scholarly journals How artworks modify our perception of the world

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfredo Vernazzani
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
The World ◽  
Art Critics

AbstractMany artists, art critics, and poets suggest that an aesthetic appreciation of artworks may modify our perception of the world, including quotidian things and scenes. I call this Art-to-World, AtW. Focusing on visual artworks, in this paper I articulate an empirically-informed account of AtW that is based on content-related views of aesthetic experience, and on Goodman’s and Elgin’s concept of exemplification. An aesthetic encounter with artworks demands paying attention to its aesthetic, expressive, or design properties that realize its purpose. Attention to these properties make percipients better able to spot them in other entities and scenes as well. The upshot is that an aesthetic commerce with artworks enlarges the scope of what we are able to see and has therefore momentous epistemic consequences.

Environmental aesthetics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Environmental Aesthetics ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
The Aesthetic

Environmental aesthetics is one of the major new areas of aesthetics to have emerged in the last part of the twentieth century. It focuses on philosophical issues concerning appreciation of the world at large as it is constituted not simply by particular objects but also by environments themselves. In this way environmental aesthetics goes beyond the appreciation of art to the aesthetic appreciation of both natural and human environments. Its development has been influenced by eighteenth-century landscape aesthetics as well as by two recent factors: the exclusive focus of twentieth-century philosophical aesthetics on art, and the public concern for the aesthetic condition of environments that developed in the second half of that century. Both factors broadened the scope of environmental aesthetics beyond that of traditional aesthetics, and both helped to set the central philosophical issue of the field, which is due in large measure to the differences between the nature of the object of appreciation of environmental aesthetics, the world at large and the nature of art. These differences are so marked that environmental aesthetics must begin with basic questions, such as ‘what’ and ‘how’ to appreciate. These questions have generated a number of different philosophical positions, two of which are the engagement and the cognitive approaches. The first holds that appreciators must transcend traditional dichotomies, such as subject/object, and diminish the distance between themselves and objects of appreciation, aiming at multi-sensory immersion of the former within the latter. By contrast, the second contends that appreciation must be guided by the nature of objects of appreciation and that knowledge about their origins, types and properties is necessary for serious, appropriate aesthetic appreciation. Each approach has certain strengths and weaknesses. However, although different in emphasis, they are not in direct conflict. When conjoined, they advocate bringing together feeling and knowing, which is the core of serious aesthetic experience and which, when achieved in aesthetic appreciation of different environments of the world at large, shows just how rewarding such appreciation can be.

Environmental aesthetics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Environmental Aesthetics ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
The Aesthetic

Environmental aesthetics is one of the major new areas of aesthetics to have emerged in the last part of the twentieth century. It focuses on philosophical issues concerning appreciation of the world at large as it is constituted not simply by particular objects but also by environments themselves. In this way environmental aesthetics goes beyond the appreciation of art to the aesthetic appreciation of both natural and human environments. The development of environmental aesthetics has been influenced by eighteenth-century landscape aesthetics as well as by two recent factors: the exclusive focus of twentieth-century philosophical aesthetics on art and the public concern for the aesthetic condition of environments that developed in the second half of that century. Both factors have broadened the scope of environmental aesthetics beyond that of traditional aesthetics, and both have helped to set the central philosophical issues of the field, which are due in large measure to the differences between the nature of the object of appreciation of environmental aesthetics, the world at large, and the nature of art. These differences are so marked that environmental aesthetics must begin with most basic questions, such as ‘what’ and ‘how’ to appreciate. These questions have generated a number of different philosophical positions, which are typically classified as either noncognitive or cognitive approaches. Positions of the first type stress various kinds of emotional and feeling-related states and responses, which are taken to be the more noncognitive dimensions of aesthetic experience. By contrast, positions of the second type contend that appreciation must be guided by the nature of objects of appreciation and thus that knowledge about their origins, types and properties is necessary for serious, appropriate aesthetic appreciation. Each of these two kinds of approach has certain strengths and weaknesses. However, recent work in environmental aesthetics, especially in the aesthetics of human environments and everyday life, demonstrates that although different in emphasis, they are not in direct conflict. When conjoined, they advocate bringing together feeling and knowing, which is the core of serious aesthetic experience and which, when achieved in aesthetic appreciation of different environments of the world at large, demonstrates just how rewarding such appreciation can be.

