We explain what aesthetics is, its characteristics throughout history and its relationship with art. Also, the aesthetic qualities.
What is aesthetics?
The aesthetic is the branch of philosophy that is dedicated to studying art and its relationship with beauty both in its essence (what it is), and in its perception (where it is located). The latter includes other types of aspects such as aesthetic experience or aesthetic judgment. When we value a work of art as beautiful or sublime, for example, we make use of our ability to make an aesthetic judgment.
Even though aesthetics is not thought of as a “science of the beautiful” in contemporary philosophy, its origin and history are intertwined with this aesthetic category, as well as with the sublime.
History and etymology
The word aesthetic comes from latin aestheticus and this from the Greek αἰσθητική (aisthetike). Both indicate a relationship with the senses and that is why it is used aesthetics to name the knowledge that is perceived through sensitivity. Thus, this discipline can be understood as the philosophy of perception in general.
The first to think about the aesthetic was the Greek philosopher Plato (c. 427-347 BC), particularly in three of his dialogues: Hippias major (about the beauty of bodies), Phaedrus (about the beauty of souls) and The banquet (about beauty in general). In them there is a search for a universal concept of beauty, which tends to notions of proportion, harmony and splendor.
Throughout the history of philosophy the concept of beauty has been changing. This characteristic has intrigued human beings, who count on art as a tool to think and produce beauty, in addition to the natural beauty of the world.
The classical notions of Antiquity, which made the good, the beautiful and the true coincide, gave way to more complex senses of the aesthetic. During the Middle Ages, for example, beauty was thought from morality while in the Renaissance there was a return to a concept of beauty as an ideal of shapes and proportions. Modernity, for its part, thought of an idea of beauty assimilated not to the object but to the eye of the artist. Today beauty is thought of in different ways, either as that which escapes or opposes utilitarianism, as something useless, as a prey to subjectivity or even as completely non-existent. There are many ways to think about what beauty is or whether there is such a thing as beauty itself. The task of aesthetics is to consider these points of view and bring them into dialogue in the best possible way.
Aesthetics as a philosophical discipline
Even though the history of aesthetics is vast and complex, it was not until the 18th century —with the publication of the Criticism of the trialby the German philosopher Immanuel Kant —which was thought of as a strictly philosophical discipline. Much of his work revolves around saying what taste consists of, beyond beauty or the sublime.
the word aestheticsused to refer to the “science of the beautiful,” was first used in 1750 by Alexanger Baumgarten. Edmund Burke, Irish philosopher, was also involved in thinking about the categories of the beautiful and the sublime. However, the first to systematically give theoretical form to the judgments of the beautiful and the sublime was I. Kant. In Criticism of the trial explains and reflects on the meaning of judgment, its origin and the reason why something seems beautiful or sublime to us. As a general idea, the faculty of judgment is considered as an intermediary between understanding and reason. It is through the use of judgment that we can suspend our knowledge about objects and experience the amazement that their form awakens in us.
Aesthetics emerge as result of the Enlightenment (18th century) and the Enlightenment century (19th century) just as Kant called them. The Enlightenment was divided between empiricists and transcendentals. The empiricist, led by Burke, was the one closest to the culture of the salons. The Kantian enlightenment, on the other hand, thought about aesthetics from the categories of the universal and aesthetic judgment as a right.
The Kantian difference between the beautiful and the sublime is in the type of pleasure that things awaken in us:
- The beautiful is what drives us to life and can be united with charm and imagination. It's a positive kind of pleasure.
- The sublime is a pleasure that is born indirectly thanks to the suspension of our vital faculties. It is a negative pleasure, even if it remains a form of pleasure.
The centuries of the Enlightenment and the works of Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant were followed by other philosophers, thinkers and schools. Authors such as Schlegel, Schelling and Fitche introduced and promoted the concepts of taste, interest and beauty with ideas such as aesthetic appetite and the desire for novelty. The same thing happened with the works of Nietzche, Hegel and Heidegger, for example, and Benjamin, Adorno or Derrida.
The history of aesthetics is a history in constant construction, whose discussions remain current beyond the period in which it is found.
Aesthetic periods according to the idea of beauty
The idea of beauty changes from one era to another. What we consider beautiful or pleasant today, in other times has been considered ugly, mundane or incomprehensible.
