâsir Dede (1765-1821), Hâsim Bey (1815-1868) and Huseyin Sadettin Arel (1880-1955) who proved their existence with their musical creations and thus, could make visionary moves, defined the Mahur maqam with their unique nuances. Nâsir Dede approached to the Mahur maqam in the mysterious world of lahn (errors of speech) which belongs to the world of meanings of Yenikapi Mevlevihane and in this context, arranged the relationships of musical intervals according to the features of tune structures determined by masters of music. Hasim Bey approached to the Mahur maqam within the musical expression style of Western culture which was began to be understood and compared by the individuals of Tanzimat Reform Era. Accordingly, the Mahur maqam corresponds to the sol major in the European style in a sense. In this context, according to Huseyin Sadettin Arel, the Mahur maqam is similar to major, but as different from major it is a structure dominated by Cargah tunes containing T-T-B-T intervals. For Arel, the said intervals are musical materials which can adapt to modern mind and emotion definitions of nation-state citizens of the Republic. In this respect, the Mahur maqam constitutes a structure having different effects other than the effect area of major. Arel, thus, claims that Turkish music has its own national materilals which are candidate for universality such as Cargah, Buselik, Kurdi, Rast, Ussak, Hicaz obtained from the nature against the major-minor of the West. Through the article study, the Mahur maqam is questioned intellectually interacted with the perspectives where historicity begins to form which includes society and individual facts in the the triangle of said people’s creations. Keywords : Abdulbâki Nâsir Dede, Hâsim Bey, Huseyin Sadettin Arel, Mâhur, Musical Creation, Intellectuality, Historical, Community, Individuality. DOI : 10.7176/JSTR/5-5-08

Catarsis e experiência receptiva na “Estética” (1963) de Georg Lukács

Neste artigo, descreveremos de que forma a experiência estética da recepção e a ideia de catarsis estão presentes na estética de maturidade de Georg Lukács, considerando que o seu projeto original foi organizado em 3 partes: a particularidade do fato estético, os problemas do reflexo artístico e, por fim, a tipologia filosófica do comportamento estético. Octogenário, Lukács finalizou, somente, a primeira parte da obra, em 1963. Apesar de sinalizar ao leitor que noções relativas ao comportamento estético seriam discutidas na terceira parte da obra, o autor faz apontamentos acerca da experiência receptiva e da ideia de catarsis, que serão, neste estudo, retomadas.

Expressivism and Arguing about Art

Peter Kivy claims that expressivists in aesthetics cannot explain why we argue about art. The situation would be different in the case of morals. Moral attitudes lead to action, and since actions affect people, we have a strong incentive to change people's moral attitudes. This can explain why we argue about morals, even if moral language is expressive of our feelings. However, judgements about what is beautiful and elegant need not significantly affect our lives. So why be concerned with other people's feelings about art? Kivy thinks the best explanation of our tendency to argue about art is that we implicitly believe in objective facts about aesthetics. This would count against expressivism. I argue two things: (1) that there is no good reason to think that we don't care about preferences and emotions unless they have significant practical consequences and (2) that the truth of expressivism about aesthetic language is compatible with beliefs about objective aesthetic facts.

El Problema de la representación en las Bellas Artes a la luz de la historia cultural

El proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la historia del arte tiende a potenciarse al concebirse desde la metodología de la historia cultural. Esto en virtud de que la historia cultural nos exige ver a la obra de arte no sólo como un hecho artístico sino también como un hecho histórico y un hecho estético. En otras palabras, como un hecho cultural. Tradicionalmente, sin embargo, la enseñanza de la historia del arte se ha circunscrito en lo concerniente a las cualidades de hecho artístico de su objeto de estudio. Con ello, únicamente se limitan las posibilidades de comprensión /aprendizaje de la historia del arte. Resulta pertinente entonces evaluar cómo la historia cultural colabora con la historia del arte en la comprensión de los problemas de la representación en las Bellas Artes, fundamentalmente la pintura. Nos proponemos así establecer a la historia cultural como un lente de aumento de los factores que han incidido en la llamada «experiencia del arte» correspondiente a cada obra, a partir de la aplicación de la metodología de estudio histórico-cultural que refina la información inherente a cada obra.