Challenges and Responses to Everyday Aesthetics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuriko Saito
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Phenomenological Description ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Everyday Aesthetics ◽  
Popular Appeal ◽  
The Rich

Everyday aesthetics is often criticized for lacking aesthetic credentials. Its legitimacy as a discourse is questioned because proximal senses, experiences gained while engaging in an activity, and qualities other than beauty and sublimity are included in its purview. Inclusion of these items is considered to deny a clear ‘object’ of aesthetic appreciation, the possibility of objective judgments, and profundity of aesthetic experience. Excluding them, however, does not do justice to the rich and multifaceted contents of everyday aesthetic life. Phenomenological description, instead of the judgment-oriented and objectivity-seeking discourse, is more appropriate for exploring some dimensions of everyday aesthetic life. In addition, while possibly lacking the same degree of profundity and intensity of beauty and sublimity, the popular appeal of easily recognizable aesthetic qualities deserves to be investigated because of their prevalence and frequent manipulation for commercial and political purposes.

Schopenhauer and the Paradox of the Sublime

2020 ◽  
pp. 237-255
Author(s):  
Bart Vandenabeele
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Aesthetic Object ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The World ◽  
The Aesthetic

Schopenhauer explores the paradoxical nature of the aesthetic experience of the sublime in a richer way than his predecessors did by rightfully emphasizing the prominent role of the aesthetic object and the ultimately affirmative character of the pleasurable experience it offers. Unlike Kant, Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the sublime does not appeal to the superiority of human reason over nature but affirms the ultimately “superhuman” unity of the world, of which the human being is merely a puny fragment. The author focuses on Schopenhauer’s treatment of the experience of the sublime in nature and argues that Schopenhauer makes two distinct attempts to resolve the paradox of the sublime and that Schopenhauer’s second attempt, which has been neglected in the literature, establishes the sublime as a viable aesthetic concept with profound significance.

Figurations of the Ecstatic

Janus Head ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-221
Author(s):  
David D. Dillard-Wright ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Consumer Society ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common

Descriptions of “aesthetic arrest,” those ecstatic moments that lift the common sense subject-object dichotomy, abound in Merleau-Ponty’s writings. These special experiences, found in both artistic and mystical accounts, arise from the daily life of ordinary perception. Such experiences enable the artist, philosopher, or mystic to overturn received categories and describe phenomena in a creative way; they become dangerous when treated as the sine qua non of aesthetic experience. Aesthetic arrest, though rare in consumer society, need not be overwhelmed by the flood of information and can still provide fresh glimpses into the world as lived.

Regarding Electronic Music

Tempo ◽  
1966 ◽  
pp. 2-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aurelio de la Vega
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Electronic Music ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Musical Composition ◽  
Electronic Medium ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
Twentieth Century Music ◽  
Long Time

For a long time now—long when we consider the quick, changing time-scale of our days—electronic music has been with us. The public at large usually remains cold, confused or merely dazed when faced with any new aesthetic experience. Critics, musicologists and the like still seem, as usual, to be unable to predict what will happen to this peculiar, mysterious and often anathematized way of handling musical composition, while many traditionally-minded composers consider it a degrading destruction of the art of music. On the other hand, the electronic medium seems to attract a long, motley caravan of young, inexperienced and often unprepared ‘beatnik type’ self-titled composers, who believe that the world began yesterday and that you only have to push buttons and prepare IBM cards to obtain magical results. Probably not since Schoenberg proclaimed the equal value of the twelve semitones of our sacred but by now obsolete tempered scale has twentieth-century music been faced with such a bewilderment.

scholarly journals “Presence” in the Broad Present. Gumbrecht, H. U. (2020). Production of Presence. What Meaning Cannot Convey. Kharkiv: IST Publishing

Sententiae ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-78
Author(s):  
Victor Chorny ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Complex Relation ◽  
The World ◽  
Satisfactory Account ◽  
History Of ◽  
Vague Concept

