Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A. (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D. Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India
Mrs Sudha Rani Maheshwari, M.Sc (Zoology), B.Ed. Former PrincipalA.K.P.I.College, Roorkee, India
From the lay-man point of view aesthetics deals with the concept of beauty ,which is the effect one feel after receiving or perceiving any stimulus, concrete or abstract. This effect can be pleasing or repulsive. Actually the above point refers only about the effect of beauty, but” what” aspect of the basic question is still unanswered. Actually beauty is nothing but equilibrium among the various inherent components in anything, may it be music. Painting literary work, a thought in philosophy or anything in nature including biological structure or social and cultural impact factors.
Aesthetics, the philosophy of art is concerned with questions like, why do we find certain things beautiful?, what makes things great art?, and so on. the study of value in the arts or the inquiry into feelings, judgments, or standards of beauty and related concepts. Philosophy of art is concerned with judgments of sense, taste, and emotion.
Aesthetics deals with sense, perception and appreciation of beauty. It broadly includes everything to do with appreciating of art, culture and nature. It also examines how the perception of beauty is determined by taste and aesthetic judgment. The practice of defining, criticizing and appreciating art and art forms is based on aesthetics.
Aesthetics involves the conceptual problems associated with the describing the relationships among our feelings and senses with respect to the experience of art and nature .It is the inquiry into feelings, judgments, or standards concerning the nature of beauty and related concepts such as the tragic, the sublime, or the moving—especially in the arts; the analysis of the values of sensory experience and the associated feelings or attitudes in art and nature; the theories developed in les beaux arts.
Actually Aesthetics deals with the nature of the values which are found in the feeling aspects of experience. The conscious search for the principles governing the creation and appreciation of beautiful things.
There can be few topics more certain to lead to furious discussion than those related to aesthetics; there can be few topics within the realm of aesthetics more certain to arouse normally peaceful artists, philosophers, and aestheticians to a pitch of uncontrolled imagination than that which has given this article its title. The idea that objects of beauty, as well their creation and appreciation, are subject to scrutiny appears abhorrent to most people. There appears a fear exists that clumsy handling might crush the butterfly wings; an idea that analysis may destroy what is intending to study.
Aesthetics in Philosophies
As science and philosophy have common ground in seeking truth, so art and philosophy share a common interest in interpreting experience. Neither of them has the primary interest in discovering facts. The chief concern of both is to interpret, appreciate, and enjoy the meaning aspects of facts.
But there are differences in the nature and scope of the interpretation which each attempts. From the standpoint of scope, the interest of the artist is somewhat more limited than that of the philosopher. When the artist interprets, it is the aesthetic qualities of experience with which he deals. He attends to the feeling tones which he finds in his experience. He seeks to catch these and express them so that others may feel what he feels. He is not primarily concerned with the moral aspects of experience. Questions of truth are also secondary. Most important to him are the aesthetic values, and other considerations are shoved to the side for them. The philosopher, on the other hand, is concerned to interpret other phases of experience. While philosophy is concerned with aesthetic experience, it is also concerned with other values, with reality, with knowledge, and with the kind of action which results in the fullest life. Consequently the philosopher extends his interpretative activity into many phases of experience, in addition to the aesthetic.
When we consider the difference in the nature of the interpretation attempted by art and philosophy, we see that the distinction between the two is far more than one of scope, philosophy being broader and more inclusive than art. But as to scope alone, there is no suggestion here that philosophy is superior to art just because it is more inclusive. Were that intimated by philosophers, there would be as much ground for artists to hold that their first love is superior to philosophy because in its narrower field of interpretation it sometimes runs more deeply.
The artist’s treatment of beauty is actual, the philosopher’s theoretical. The artist enjoys and appreciates, expresses and creates. The philosopher intellectualizes aesthetic experience. He seeks to analyze the experience of beauty so much as to determine what constitute it. Of course the artist may theorize and the philosopher may be a poet; but the artist’s primary endeavor is the actual expression of beauty with an intellectual understanding of its nature.
The artist, it would seem, must be free from self-consciousness in his interpretation, in order that it maybe true aesthetic value to which he gives expression. If he is highly conscious of his own relation to the situation or experience which he is interpreting his expression is likely to be hindered or become affected. It is possible that he is most an artist when he is least conscious that he is giving expression to the beautiful. The philosopher is in an opposite situation. His task of interpretation necessitates that he be highly conscious of himself. He is always a factor in his experience and therefore cannot interpret experience without taking himself into account. His interpretative endeavours must be fully self-conscious and deliberate.