Meditations on Objective Aesthetics in World Music

Abstract Abstract. This essay opens a dialogue between ethnomusicology and neo- Darwinism as promulgated by biologist Richard Dawkins and others. The first half engages quantum physicist David Deutsch’s much-discussed The Beginning of Infinity (2011), which integrates neo-Darwinism with the epistemology of objective knowledge developed by Karl Popper. Along the way Deutsch suggests that aesthetics with universal reach, akin to scientific facts, must be discoverable. Both Deutsch and Dawkins argue that traditional (meaning nonpost- Enlightenment) societies squelch unfettered knowledge creation in order to preserve themselves, and hence are unlikely to develop objective knowledge. Yet ethnomusicologists show that music can express social values but also point beyond them to unsuspected realms. If there exist aesthetic facts with universal reach in traditional music, can they be identified in these realms? Can ethnomusicology be an arena for discussing such questions? The second half of the essay engages in an analysis of a Ba-Benzele Pygmy tune in search of its objective aesthetic properties and their implications.

Can Folk Aesthetics Ground Aesthetic Realism?

ABSTRACTWe challenge an argument that aims to support Aesthetic Realism by claiming, first, that sense is realist about aesthetic judgments because it considers that aesthetic judgments can be right or wrong, and, second, that because Aesthetic Realism comes from and accounts for aesthetics, it is the best aesthetic theory available. We empirically evaluate this argument by probing whether ordinary people with no training whatsoever in the subtle debates of aesthetic philosophy consider their aesthetic judgments as right or wrong. Having shown that the results do not support the main premise of the argument, we discuss the consequences for Aesthetic Realism and address possible objections to our study.1. Introduction1.1 The common sense argument a ground for Aesthetic Realism?Several arguments are used to support Aesthetic Realism. Among these, one consists in appealing to aesthetics, that is, to common-sense beliefs about aesthetic judgments, and more precisely to the fact that lay-persons are natural normativists.1Traditionally (at least since Kant), philosophers consider that aesthetic judgments possess at least the following features: aestheticism (i.e., aesthetic judgments ascribe aesthetic values to things, persons, and events) and (i.e., aesthetic judgments for universal validity in the sense that when one formulates an aesthetic judgment, she considers her judgment as being either correct or incorrect so that, in a contradictory aesthetic debate, each side believes that at most one of them is right). Philosophical theories according to which aesthetic judgments actually possess such correctness (or incorrectness) are normativist theories. Others, which hold that aesthetic judgments do not possess this feature, we call skeptic theories.2 The claim according to which aesthetic judgments possess normativity is thus equivalent to the claim that laypeople are normativist.As such, Aesthetic Realism is a normativist theory. Reference to and folk normativism in aesthetic judgments appears in an argument with two steps for Aesthetic Realism, which is summed up by Zangwill (2001).Both realism and non-realism are on a par as far as the experiential aspect of aesthetics is concerned. But when it comes to explaining the of aesthetic judgements, the realist is ahead [...] I conclude that folk aesthetics is thus realist. Whether or not the tacit folk metaphysical commitment to aesthetic facts or states of affair is justified is another matter, but our aesthetic judgments presuppose that metaphysics. What is not an option is holding some non-realist view, be it Humean, Kantian or dispositional, while we can unproblematically retain our ordinary practice of making aesthetic judgments.The first step states that laypeople are normativist when it comes to aesthetic judgments (or, to put it in different words, that is indeed a property of lay aesthetic judgments). Accordance with folk aesthetics is capital for Aesthetic Realism. Indeed, it is important for Aesthetic Realism not to conflict with ordinary judgments for two reasons. First, by doing so, it compels the concurrent theories (those which agree with Aesthetic Skepticism) to endorse the argumentative burden of proving that and explaining why laypeople are wrong. Second, it allows Realism to compensate for its metaphysical disadvantage. Indeed, Aesthetic Realism is more metaphysically demanding than Aesthetic Skepticism because the former appeals to aesthetic entities,3 whereas the latter does not. Thus, if it were shown that Aesthetic Realism conflicts with sense, then motivations for holding such a theory would be very thin because, in this case, Aesthetic Realism would be at the same time more metaphysically demanding and in need of an error theory.The purpose of the second step is to show that Aesthetic realism is the best theory available. …

