Aesthetic opinions

Note: This blog post has been retracted, since I no longer think of it as a good representation of how I think about its topic. I may, or may not, have written a better post about the same topic since; check the full list of posts.

You have no reason to trust my aesthetic opinions. I am not an artist or a critic. Ideally, aesthetics should come from art critics, and art criticism should come from artists, so that you can see at each level that the aesthete has well-formed and universally applicable judgments.

That said, I have opinions anyway. How could I not?

0. Contents

1. Definition of art
1.1. Final cause
1.2. Aesthetic appreciation
2. Definition of aesthetic properties
3. Nature and method of aesthetics
4. Contemporary aesthetic theory
4.1. Beautiful vs. ugly
4.2. Sublime vs. cute
4.3. Based vs. cringe
4.4. Funny vs. sad
4.5. Other terms
5. Notes

1. Definition of art

Art has a general sense in philosophy, which we should not confuse here – “a habit of making [something] with right reason”. Ars est habitus cum recta ratione factivus. It is in this sense that both the liberal arts and the servile arts are arts. This does not matter to aesthetics at all and should be ignored here.

Art, in the usual sense, is a human expression produced through technique for an aesthetic end.[1] Let’s break this down:

• Art must be a human expression. If this expression is an object, an artifact, it is called a “work of art” or “artwork”, but performances such as theatre or singing may be called “art” or “artistic”. Art must be made by humans – nature is not an artwork, strictly speaking, and neither are the productions of computers or of infrahuman animals.
• Art must be produced through technique. Art is not done unintentionally or haphazardly; involuntarily screaming in pain is not art, throwing paint randomly at a wall is not art, and Duchamp’s Fountain is not art either, though his Bicycle Wheel might be.
• Art must be for an aesthetic end. It must exist for the end of aesthetic appreciation. The end is objective; the object’s being ordered to this end does not depend on the author’s intention, although it tends to be caused by it.

This last point is the least clear, of course, but I will explain.

1.1. Final cause

First, note that the aesthetic end need not be the sole, or the primary, end of the object; a chair could be considered a work of art if it were skilfully improved with a view to being very beautiful (or some such quality). But it would not, of course, be primarily a work of art, since the primary purpose of the chair is (usually) for people to sit on it. Those objects that we call artworks, then, tend to be the ones where we judge the aesthetic end to be primary.

When the only purpose of the object is aesthetic appreciation, we have what should be called “pure art”. Advertising may be art, but not pure art, since one of its ends is not aesthetic – selling a product or service, or advancing a cause, etc.

It may be noted that some objects that are only secondarily artistic may be instrumental to the aesthetic appreciation of a pure artwork. For instance, a well-made frame helps you appreciate a painting, and a well-chosen font and typesetting helps you appreciate a book.

It may also be noted that, since producing, reinforcing, or illustrating a belief is not an aesthetic end, sacred art is generally not pure art, and neither are fables or dystopian novels.

1.2. Aesthetic appreciation

Aesthetic appreciation is simply the human perception of what I call aesthetic properties, which I will explain next.

2. Definition of aesthetic properties

An aesthetic property is a propensity in an object to cause a certain kind of subjective experience. (Beauty is the most famous such property.)

As such, they are objective, but different subjects will judge differently about them, since it is difficult, without close analysis, to realize whether an experience was caused in us primarily by an object, or if, instead, the object merely served as an occasion for an experience which we would tend to have because of our subjective peculiarities.

3. Nature and method of aesthetics

Aesthetics is the study of the nature and causes of aesthetic properties, especially those produced by art. The system of aesthetic science will consist of all general propositions that can be found that are universally true of aesthetic properties and their causes, and which, when applied to a particular work of art, must produce objectively correct art criticism.

The method of aesthetics, as of any science, follows from the nature of its object, which I believe is helpfully characterized by this observation: subjective experiences produced by art are produced largely by the sensitive powers. Which is to say, they are composed largely of passions of the soul. The understanding will affect things, but it is secondary.[2]

As such, aesthetic enjoyment is largely a bodily thing. Insofar as we understand which motions in our bodies tend to cause which kinds of subjective experiences, there is room for aesthetics to benefit from massive, ‘empirical’ experimentation.

