Abstract
Since man became aware of his having experiences of beauty, they have been an object of wonder and hence of philosophic reflection. What is the nature of these experiences ? What is the character of the objects which elicit them? What function do they play in the human economy? This effort to work out satisfactory answers for these questions will be found to be reminiscen-of the figure in Plato’s Ion where the artistic inspiration is represented by an image of iron rings held together by magnetic force. The Muse is the first ring; the inspired creation and the appreciator are the other rings. To explain in more literal terms the nature of this magnetic force and of the rings which it holds together is to develop a theory of aesthetic value. In certain respects the present interpretation of this image remains within the ambit of Platonic philosophy; in others it is modern. Thus it is intended to embody criticism of both ancient and modern aesthetic thought and seeks to retain characteristics of both kinds, despite the very considerable differences between them.
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References
Cf. Republic, 430, 431, 443D; Laws, II, 653A.
Cf. Symposium 206; Philebus 64D, “Measure and symmetry are beauty and virtue all the world over,” trans. Jowett; also 66A; and Aristotle, Metaph., XIII, 3, 1078a, “The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness.” trans. W. D. Ross.
Cf. Philebus 51; Aristotle, Metaph. XIII, 1078a.
Republic vi, 509-511.
I elaborate this point in chapter IX. Cf. also Butcher, Aristotle’s Theory of Fine Art, London, 1907, p. 150f.
The Basis of Criticism in the Arts, Harvard, 1945, p. 106. By Formism he refers to the classic tradition starting with Plato and Aristotle.
Critique of Judgment, Oxford, 1911, I, 16.
He also distinguishes a beauty which belongs to the materials from which a work of art is made. This kind of beauty can, I believe, safely be omitted from discussion in the present essay. Cf. p. 93f.
These distinction, which I have made in each author’s own terms, are prominently discussed by each. Cf. Roger Fry, Vision and Design, London, 1924; D. W. Prall, Aesthetic Judgment, N.Y., 1929; H. N. Lee, Perception and Aesthetic Value, N.Y., 1938; T. E. Jessop, ‘The Definition of Beauty’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, XXXIII, 1932-33; J. Hospers, Meaning and Truth in the Arts, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1948. It should be noted that the term ‘dualistic’ is applied to this group of theories in a loosely descriptive sense. While all distinguish at least twp species of aesthetic value, not all distinguish them with equal sharpness. H. N. Lee derives expressive value from the direct or formal value. At the other extreme Santayana appears to dichotomize these two values. He writes “We have in works of art two independent sources of effect,” (Sense of Beauty, N.Y., 1936, p. 124), and “The distinction of the analysis may be so great as to prevent the synthesis” (Ibid, p. 146). Nevertheless, he is convinced that these two values are somehow fused by a psychological mechanism. Missk. Gilbert has pointed out the independence of his two forms of value, cf. her Studies in Recent Aesthetic, Durham, N.C., 1927, pp. 116-127.
R. Arnheim, ‘The Priority of Expression,’ Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, VIII, no. 2, 1949, 106–110.
Art, London, 1931, p. 44.
Meaning and Truth in the Arts, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1948, p. 14.
Aesthetic Judgment, N.Y., 1929, p. 184.
‘The Aesthetic Work of Art’, in Basis of Criticism in the Arts, Cambridge, 1945, p. 162. W. T. Stace, whose aesthetic theory is also built upon a basis in perception, although it is not to be placed among the dualistic theories mentioned above, includes literature and allied arts by a similar enlargment of the notion of perception; perception is derived, he argues, not only from the five senses but also from internal events as witnessed by introspection cf. his Meaning of Beauty, London, 1929, chapters 2 and 9.
Romance and Tragedy, Boston, 1927, p. 45. Cf. also R. Wellek and A. Warren, Theory of Literature, N.Y., 1942, p. 250 ff.
John Dewey, Art as Experience, New York, 1934. My consideration of Dewey’s writings will be confined to this book.
Op. cit., p. 46.
It is difficult to decide whether Dewey uses the term ‘aesthetic experience’ to refer to an entire rhythmic unit of experience, running through tension, emotional response, and resolution or equilibrium, or whether it refers only to the finally achieved state of equilibrium.
Ibid., p. 29.
Ibid., p. 151.
Ibid., p. 161.
Ibid., p. 166.
Ibid., p. 176-177.
Consider, to take a single illustration, Dewey’s presentation of Aristotle. He believes that Aristotle regarded form as shape imposed upon chaotic matter and fail entirely to note the relativity of these two principles of the Aristotelian analysis, (cf. p. 115-116). He interprets ‘character’, as this term is used in the Poetics, as it was understood in the eighteenth century theory of genres, i.e., as referring to the moral traits not of an individual but of a type, (cf. Ibid., p. 284). Hence Aristotle is said to compartmentalize the individual in the pidgeon-holes of his theory. But Dewey ignores the whole of Aristotle’s Metaphysics with its recognition of the basic character of the concrete individual, its elaborate analysis of first substances, and its doctrines of individual nature and signate matter … The presumed error of compartmentali-zation could have been placed in a juster light.
Art as Experience, p. 117.
Ibid., p. 249.
Ibid., p. 119.
Ibid., p. 130.
Ibid., p. 160.
Ibid., p. 223.
Ibid., p. 215.
For example, the list of criteria offered by H. D. Aiken in “Criteria for an Adequate Aesthetics,” J. of Aesth. and Art Crit., VII, no. 2. December 1948, 141–148, reads more like the sketch of a fully formed theory of aesthetics than a set of criteria for any such theory.
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Ballard, E.G. (1957). The Present State of Aesthetic Theory. In: Art and Analysis. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-8843-2_1
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