Aesthetics in Idealism
Idealist sees as beautiful the approximation of the Ideal. That which in finite terms attempts to express the Absolute is categorized as aesthetically pleasing. This would appear to leave little ground for creativity since there must be an absolute standard against which all art can be measured. Again, we have the teachers and the ministers defining that which as special intermediaries they recognize as closest to the nature of the Absolute. Thus are art critics born.
In art idealism is the tendency to represent things as aesthetic sensibility would have them rather than as they are When we enjoy a work of art, say the idealists, it is because, on the one hand, we see it as a true representation of the Ideal; and on the other hand, it serves to bring us closer to contract with the Ideal.
Music is considered by some idealists as the highest from of aesthetic creation since it does not represent anything in the phenomenal or existent world, but instead cuts across it to the heart of the Absolute. The artist should, according to his school for thought, attempt to idealize e world to us, that is , to present its inner meaning rather than to portray it as it appears to the senses, to capture its inner essence, its oneness with the Ideal.
Aesthetics in Naturalism
The principles enunciated above regarding the ethical values of naturalism hold also for aesthetic values. They, too, are rooted in nature and do not depend on any source outside nature for their validation. Nature itself provides the criterion for beauty there is no need to call upon universal principles such as unity and proportion to judge beauty. A landscape is beautiful simply because it is nature. A painting is beautiful because it reflects nature, not because it elevates man above nature.
For naturalists, as could be surmised, aesthetic experience and the values it yields are both purely natural in character and do not involve any spiritual or supernatural factors. First of all, according to naturalism, the subject who is engaged by aesthetic experience is a child of Nature. While it takes a high degree of development to yield the kind of complex nervous system which can communicate with words and other symbols, and retain meanings long enough to interrelate them in such a way as to yield aesthetic enjoyment of an object, yet that is what Nature has yielded in man. “A pattern of responses of high complexity of co-ordination is possible.” Vivas says, “because in the process of evolutionary development a nervous system, highly centralized, came into being.” Man, the subject who has aesthetic experiences, is a sentient organism developed by Nature, which is capable of centring his meanings in such a way as to experience aesthetic values. These values, therefore, do not transcend Nature; they are events in the experience of this highly developed organism which is the result alone of evolutionary processes at work in Nature.
There is also a minor sense in which aesthetic values are natural. This is that they are not superior values which only a few select people are capable of enjoying. They are values which touch areas where we all live; they are natural because they are “native in the ordinary experience of all men.”
Aesthetics in Pragmatism
The pragmatist’s standards of art and beauty differ from those of the other philosophies we have discussed in that they do not exist in some separate realm. What is beautiful is simply what we find beautiful in our own experience, what has the power to move us and to make us feel deeply. Art is a form in which an artist describes his own personal experience to the viewer. But the description need not be detailed or an exact reproduction of what the artist has seen.
In every work of art, however, these meanings are actually embodied in a material which thereby becomes the medium for their expression. This fact constitutes the peculiarity of all experience that is definitely aesthetic. Its imaginative quality dominates, because meanings and values that are wider and deeper than the particular here and now in which they are anchored are realized by way of an object that is physically efficacious in relation to other objects. A more current way of saying this would be, “the medium is the message.”
The test of a work of art is whether or not it can stir the viewer and communicate to him the experience with all (or at least many) of the complex feelings and ramifications the artist is attempting to convey. Thus, the public test of a work of art is whether or not the artist has communicated his experience to us and whether others share the sense of pleasure and esthetic satisfaction we receive from a work of art.
Aesthetics in Realism
There is a close relation between the refinement of perception and the ability to enjoy aesthetic values. It holds that ultimate values are essentially subjective. In other words, he believes that no goal or object is bad or good in itself. Only the means for acquiring such goals or objects can be judged good or bad insofar as they enable the individual or the group to attain them.