Aesthetics in the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead published no book or article strictly on aesthetics. Nonetheless, in his philosophical writings he mentions several times that aesthetic experience is the key to his metaphysics. In fundamental places of his philosophical system, moreover, he uses expressions like ‘aesthetic experience’, ‘aesthetic fact’, ‘aesthetic unity’, and ‘aesthetic order’. These expressions do not, however, refer to human conscious experience alone, but to all entities of the universe. That has led some scholars to the conviction that these terms are used in a purely technical sense and therefore do not refer to the sphere of aesthetics. The author of the current article seeks to demonstrate that these terms do refer to the sphere of aesthetics. The argument set out here consists in three steps. In the first, the author presents Whitehead’s philosophical method of imaginative generalization. In the second step, the author presents the fundamental ontological unit (the actual occasion) of Whitehead’s philosophy, and points out that Whitehead describes it using aesthetic terms that are employed in a broad sense. In the third step the author presents Whitehead’s view of aesthetic understanding. At the end of the article, it is demonstrated that although Whitehead did not develop his analysis of aesthetic understanding into a consistent theory, it forms the background to all his metaphysical books. Abstrakt Alfred North Whitehead hat sich weder in einem Buch noch eigenen Aufsatz gesondert mit Asthetik beschaftigt. Nichtsdestotrotz erwahnt er in seinen philosophischen Texten mehrmals, dass die asthetische Erfahrung der Schlussel zu seiner Metaphysik sei. An Stellen, die fur sein philosophisches System grundlegend sind, verwendet er zudem Ausdrucke wie „asthetische Erfahrung“, „asthetische Tatsache“, „asthetische Einheit“ oder „asthetische Ordnung“. Sie verweisen nicht nur auf die bewusste menschliche Erfahrung, sondern auf alle Entitaten des Universums. Dadurch gelangten einige Forscher zur Uberzeugung, dass die Verwendung der genannten Ausdrucke rein technisch ist und sie sich also nicht auf das Gebiet der Asthetik beziehen. Der Autor dieser Studie versucht hingegen zu zeigen, dass diese Ausdrucke sehr wohl auf das Gebiet der Asthetik Bezug haben. Die Argumentation ist dreigeteilt: Erstens wird Whiteheads Methode der imaginativen Generalisierung vorgestellt. Zweitens wird das grundlegende ontologische Element (das wirkliche Ereignis) von Whiteheads Philosophie vorgestellt und darauf aufmerksam gemacht, dass Whitehead bei seiner Beschreibung asthetische Begriffe in ihrer weiten Bedeutung verwendet. Drittens wird Whiteheads Auffassung des asthetischen Verstehens vorgestellt. Schlieslich wird gezeigt, dass die Analyse des asthetischen Verstehens, obwohl Whitehead sie zu keiner konsistenten Theorie ausgearbeitet hat, den Hintergrund aller seiner Bucher zur Metaphysik bildet.

Teorie dell’oggetto estetico nel pensiero francese contemporaneo

The problem of defining aesthetic object seems to represent a real challenge to part of twentieth century's french thought: for this reason it is there in each and every reflection on the nature of aesthetic facts. The essay sketches out a critical and bibliographic history of this aesthetic categorie from Mikel Dufrenne's Phenomenologie de l'experience esthetique (1952), to Jean-Marie Schaeffer's Objets esthetiques (2004).

A Fragment on the Emotion, “Mathesis” and Time Dimension of the Purely Musical. Marginalia with Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun by Claude Debussy

In the dialogue What Is Music? between Carl Dahlhaus and Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, music is defined as a “mathematized emotion” or an “emotionalized ‘mathesis’”. As emphasized by Marija Bergamo, this is the way of underlining its equal and unavoidable constitution, based on emotion and rational organization in the time dimension. So, Marija Bergamo is continuously searching for those music determinants in a musical work as an “autonomous aesthetic fact”, whose base and real essence lie “within the nature and essence of music itself”. In other words, the starting point of the author’s concern with (art) music is her reflection on that which is “purely musical”, that is, on “the very nature of the musical”.The attempts to determine what the purely musical is and to understand the nature of the sense and inevitability of man’s musical dimension have been made since the beginnings of music and musical thinking. In that context, more recent knowledge and thinking about the phenomenon of music, which are derived from various disciplines, correspond closely to Marija Bergamo’s views. In a narrower sense, the notion of purely musical is closely related to aesthetic autonomy, that is, autonomous music or musical autonomy. From such a viewpoint – and in conformity with Marija Bergamo’s view – I would say that the purely musical in an art music work exists independently of non/autonomy (that is, independently of any function, except an aesthetic one), as well as independently of the origin of its content (musical or extra-musical), and that it always, whenever “one thinks in the sense of music and is seized by it” (in terms of emotion, mathesis and time), creates, brings and possesses its specific (non-conceptual perceptive) musical-semantic stratum. This is shown, at least partly, on a characteristic and (in many respects) paradigmatic example – the music of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun by Claude Debussy. Therefore, rationalism of the magic inspiration of music (and/or: in music; by music; and possibly /by music/ about music), as a “mathematized emotion” or “emotionalized mathesis” in the time dimension, makes it – in a purely musical sense, based on purely musical logic – a unique form of non-conceptual cognition.