Since we do not understand these causes all that well, generally the best we can do is for self-aware, attentive critics to examine their minds as they appreciate an artwork and to use their rational powers as best they can to discover the objective causes of their subjective experiences. In layman’s terms, they try to describe what is interesting to them about the art. From such attentive criticism, we may eventually discover the general propositions that are sought by aesthetics.[3]

I am not a critic. There are not any posts on this blog, at this time, that criticize artworks; and there might never really be many of them. So I am not being very helpful by giving my general opinions about these properties by themselves. If my opinions will be useful to anyone, they will probably be useful for persons who already agree with my judgments to, perhaps, find a clearer statement of their beliefs.

4. Contemporary aesthetic theory

I believe aesthetic properties tend to come in opposed pairs. That’s just how it is; we tend to oppose them in conversation, and when we judge that something is both of a pair of opposites, we find this surprising. I will give some of those pairs and discuss them.

4.1. Beautiful vs. ugly

The most famous aesthetic property is beauty. The intrinsic character of the subjective experience of beauty is hard to describe other than merely as something pleasant. By contrast, to experience the ugly is something I can only describe as unpleasant. But this may not be the complete essence of the terms; some things seem to be unpleasant to look at without being ugly, such as bright lights.

Just as pleasure gets mistaken with the good, beauty gets mistaken for a transcendental; people want to say that everything is beautiful. I mean, sure, our planet seen from afar is beautiful, but to say that every single thing is beautiful is to stretch the word. And the word is explicitly stretched by those who call beauty a transcendental – they start with “the beautiful is what pleases upon being seen”, which is fair enough, and then decide that how they are actually “seen” is with “the intellectual sight”, and make the appreciation of beauty into a rational judgment. Well, of course all things please the intellectual sight – all men desire to know, all desires please upon being fulfilled, and “true” is a transcendental. But please don’t try to pass this off as having anything to do with the word “beautiful” as used in art criticism, which is to say, the aesthetic sense of the word.

The cause of beauty is very, very often said to be “proportion”, or something like that. I agree with Edmund Burke that it isn’t. I have no positive general proposition on the cause of beauty to offer, though.

4.2. Sublime vs. cute

The sublime and the beautiful are often distinguished, as they were by Burke and Kant. There is no reason not to! I mean here, then, the standard meaning of the sublime in such aesthetic authors. The subjective experience of the sublime can be described as a feeling of being humbled or terrified; of being small and scared. Things commonly said to be sublime are large waterfalls, powerful animals, etc.

I have nothing to add to the literature on the sublime as such. I just note that it seems to be opposed to the cute, which I think is clearly an aesthetic property in the sense I have it, and as such, a proper object of aesthetics. Cuteness involves thinking of the object as small, and sublimity involves thinking of it as large; cuteness feels safe, and sublimity unsafe. They are opposites; if something is both cute and sublime, it is as surprising as when something is both beautiful and ugly.

The causes of the sublime were well laid out by Burke, and the causes of cuteness have been the subject of recent studies.

4.3. Based vs. cringe

Based and cringe have become popular terms recently, and their definition and import have been discussed. Since based is generally used with approbation, some people have, like in the case of beauty, tried to claim that it is a transcendental. Like in the case of beauty, I believe that this does not accord with usage of the term, and that based and cringe are rather aesthetic properties instead.

I would generally characterize the subjective experience of the based as involving the thought that the object is free; that it is undetermined by anything else. When said of persons, it involves freedom from the passions in particular.

Persons called based are generally those who seem not to let their judgments be influenced by emotional appeals. The based is represented, for instance, by “Chad” caricatures who look, uncaringly, in the face of crying, upset “soyjaks”. This need not mean that based persons are being cruel, but it can; they are “free” in the Stoic sense.

Accordingly, the based is not coextensive with the good. Some persons are based while they do evil acts; for instance, barbarian tribes who sacked villages are often called based.

When abstract beliefs are called based, I believe that this is in a sense derived from the application to humans; it is generally a judgment about the persons who hold the beliefs, and the way in which they came to hold them.

