Aesthetics

Aesthetics refers to the branch of philosophy that deals with questions of beauty, art, and perception. As far back as the time of Plato and Aristotle, philosophers have discussed the social value and role of art. It wasn't until the eighteenth century, however, that philosophy began to investigate aesthetic experience and judgment as discrete and independent categories of perception, grounded in the human subject. In the eighteenth century, aesthetic experience was associated with nonutilitarian objects like art and nature. Since the onset of consumer capitalism, however, qualities associated with aesthetic experience, such as beauty, form, and sensual pleasure, have become central to the marketing and consumption of consumer goods.

During the eighteenth century, a period known as the Enlightenment, the social and ideological order of feudal society was put into question through the rising power of the merchant class. Enlightenment thinkers began to explore new ideas about the importance of human reason, as opposed to church doctrine and the divine rights of the aristocracy, in shaping and understanding the world around them. One of the most important philosophers of the period, Immanuel Kant, explained knowledge, reason, and morality in terms of universal categories of the human mind, rather than as reflections of an external divine will. Kant was one of the first philosophers to integrate aesthetics into a general philosophical system. In addition, he is credited with providing the groundwork for modern ideas about the unique and autonomous nature of aesthetic experience. In his 1790 work The Critique of Judgment, Kant discusses the special properties of aesthetic judgments that distinguish them from those we apply to objects of scientific or ethical knowledge. First of all, aesthetic judgments are made individually, based on an individual's response to a particular experience. We can't, like in science, apply concepts or laws developed through prior experience to help us make an aesthetic judgment. In addition, for Kant, beauty is not an immutable quality that belongs to an object. Instead, “beauty” refers to the kind of pleasure that people experience as a result of the “free play” between their faculties of imagination and understanding. Aesthetic judgments are made based on the subjective experience of individuals, according to Kant, and they also make claims to universal validity (everyone should come to the same conclusion).

It is important to note that for Kant, in order for judgments to fall under the category of pure judgments of taste, they must occur in response to disinterested pleasure. In other words, the feelings of pleasure stimulated by objects that we deem beautiful are not related to the desire to possess the objects or to the object's ability to satisfy some need (e.g., hunger, vanity) exterior to aesthetic pleasure. This last point is especially relevant for later art movements such as modernism, formalism, and “art for art's sake.” The ideas put forth by these movements (see later in this entry), which came to dominance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, connected art's distinction and quality with the degree to which it was autonomous from everyday concerns and practical values.

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