Du comportement symbolique des derniers chasseurs Mechta-Afalou d'Afrique du Nord

The symbolic behaviour of the latter Mechta-Afalou hunters of northern Africa. The symbolic universe of Mechta-Afalou’s men is very little known, as Prehistory was mostly interested in reconstituting industrial assemblages and technological modes of their obtention. We will try in this paper, on the basis of the last works of Afalou Bou Rhummel, to accede to some of those activities indirectly bound to subsistence. We will first focus on the longevity of the human occupation of this important rock shelter and of the neighbouring shelters inscribed within the bio-geographical unit of the coastal mountainous massif of the Babors. The territory has been occupied continuously by Iberomaurisian populations during more than eight millennia, just before Holocene. Access to food resources, requesting the numerous strata of nature, departing from fishing art possibilities and going through the universe of molluscs and different varieties of vertebrates, seems to have been controlled by those populations that have, nonetheless, shown a particular preference to the wild ship ( Ammotragus lervia). Populations have invested the different areas of the territory with different significance. To grasp each subtlety, far from it, is still not yet possible. Nevertheless, we ought to seek for the significance of choosing the Afalou Bou Rhummel shelter for the establishment of a necropolis gathering several tens of individuals, such as the westward and almost contemporary necropolises of Columnata and Taforalt. Those places were certainly meaningful enough for everyone to have wished to get buried there or at least not elsewhere, in other habitats even occupied at the same epoch. It happens that the shelter has also given, in the form of backed clay statuettes, the oldest artistic manifestations known up to now in northern Africa. This second fact represents the meeting point, in a living place, of two prominent facts of recent prehistory both characterising modern Men: the metaphysical fact and the aesthetic fact. To cite this article: S. Hachi, C. R. Palevol 5 (2006) .

The Split and the Structure: Twenty-Eight Essays

Rudolf Arnheim's great forte is his ability to illuminate the perceptual processes that go into the making and reception of artworks - painting, sculpture, architecture, and film. Over the years, his pioneering mode of 'reading' art from a unique scientific/philosophic perspective has garnered him an established and devoted audience. That audience will take pleasure in Arnheim's most recent collection of essays, one that covers a range of topics and includes titles such as Outer Space and Inner Space, What Is an Aesthetic Fact?, As I Saw Children's Art, Two Ways of Being Human, Consciousness - an Island of Images, and From Chaos to Wholeness. The notion of structure is Arnheim's guide in these explorations. Most of the essays examine the nature of structure affirmatively: how it comes about, its incentives and objectives, its celebration of perfection. He is interested in how artists grope for structure to shape powerful, enlightening images, and how a scientist's search for truth is a search for structure. Writing with enviable clarity, even when deploying complex arguments, Arnheim makes it easy and exciting to follow him as he thinks. America is not abundantly supplied with 'public intellectuals' such as Rudolf Arnheim - to have his writings with us is cause for celebration. 'The word 'structure' appears for good reason in the title of this collection...Structure seems to be needed as an arbiter wherever this civilization of ours is split by selfish interests and fighting for either/or decisions. The essays want to speak with the voice of reason, because they want to show how the parts require the whole.'

The New Criticism as an Historical Phenomenon

T HE ERA of the New Criticism, everyone agrees, is over. Its beneficial effects, which are many, will we hope be permanent-its sins interred with its bones. One of the founders, T. S. Eliot, has already written an apologia and an historical analysis of the movement as a whole.l According to Eliot, it was the method and attitude of Coleridge, the first great critic in English to employ such extraliterary disciplines as philosophy, aesthetics, and psychology in the study of literature, that has stimulated the extraliterary interests of modern criticism in the social sciences, linguistics, and semantics. The other principal impetus of the New Criticism, according to Eliot, has been the search for origins. Rene Wellek has also pointed to a twofold impulse behind the New Criticism, but his analysis differs from Eliot's. According to Wellek, there were groups: those who have more and more brought to bear on literature all kinds of knowledge-psychoanalysis, Marxism, and recently anthropology; and those who have tried to study literature as an aesthetic fact.2 Wellek's formulations seem to be more just and more accurate than Eliot's, since the concern for origins is surely an inheritance from the late nineteenth century and not something peculiar to the twentieth. Certainly Wellek's two poles-psychoanalysis, anthropology, theory of language (extrinsic interests), at one extreme, and