Abstract
Although our analysis in the preceding chapters should have left little doubt that religious experience and aesthetic response often coalesce, it seems obvious to most reflective religion scholars and theologians that the specific aesthetic tastes of a given person or social group are by nature of little or no concern to religion. Within the Christian tradition, for instance, ‘bad taste’ is not considered a deadly or even venial sin. Nor is it generally condemned as a hindrance to sanctification or spiritual maturity. Impeccable taste, moreover, is hardly deemed to be one of the ‘fruits of the spirit’. Saintliness and the so-called Christian virtues seem to have little to do with the appreciation of the subtler beauties of art and nature. The beatitudes certainly do not mention people with ‘good taste’ among the blessed. Instead, the poor and outcast, whose taste has often been regarded as extremely questionable, are the ones named to inherit the Kingdom. The rich — the traditional patrons of art and culture — are said to have their reward already.
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Notes
See H. A. Needham, ed., Taste and Criticism in the Eighteenth Century (London: Harrap, 1952) p. 224.
See Paul Kristeller, ‘The Modern System of the Arts’, Renaissance Thought II: Papers on Humanism and the Arts (New York: Harper & Row-Torchbook, 1965).
For the precise wording and import of Kant’s various definitions, see Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J. H. Bernard, 1911; reprint edn (New York: Hafner, 1951) Sections 1, p. 37; 5, p. 44; 40, p. 138.
Frank Sibley, ‘Aesthetic Concepts’, 1959; reprinted in Philosophy Looks at the Arts, rev. edn ed. Joseph Margolis (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978) pp. 64–87; quotation from p. 66.
Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 2nd edn, 1759; facsimile edn (New York: Garland, 1971) pp. 30–1.
David Hume, Of the Standard of Taste, 1757;
modern edition: Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays, ed. with an Introduction, John W. Lenz (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Library of Liberal Arts, 1965) pp. 13, 18.
Roger Scruton, ‘Architectural Taste’, British Journal of Aesthetics 15 (1975): 294–328.
For one of the few published statements of the view that liking and valuing aesthetically are not identical, see John Fisher, ‘Evaluation without Enjoyment’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 27 (1968): 135–9.
See Paul Guyer, ‘Pleasure and Society in Kant’s Theory of Taste’, in Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer, Essays in Kant’s Aesthetics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982) pp. 21–54.
See Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian, trans. W. A. Lambert, rev. Harold J. Grimm, in Three Treatises, rev. edn (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970) pp. 277–316.
Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982; reprint edn (New York: Washington Square-Pocket, 1983), dedication page.
Marcia Cavell, ‘Taste and the Moral Sense’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 34 (1975): 30–3.
John Dewey, Art as Experience, 1934; reprint edn (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons-Capricorn, 1958), p. 349.
See, for example, Stanley Hauerwas (with David Burrell), ‘From System to Story’ and ‘Story and Theology’, in Hauerwas, Truthfulness and Tragedy: Further Investigations in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977).
See James M. Gustafson, Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective, vol. 1: Theology and Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) pp. 116–17, 291.
Nicholas Wolterstorff, Art in Action: Toward a Christian Aesthetic (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1980) p. 169, emphasis added. Cf. pp. 78–83.
See the translation of passages on beauty from Thomas Aquinas’s Exposition of Dionysius on the Divine Names, in Vernon J. Bourke, ed., The Pocket Aquinas (New York: Simon & Schuster-Pocket, 1960).
Cf. Armand A. Maurer, About Beauty: A Thomistic Interpretation (Houston: Center for Thomistic Studies, 1983).
See Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, ed. John E. Smith (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959) pp. 298–9.
See also Terrence Erdt, Jonathan Edwards: Art and the Sense of the Heart (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980) pp. 4, 58–9;
and Roland Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968).
For two outstanding interpretations of the Romantic vision of the religiously aesthetic, see Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825–1875 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980);
and M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971).
See Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, 7 vols ; vol. 1 (San Francisco: Ignatius and New York: Crossroad, 1982); vols 2–3 (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1984–6); vols 4–7, trans, in progress.
See Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, ed. Robert C. Kimball (New York: Oxford University Press-Galaxy, 1964);
and The Protestant Era, abridged edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press-Phoenix, 1957).
See Erwin Panofsky, ‘Abbot Sugar of St.-Denis’, in his Meaning in the Visual Arts (Garden City, NY: Doubleday-Anchor, 1955).
For more on commending instead of commanding, see Paul Guyer, ‘Mary Mothersill’s Beauty Restored’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 44 (1986): 245–55.
See also Mary Mothersill, Beauty Restored (London: Oxford University Press, 1985) pp. 311, 79, 224.
George Steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes towards the Redefinition of Culture (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1971) p. 77.
For a sophisticated and informative discussion of class, society, and the arts that nevertheless reflects the narrowness of Marxian presuppositions, see Arnold Hauser, The Sociology of Art, trans. Kenneth J. Northcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982) pp. 547–653.
For a critique of Marxian theories, see Patrick Brantlinger, Bread and Circuses: Theories of Mass Culture as Social Decay (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983).
See also Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984);
and Herbert J. Gans, Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
R. G. Saisselin, Taste in Eighteenth Century France: Critical Reflections on the Origins of Aesthetics (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1965) p. 65.
Paul Thek, quoted in Richard Flood, ‘Paul Thek: Real Misunderstanding’, Artforum, Oct. 1981, p. 53.
Flannery O’Connor, ‘Revelation’, in The Complete Stories (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971) p. 508.
Gustave Flaubert, ‘A Simple Heart’, in Three Tales, trans. Robert Baldick (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1961) p. 56.
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© 1990 Frank Burch Brown
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Brown, F.B. (1990). Sin and Bad Taste: Aesthetic Criteria in the Realm of Religion. In: Religious Aesthetics. Macmillan Studies in Literature and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10021-7_6
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