The cringe, accordingly, involves thinking that the object is unfree, that it is highly determined by others, that it is ruled by the senses, tossed about by the waves.

The natural reaction to the cringe is cringing, of course. It is often noted that since the based lacks such an association with a physical reaction, the based and the cringe are not precise opposites. But neither are beautiful and ugly, or cute and sublime; all that makes these aesthetic terms opposite is our surprise in finding both in the same object.

4.4. Funny vs. sad

I believe that, peculiarly, the funny, or humorous, and the sad, or tragic, are caused by precisely the same thing: a perception of metaphysical evil, i.e., privation. This is a slight modification of the incongruity theory of humor, informed by the notion that unintelligibility is the same thing as evil.

This explains why laughing at things is mockery, and why it is considered cruel to joke about tragedies; thinking of things as funny is to notice an imperfection about them, and to point out the humor is to point out the imperfection.

The only difference between something being funny and being sad is whether you feel compassion for the imperfect thing – which may require personifying it, if it is inanimate. Some situations are more prone to cause one reaction rather than the other, but it is always possible for someone to find a joke sad, or a sad scene funny. We are unlikely to find anything to be both things at once, and if we ever do, it is surprising.[4]

4.5. Other terms

Much like based and cringe, the meme terms dank and normie, blessed and cursed, wholesome and edgy, may be accordingly considered proper objects of aesthetics, and opposed in the pairs I just gave. I’m not sure about them, though.

5. Notes

[1] I modified this definition from writer Paulo Cantarelli. Paulo had emphasized that the expression must be intelligible – a crumpled piece of paper does not become an artwork because the “artist” assigned a certain meaning to it in his head. But I believe that this is simply a case of an object having an aesthetic end in the author’s intention that it does not have intrinsically – the author tried to make art and failed. So I took that part out.

I added “human”, to emphasize the fact that I think anything beneath humans is not capable of technique, and because I think that conceiving of nature as an artwork usually just confuses things.

[2] I note here, by the way, that this is the main reason why a large amount of abstract language is thought, by all persons of good taste, to be a vice in artistic writing, whether poetry or prose.

[3] (Note added in 2022-05-04.) Since writing this post, I have learned that the preface of the book The Renaissance, by Walter Pater, has very similar doctrines:

The aesthetic critic, then, regards all the objects with which he has to do, all works of art, and the fairer forms of nature and human life, as powers or forces producing pleasurable sensations, each of a more or less peculiar or unique kind. This influence he feels, and wishes to explain, analysing it and reducing it to its elements. To him, the picture, the landscape, the engaging personality in life or in a book, La Gioconda, the hills of Carrara, Pico of Mirandola, are valuable for their virtues, as we say, in speaking of a herb, a wine, a gem; for the property each has of affecting one with a special, a unique, impression of pleasure. Our education becomes complete in proportion as our susceptibility to these impressions increases in depth and variety. And the function of the aesthetic critic is to distinguish, analyse, and separate from its adjuncts, the virtue by which a picture, a landscape, a fair personality in life or in a book, produces this special impression of beauty or pleasure, to indicate what the source of that impression is, and under what conditions it is experienced. His end is reached when he has disengaged that virtue, and noted it, as a chemist notes some natural element, for himself and others; and the rule for those who would reach this end is stated with great exactness in the words of a recent critic of Sainte-Beuve:—De se borner a connaitre de pres les belles choses, et a s’en nourrir en exquis amateurs, en humanistes accomplis.

What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects. He will remember always that beauty exists in many forms. To him all periods, types, schools of taste, are in themselves equal. In all ages there have been some excellent workmen, and some excellent work done. The question he asks is always:—In whom did the stir, the genius, the sentiment of the period find itself? where was the receptacle of its refinement, its elevation, its taste? “The ages are all equal,” says William Blake, “but genius is always above its age.” [...]

[4] (Note added in 2022-05-04.) This blog post was originally written in a single day, and partly amended by a footnote the day after. Originally, the material from this section was partly in the “other terms” section and partly in the footnote. In 2022-05-04, I made this its own section, shortening the “other terms” section and removing what used to be the last footnote.