The Philosophy of Aesthetics

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Philosophical aesthetics asks questions that every art student meets sooner or later. What is beauty? What is art? Is taste personal, or can some works really be better than others? What happens in us when we experience a work of art?

Beauty in the Ancient World

For Plato, beautiful things point toward an ideal Beauty, and he distrusted art that merely copies appearances. Aristotle gave art a more positive role. In the Poetics, he described tragedy as an imitation (mimesis) of action that arouses pity and fear and produces catharsis, a purging or clarification of emotion. He named six elements of drama: plot, character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle (Aristotle, trans. 1996).

The Eighteenth Century: Taste and Judgment

Hume (1757) argued that although tastes differ, there is a "standard of taste" set by the joint verdict of qualified critics, who have delicate perception, practice, and freedom from prejudice.

Kant (1790/2000) proposed that a judgment of beauty is subjective (it rests on feeling) yet universal in claim (we expect others to agree). Beauty gives "disinterested" pleasure, not tied to desire or use. Kant also described the sublime, the awe we feel before vast or powerful things.

Theories of Art

No theory covers everything. Imitation explains a portrait but not an abstract painting; formalism explains an abstract painting but may neglect meaning. A good student can use several theories as lenses (Carroll, 1999).

Aesthetic Experience

Dewey (1934) argued that art is best understood as experience: a fully engaged, unified response in which perception, emotion, and understanding come together. Sibley (1959) noted that aesthetic words such as "graceful," "balanced," and "dramatic" cannot be applied by rule; they require perception and taste.

Subjective and Objective

Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Most philosophers take a middle path. Responses are personal, but they are shaped by shared human nature, training, culture, and reasons that can be discussed. We can disagree about a painting yet still give reasons. This is the basis of criticism (Scruton, 2009).

Aesthetics in South Asian Traditions

South Asia has one of the world's richest aesthetic theories. The Sanskrit Natya Shastra, traditionally attributed to Bharata and dated by scholars to somewhere between about 200 BCE and 200 CE, is a treatise on drama, dance, and music (Bharata, trans. Ghosh, 1951). Its central idea is rasa ("flavor" or "taste"), the aesthetic emotion that an audience experiences through the performance. Each rasa arises from a basic emotional state (bhava) portrayed by the performer. The nine rasas are:

The philosopher Abhinavagupta (about 1000 CE) developed the theory, arguing that in aesthetic experience the spectator's ego recedes, and the emotion is savored in a universal, impersonal way (Masson & Patwardhan, 1969). The Natya Shastra also describes four kinds of abhinaya (expression): angika (body), vachika (voice and words), aharya (costume and makeup), and sattvika (inner emotional state) (Bharata, trans. Ghosh, 1951). These terms appear in the Sri Lankan dancing syllabus (NIE, n.d.-b).

Ananda Coomaraswamy (1934), a Sri Lankan-born scholar, argued that in traditional Asian art, beauty is bound up with meaning and with the sacred, and that art served life and ritual rather than existing as something separate. His work on Mediaeval Sinhalese Art (1956) remains a classic.

Questions for Reflection

1. When you call a song beautiful, are you describing the song or yourself?

2. Can an object be art without being beautiful?

3. Is the rasa you feel in a dance something in the dance, in you, or between?

CHAPTER 3