The Beautiful and the
Sublime
Alexander Gottlieb
Baumgarten
·
“…the purpose of art is to produce beauty,
defined in terms of the ordered relationship between the parts of a whole. The
point of beauty is to give pleasure and arouse desire.”
·
“the finest beauty is to be found in nature, and
therefore the highest aim of art is to imitate nature”
·
Sensual art – human form and perfection of
nature
Hume
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Art gives pleasure and satisfaction to the soul.
Pleasure and pain constitute the essence of beauty and deformity.
·
Standard of taste + aesthetic judgments à
ascertaining which features of art were most highly pleasing to qualified and
impartial connoisseurs
Edmund Burke
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“The sublime, as well as the beautiful, can be
the aim of art: a feeling of beauty is a form of love without desire, and to
feel something as sublime is to feel astonishment without fear.”
·
Sublime: “of high moral, aesthetic,
intellectual, or spiritual value; inspiring deep veneration, awe, or uplifting
emotion because of its beauty, grandeur, or immensity.” (Dictionary.com)
·
The sublime à must destroy to create
·
Derives from need for social contact,
self-preservation, and instinct to propagate the race
Kant
·
“Taste is the faculty of judging of an object or
a method of representing it by an entirely disinterested satisfaction or
dissatisfaction. The object of such satisfaction is called beautiful.”
o
Sensual delight = gratification
o
Disinterested enjoyment = pleasingness
·
“What gratifies a person is called pleasurable;
what merely pleases him is called beautiful; what he values is called good.”
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Judgments of value are related to purpose
·
Beauty is subjective, not universal
·
Beautiful objects exhibit “purposiveness without
purpose” à
relative importance to individuals, subjective interpretations of beauty
o
Free beauty = nature, natural things, life
o
Derivative beauty = art, interpretations of life
and nature
·
Production of beauty is the purpose of art