In a general overview, we can distinguish four great periods of beauty: classical, medieval, modern and contemporary. This classification should be understood as an idea of what is beautiful and what is valued visually, especially in art, throughout the different eras of humanity.
- The classic aesthetic. The idea of beauty from Ancient Greece and the Romans is the foundation of future notions of beauty in the West. For them, the beautiful, the good and the true were one thing, and their nature had to do with moderation, harmony, justice and adaptation to the ideal of an era.
- Medieval aesthetics. The Middle Ages were a largely religious era in the West, in which Christian thought prevailed above others. Thus, the concept of beauty had to do with fundamental Christian values: faith in God, sacrifice, passion and purity, that is, with morality rather than appearances.
- The modern aesthetic. The Renaissance broke with Christian tradition and vindicated the classic within the framework of the ideas of humanism and the Enlightenment, for those who thought of reason as a central concept. The ideas of beauty of the time were attributed to the planned, the structured, the symmetrical and the harmonious. Beauty was thought of as based on perfection and order, without giving room to extravagance or disproportion.
- contemporary aesthetics. In recent times many of the traditional ideas about beauty have been questioned in line with other ways of thinking about reality and culture. For example, evolutionism, psychoanalysis, Marxism or nihilistic philosophical schools. The beautiful was subjected to a process of dispersion that allowed the emergence of abstract art, conceptual beauty and the beauty of the meaning of things, rather than the fulfillment of a canon that distinguished between the aesthetic and the mundane. On many occasions, in fact, the horrible, the everyday and the incomprehensible have been proposed as models of the beautiful.
aesthetic qualities
The aesthetic qualities are elements that make an object or work of art valuable.
The aesthetic qualities must be able to be perceived by the viewer: The aesthetic is what gives us pleasure when we perceive, in a broad sense, an object.
In that sense, there are three different types of aesthetic qualities:
- sensory qualities. They make an object pleasant to the senses (for example, its texture, its colors, its brightness or its timbre). These qualities are perceived through the senses and, depending on who experiences them, the pleasure they produce varies. For example, the notes of a musical melody are sensory qualities that produce pleasure when perceived.
- Formal qualities. They have to do with the way in which the elements that compose it are combined in the object, or the relationship that can be perceived between them. For example, the combination of words that make up a poem are formal qualities that can produce pleasure.
- Vital qualities. They refer to the existential or experiential content of an object, that is, to the ideas it evokes, the feelings it transmits or the experiences it recovers. These qualities do not reside in the object itself, but rather the observer can reach them through it. Those objects that can evoke the most meanings occupy a privileged place over the others.
Relationship between aesthetics and art
Aesthetics has its philosophical origin in the question of beauty. For two thousand years, the question of what is beautiful, in general terms, existed outside of art.
Only in the 18th century, with the rise of Enlightenment culture and philosophy, did aesthetics become a philosophical discipline per se. For the cultural canon, Those who could appreciate the beauty of an object were those who had culture taste and the ability to decide what was beautiful and what was not. Thus gave way to a new cultural figure: the figure of the critic. With it, new relationships appeared between the artist, the work and the public.
The question about taste led to the question about the work and, from there, to the question about art in general. What is art and what is specific about the work are questions whose presence gained relative importance towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. It has even been questioned whether art ever existed.
Throughout the 20th century, the aesthetic field was extended not only to painting but also to literature, poetry, music and architecture. Even though it is impossible for some thinkers to say what makes a work a work, The contemporary world is already the scene of aesthetic discussion par excellence: Is it still possible to talk about art?
Continue with: Fine arts
References
- Benjamin, W. (1988). The concept of art criticism in German romanticism. Peninsula.
- Adorno, T. W. (2004). aesthetic theory. Akal.
- Danto, A. (1999). After the end of art. Contemporary art and the edge of history. Paidós.
- Formaggio, D. (1992). The death of art and aesthetics. Grijalbo.
- Muzzle, V. (ed.). (1996). History of aesthetic ideas and contemporary artistic theories. Viewfinder.
- Eagleton, T. (2006). Aesthetics as ideology. Trotta.
- “Aesthetics (philosophy)” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.
