This post about my aesthetic opinions replaces the previous one on the same topic, which is no longer accurate.
Definition of aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy intending to provide the most generally applicable principles for the elaboration of art criticism which is as correct as possible.
As such, aesthetics is best pursued by critics, just as criticism is, in my view, best pursued by artists. Neither, however, is my case.
Definition of art
Art is defined only by its having the purpose of aesthetic appreciation, which will be defined further down, as its main or sole purpose. Some consequences of the definition can, however, already be noted:
- The details of its production are mostly irrelevant.
- An artwork does not have to be produced intentionally or with skill, but can be accidental or haphazard. It does not even have to be a human production, but can be machine-made.
- However, given the details of aesthetic appreciation as explained below, it may be impossible to regard something as fit for aesthetic appreciation, and therefore as an artwork without at least regarding it as the product of a mind with a worldview.
- It would be difficult for someone to regard the product of a natural process, such as erosion, as having truly and exclusively the purpose of aesthetic appreciation, but it could possibly happen in some circumstances.
- Anything can be regarded as an artwork, so long as it is not, at the same time, regarded as something else.
- The purpose of something comes from the concept by which we understand it. Text ordinarily conveys information, but someone may “write” text in a language no one understands, to add flavor to a fantasy world, as with the Codex Seraphinianus.
- Things whose main purpose is not aesthetic appreciation are not artworks. For instance, a chair, however skilfully made and beautiful, is not an artwork.
- Decoration in non-artworks may nevertheless be helpful to artworks, as with how a beautiful frame can add to a painting, or a book’s beautiful graphic design may enhance the enjoyment of its story.
- The term impure art may designate artworks which have a prominent secondary purpose besides aesthetic appreciation, such as sacred art, which also intends to edify the viewer, and educational stories which intend to instruct.
Aesthetic appreciation
Commonly misapprehended.— Aesthetic appreciation has been misapprehended, on the one hand, by theories which see it as something purely intellectual. These theories typically focus on a concept of “beauty”, which is then called a transcendental property of being, and made basically identical with goodness – which, in any naturalistic ethics, is something that is understood with reason, not grasped with the senses. These theories typically lead to some form of “moralizing” as the purpose of art, i.e., the idea that good art must make its viewers morally better. This theory goes against common sense because it really is missing something.
Misapprehended, before, by myself.— On the other hand, aesthetic appreciation has been misinterpreted by my earlier theory, which focused on the sensory aspect of appreciation, downplaying any role of the intellect. Appreciating an artwork was seen to not be fundamentally different from enjoying food, for instance. The problem with this is that there really is something different about artworks, and it is more fundamental than I had thought.
Aesthetic appreciation involves learning an artist’s worldview.— The core of aesthetic appreciation, as I see it now, is that, art, as Arnold Weinstein said of literature once, “translates information into experience”. It communicates the concepts by which the artist interprets the world, by showcasing them as applied to idealized experiences which show those concepts in their clearest light. It shares “how the artist sees things”, his worldview.
Applications of this conception
Application to different media.— This is shown most directly by written works, since an experience is described using words which correspond to the concepts which the artist uses to think. But the ways in which music and poetry associate sounds and rhythms to experiences are also communicative of concepts, as are the ways in which drama and movies focus on, and portray, the actions in a story. With images and sculptures, it is a matter of which elements are emphasized – it is no wonder that cartoon pornography tends to feature oversized genitals, since those are the central things to what is being communicated.
Literary forms ranked.— The closer to an actual experience is portrayed, the better an artwork conveys a worldview, since the concepts are communicated in closer connection with their application in real-world experience. This is not to say that all epic poems and fantastical works are worse than all more realistic works, but it is no wonder that epics show up in more primitive and backward societies and novels in more advanced and learned ones, which can deal with more refined concepts. An advanced society has to deal with subtler issues than struggle and death.
Aesthetic qualities
It was a consequence of my earlier view that aesthetic theory focused mostly on largely-sensible “aesthetic qualities”, which I now see merely as means to art’s end, although their proper use is certainly important to any artist, and best understood by artists who are experienced in their use, which is why artists still make the best critics.
