An Introduction to Philosophy Lecture 09: Aesthetics James Mooney Open Studies The University of Edinburgh j.mooney@ed.ac.uk www.filmandphilosophy.com @film_philosophy

1. Aesthetics
An Introduction to Philosophy: 09
© James Mooney 2012

2. What is aesthetics?

3. What is
beauty?
Objectivism
Subjectivism
The view that values
The view that values such as goodness and
and properties beauty are not a
(goodness, beauty) feature of external
exist independently of reality but a product of
human apprehension human beliefs and
of them.
responses to it.

8. ‘The Standard of Taste’
David Hume, 1757
“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists
merely in the mind which contemplates; and each mind
perceives a different beauty. One person may perceive
deformity, where another is sensible of beauty.”
– Hume does believe however that, although beauty is a subjective
quality, there is nevertheless a standard by which to discern
between different tastes.
– Some great works of art, for example, will have such universal
assent across time and cultures that their status as such will be
unquestionable.
– If there are disagreements about such matters we are to acquiesce
to the ‘good critic’ who will have ”strong sense, united to delicate
sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and
cleared of all prejudice.

9. The Golden Mean
Pythagoras

10. What is Art?
• Art as representation
(mimesis)
• Art as expression
(expressionism)
• Art as form
(formalism)

11. Art as Representation

12. Plato on Mimesis

13. Aristotle on
mimesis

14. Catharsis
Plato Aristotle on Tragedy

15. Art as Expression (Expressionism)
“The activity of art is based on the fact that a man,
receiving through his sense of hearing or sight
another man's expression of feeling, is capable of
experiencing the emotion which moved the man
who expressed it. To take the simplest example;
one man laughs, and another who hears becomes
merry; or a man weeps, and another who hears
feels sorrow… and it is upon this capacity of man
to receive another man's expression of feeling and
experience those feelings himself, that the activity
of art is based.”
Tolstoy, What is Art?, 1896

16. “I was walking down the
road with two friends
when the sun set;
suddenly, the sky turned
as red as blood. I stopped
and leaned against the
fence, feeling unspeakably
tired. Tongues of fire and
blood stretched over the
bluish black fjord. My
friends went on walking,
while I lagged behind,
shivering with fear. Then I
heard the enormous,
infinite scream of nature.”
Munch, The Scream, 1893

17. Art as Form (Formalism)
• Clive Bell, ‘Significant Form’
There must be some one quality without which a work of
art cannot exist; possessing which, in the least degree, no
work is altogether worthless. What is this quality? What
quality is shared by all objects that provoke our aesthetic
emotions? What quality is common to Sta. Sophia and the
windows at Chartres, Mexican sculpture, a Persian bowl ,
Chinese carpets, Giotto 's frescoes at Padua, and the
masterpieces of Poussin, Piero della Francesca, and
Cezanne? Only one answer seems possible - significant
form. In each, lines and colours combined in a particular
way, certain forms and relations of forms, stir our aesthetic
emotions. These relations and combinations of lines and
colours, these aesthetically moving forms, I call
Significant Form; and Significant form is the one
quality common to all works of visual art.

18. Modern Art

20. They were asking me questions like:
“is it art?” And I was saying “Well, if
it isn’t art… what the hell is it doing
in an art gallery and why are people
coming to look at it?”
Institutional
Theory

21. Details
James Mooney
Open Studies
The University of Edinburgh
j.mooney@ed.ac.uk
www.filmandphilosophy.com
@film_philosophy