Since the realist place so much value on the natural law and the moral law as found in the behavior or phenomena in nature, it is readily apparent that the realist will find beauty in the orderly behavior of nature. A beautiful art form reflects the logic and order of the universe. Art should attempt to reflect or comment on the order of nature. The more faithfully and art form does this, the more aesthetically pleasing it is. Art may extract out that which is essential in the natural order and reduce or remove that which is only peripheral. Thus, in painting, a realist may enjoy work ranging from the “imitation of nature “ to the most abstract.
Aesthetics in Existentialism
Another distinctive feature of the aesthetical views of existentialists lies in their use of the art forms, especially literature, drama, and painting, as media for communicating philosophical doctrines.The central place is given to ‘humanities’, poetry, drama, music, art, novels etc. as they exert the human impact in revealing man’s inherent quilt, sin, suffering, tragedy, death, late and love. Humanities have spiritual power. Art and Literature, they say should be taught, as they represent a priori (cause effect) power of human nature.
Aesthetics in Humanism
The principal enunciated above regarding the ethical or moral values of the Renaissance hold also for aesthetic values, at least in the sense that these values are rooted in human nature. Art in all its forms, but especially literature, is the most excellent product of the human mind. Following the lead of the Greek and Roman artists and authors the masters of the Renaissance glorified man human nature. The exemplars of style, of form, and the like were from classical masterpieces. In cases where the vernacular was used in literature, such as in Dante’s inferno, the ancient writing provided the themes and to some extent the style. The painting, sculpture, and architecture of the Renaissance followed closely the realistic form of ancient pieces. The works of Van Eyck, da Vinci, and Michelangelo might be cited as examples.
Aesthetics in Marxism
In the field of aesthetics, the great interest and productivity of the people of Communist countries in the fine arts puts the American to shame. The handling of the artist and the development of a theory of art presented One group of extremist demanded that all art works, especially literature, preach the party line. In other words, the arts should be considered as vehicles of Communist doctrines and no deviation from these doctrines should be tolerated. The more moderate group, which included Trotsky and Bukharin felt that the arts could thrive only when the artist is given sufficient freedom to produce creative works; creativity is stifled if the artist is made to produce according to political specifications. The engineer, the agricultural expert, and the economist could be bound by Communist doctrines but the artist could not be so bound. Of course, the artist could never be permitted to use his art as a political weapon against the revolution.
Aesthetics in Perennialism
Just as man tends towards knowledge and morality, he tends towards beauty. We know something is beautiful when we respond to it immediately and with pleasure. Man tends to be creative; he desires to give to his material the meaning that is potential in it. Art, therefore, is immediately self-evident. The artist intuits meaning rather than approaching it logically, although he may appreciate a work of art through the pleasure it gives the intellect.
Aesthetics in Analytic Philosophies –
The analyses use those art forms, especially literature, drama and painting, as media for communicating philosophical doctrines. The History of philosophy records no parallel of a school of thought which uses the arts as the avenue for putting their beliefs into the cultural stream of the age. It is true that Plato, St Augustine and others have produced works which are considered great literature. Also great artists such as Michelangelo, Dante, have reflected certain metaphysical beliefs in their masterpieces. But in both instances these great thinkers or artists were not attempting to be both professional artist and philosopher.
It is very feature of analytic philosophy that makes it difficult to understand, namely the use of poetic Language and other art forms express the ideas of technical philosophy. The neophyte, in his first attempt at reading the Analysis’s, is completely baffled by the terminology and the concepts. A good background in scholastic philosophy for example, seems to be of little help. It fact a student of modern literature is much more “at home” with Analysis’s philosophy than is the student of philosophy.
As far as the main characteristic of the Analytic theory of the art, First and foremost it must be noted that there are no rationalistic or empirical criteria for art. Nor can Social, political or religious norms be applied to the art forms. Art is purely subjective-it is its own master it is its own criterion, stated negatively, this view means that the artist is not bound by such criteria as Symmetry, unity, harmony or definiteness. Nor he is expected to portray the ‘Real World’, as it exists independent of his own perception of it. Also his art products need not promote socialism, democracy, religion, or a philosophy of life.
The themes of Analysis’s art are most interesting since they give live portrayal to the conditions of “existent man”. Their plays and novels depict anguish, abandonment, despair, nausea and death.It might be worth noting that artistic expression is somehow tied in with the phenomenological method. What the Analysis artist seems to be doing is looking in upon his inner most desires and feelings and expressing these through the medium of arts.