I still find that most of the theory I had given about aesthetic qualities, which I thought came in opposed pairs, is right, though. The earlier post was longwinded, so here’s an overview. I endorse everything in this overview, not necessarily all the content in the retracted post, but anything here which is supported there is probably also clarified there.
Beautiful vs. Ugly: Beauty implies pleasure, while ugliness implies displeasure. Beauty is not a transcendental property of being. As Edmund Burke noted, beauty is not caused by “proportion”.
Sublime vs. Cute: The sublime, characterized by feelings of awe and fear, may be contrasted with the cute, associated with safety and smallness. The sublime has been better covered by Burke, Kant, etc., while cuteness has not been studied much.
Based vs. Cringe: These may be seen as aesthetic properties. Basedness implies freedom and independence, as seen in people who, like the Stoic sage, are unaffected by emotional appeals. Cringeness implies a lack of freedom, and being overly influenced by external factors. Cringeness is associated with the physical reaction of cringing at it, while basedness has no analogous reaction.
Funny vs. Sad: Both humor and sadness stem from something’s falling short of its concept, which is both an incongruity, in the theory-of-humor sense, and an imperfection (privation) in the metaphysical sense. When something’s falling short of its concept is seen more as an incongruity, without evoking compassion, it appears funny, whereas when it is seen more as an imperfection, evoking compassion, it appears sad.
As noted in the earlier post, this is not exhaustive, and at the time, I had been toying with other meme notions such as Dank vs Normie, Blessed vs Cursed, Wholesome vs Edgy, etc. I no longer find this to be very informative to art criticism, not even really when we take memes as an art form.
Class theory of genres
Class theory, as outlined some of my previous posts, may be profitably applied to “genre fiction”.
The proletariat tends to efface nature and support revolutions; the aristocracy tends to ossify artifice and stifle development; the bourgeoisie, in turn, is in line with the natural development of society according to know causes. This easily lends itself to the idea that fantasy, totally unmoored from reality, should be considered proletarian; that sci-fi, which outlines possible future developments in accordance with known natural causes, is bourgeois; and that realistic fiction, especially such as is optimistic about the current world, or pessimistic about the possibility of its improvement, is aristocratic.
In practice, these associations are very loose. Ayn Rand isn’t sci-fi, but is obviously (and quite preachily) bourgeois fiction. And some sci-fi can be rather proletarian or aristocratic, such as the Culture series.
Romanticism not irrational
Given that the essence of good art is that it “translates information into experience”, and that this is plainly in accordance with the human desire for knowledge, it seems that the Romantic movement has been unfairly decried as a “reaction” to the rational tendencies of the Enlightenment, when, given its perfectly good artworks, it was plainly nothing of the sort.
As has been pointed out by Murray Rothbard in defense of Ayn Rand’s fiction, Romanticism was vastly superior to anything that came after it – the Symbolist movement, which attempted to convey pure abstract concepts as an art form, and the Realist movement, which attempted to convey the facts of a story in a bare, “uninterpretive” way, as if it were told by a researcher who collected information on the story and then simply pasted it together, without attempting to explain it.
Both of these styles are against human reason. Concepts cannot be understood without the sensible things to which they apply, and sensible things cannot be understood without concepts. “Thoughts without content are empty, sensations without concepts are blind.” The Romantic style is most in line with rational human understanding.
The mainstream interpretation of Romanticism as an irrational reaction seems mainly due to Isaiah Berlin. Though I do not have the time or resources to seriously dispute his scholarship, I strongly doubt its main drift on this regard. I tend toward trusting the general view of Romanticism laid out by Victor Hugo in his Preface to Cromwell. Hugo emphasizes that the distinguishing feature of Romantic art is the grotesque, the close juxtaposition of, and sharp contrast between, the ugly and beautiful, the unshapely and the graceful. This, to me, shows a concern with portraying experience in a faithful, but interpretive way. It is a way of conveying the artist’s worldview.