This review of the Ukrainian translation of H. U. Gumbrecht’s best-known work brings out the strengths and weaknesses of the translation and the peculiar reception of Gumbrecht’s key ideas (“presence” and “the broad present”) in Ukraine. It also critically assesses Gumbrecht’s own original and often contradictory points. I question the relevance of Gumrecht’s meaning / presence distinction for reconstructing the history of the philosophical tradition, as well as for analysing our complex relation to the world. I also demonstrate the weakness of his biased attempts to paint his opponents as relativists. Besides, I contrast Gumbrecht’s meaning / presence dualism with John Dewey’s theory of experience. The latter conceives experience as a dialectical relation between “doing” and “undergoing”. This juxtaposition shows that Gumbrecht’s theory cannot give a satisfactory account of the mechanisms of everyday or aesthetic experience due to its lack of consistent “everyday” epistemology. Moreover, his vague concept of “presence” and its unequivocal appraisal conflict with his own concept of the chronotope of “broad” or “complex” present, as presented in the selected essays of The Time Is Out of Joint. Eventually, I conclude that Gumbrecht’s eclectic terminological apparatus, as well as uncritical and biased reconstruction of the tradition preclude any serious philosophical engagement. However, it does not undermine the significance of his particular insights and theoretical instruments (such as “the broad present”) for cultural analysis.

Hearing the Contradictions: Aesthetic Experience, Music and Digitization

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-302
Author(s):  
Nancy Weiss Hanrahan
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Aesthetic Judgment ◽  
Thick Description ◽  
Cultural Form ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
Primary Object ◽  
The World ◽  
Digital Environments ◽  
The Aesthetic

If, as Susan Buck-Morss (2003) suggests, aesthetic experience is an occasion for “making critical judgments about not only cultural forms but social forms of our being-in-the-world,” or if it is linked, in David Hesmondhalgh’s (2013) account, to the possibilities of collective flourishing, potential changes in the nature of that experience merit critical attention. This article reflects on the ways in which these social or ethical dimensions of the aesthetic experience of music are affected by digitization. It moves from a discussion of aesthetic experience as a form of encounter that refers to a common world, to consideration of recent work in music sociology that engages themes that emerge from that discussion: aesthetic judgment, and the question of difference and commonality. With illustrations from focus group interviews, I suggest that the quantization associated with digital environments is altering the cultural form of aesthetic judgment, just as personalization is changing the meaning of “difference” in this context. The essay is intended as a disclosive critique that takes as its primary object not the world observable through thick description or hermeneutic interpretation of actual cultural practice, but a world evoked through critical reflection on its actual and potential constellations of meaning.

Aesthetic Value, Nature, and Environment

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Brady
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Ethical Values ◽  
Environmental Aesthetics ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Natural Objects ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Cognitive Approaches ◽  
Aesthetic Engagement ◽  
Critical Pluralism

This chapter discusses key issues and questions about aesthetic experience and valuing of natural objects, processes, and phenomena. It begins by exploring the character of environmental, multisensory aesthetic appreciation and then examines the central debate between “scientific cognitivism” and “noncognitivism” in contemporary environmental aesthetics. In assessing this debate and the place of knowledge, imagination, and emotion in aesthetic valuing, it is argued that non-cognitive approaches have the advantage of supporting a critical pluralism that recognizes the variety and breadth of aesthetic engagement with nature. Interactions between aesthetic and ethical values are also discussed, especially with respect to their role in philosophical positions such as “aesthetic preservationism” and the call for developing aesthetic theories that are consistent with environmentalism.

“Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes”

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 150-175
Author(s):  
David Seamon
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Emotional Engagement ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Natural Attitude ◽  
Aesthetic Experiences ◽  
The World ◽  
Artistic Work ◽  
British Philosopher ◽  
Phenomenological Language

In this article, I draw on Gurdjieff’s philosophy to initiate a phenomenology of aesthetic experience, which I define as any intense emotional engagement that one feels in encountering or creating an artistic work, whether a painting, poem, song, dance, sculpture, or something else. To consider how aesthetic experience might be understood in a Gurdjieffian framework, I begin with an overview of phenomenology, emphasizing the phenomenological concepts of lifeworld and natural attitude, about which Gurdjieff said much, though not using phenomenological language. I then discuss Gurdjieff’s “psychology of human beings” as it might be interpreted phenomenologically, emphasizing three major claims: first, that, human beings are “asleep”; second, that they are “machines”; and, third, that they are “three-centered beings.” I draw on the last claim—human “three-centeredness”—to highlight how aesthetic experiences might be interpreted via Gurdjieff’s philosophy. Drawing on accounts from British philosopher and Gurdjieff associate J. G. Bennett, I end by considering how a Gurdjieffian perspective understands the role of the artistic work in contributing to aesthetic experience.

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