Aesthetic Free-styling

(Originally written July 25, 2007 in Book 25)

There is not enough space to fit notes on Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil here and I find myself without another notebook on my person! So, I'm just going to freestyle philosophize and write what comes to mind.

Book idea: Searching for a Christian Aesthetic Theory

How does a Christian view beauty? What things are beautiful? Must a thing be morally good to be beautiful? Can a thing be morally corrupt and still be beautiful? What is art? What is intrinsically Christian art? Is there a difference between explicit and implicit Christian art?

How to tackle this problem:

Define art or beauty first?
Can beauty contain moral ugliness?

Defining an aesthetic theory is difficult. In fact, formulating any theory is painstaking and a hard task. This task is made even more complex when one must consider a higher power in addition. It is hubris to believe that any single man can penetrate into the very depths of God and extract the perfect and complete view of the Almighty.

Any aesthetic theory is just that, a theory. Theories are interpretations of facts and truths and maxims. The soundness of a theory rests on its internal balance and coherence and its derivation from verifiable facts and truths. A theory that is internally tight and irrefutable based on existence of polk-a-dotted elephants is not sound, but neither is an internally suspect theory based on an undeniable fact of existence. Any good theory must be internally consistent and externally justifiable. This proves to be a daunting task.

In discussing an aesthetic theory I believe that one must begin with the concept of beauty. Is beauty a relative term or does it have an objective root? At first glance one can easily maintain that beauty is relative to the culture if not to the individual. But does this mean that the concept of beauty is subjective?

Personally, I feel that since nearly every culture has some concept of beauty and ugly that the concept is a universal one. If it was not a universal concept then we could not even make the conjecture that beauty is culturally relative because as soon as we assert this we demand that each culture has a concept of beauty. The assertion that beauty is a relative concept linked to cultures or individuals is a self-defeating assertion. But given that beauty is a universal concept why do individuals and cultures differ on what is a beautiful thing?

Beauty in an abstract way is the idea that something is worthy of aesthetic appreciation. Ugliness in an abstract understanding is that the idea that something is worthy of aesthetic denigration. How things are judge to be beautiful or ugly takes place on a number of levels.

The surface love and first glance of beauty is a superficial judgment. In looking at any thing we make a judgment on whether it is beautiful, ugly or somewhere in between. A person, an art object, a landscape or whatever can be looked at as beautiful or ugly. But this superficial judgment is at worst, not an aesthetic judgment at all, or at best, an immature aesthetic judgment. True, profound aesthetic judgments take time because they demand examination of the thing (extrospection) and examination of the self (introspection) and examination of the two together.

In thinking this I do not wish to expound some intellectual elitism. I am not saying that one must be a scholar to make aesthetic judgments. This is not the case at all. I am only stating that one must thoroughly examine the thing, one's self and the effect of that thing on one's self to make a mature aesthetic judgment.

While this surface level judgment is wholly inadequate, it is a necessary first step. If we never experience the thing initially we cannot think on it. The superficial judgment is superficial only if one stops there. If one continues on it is merely the first step in making a mature aesthetic judgment.

After stepping into the process of making an aesthetic judgment one must thoroughly examine the thing to be judged. The beauty of a thing is to be judged on its aesthetic qualities: clarity, complexity, color, form, texture, sound, sight, taste and basically every feature one can perceive with one's senses.

These aesthetic qualities, that is those qualities that can be perceived through the senses, form an impression on us. That is to say, the object effects us. The more we observe the object the more it can effect us. At first glance a painting can look like a single entity. Then as we look closer we can see shadows that we were not overtly conscience of at first. Then we may notice the crispness of the lines, the blending of the colors, the delicacy of the brush stroke, etc., etc. After observing these we can make a better aesthetic judgment than before.

Our first impressions of a thing that cause the superficial aesthetic judgment are like judgments made by infants or toddlers. For them there is no need to penetrate deeper. But for those who seek the beauty of a thing they must penetrate deeper. The second level is the aesthetic qualities of sensibility. This judgment is like a child's judgment. We can say a thing is beautiful because we like the way it was made and because it looks 'pretty'.

But, to make a mature aesthetic judgment we must go further. Here we step out of the aesthetic qualities into the historicity of the thing. If it is an art object we can study the process and history of the object and its creator to understand the beauty of a thing deeper. Take for instance one of Beethoven's later symphonies.

A first impression of one of them may strike awe in us and we can say, "that is very pretty". Then we can hear it again and understand how melody, harmony, counter melody, dissonance and resolution work together to form the "prettiness" of the symphony. But our understanding of its beauty is heightened when we learn of the backstory of the symphony, what it was written for and what it is about. Our sense of its beauty is heightened even further when we realize Beethoven's own story and how he wrote it when he was nearly deaf. Once understanding these things we can make a more acute aesthetic judgment by using non-aesthetic knowledge.

If the superficial judgment is like an infantile judgment and the judgment based on sense is a childlike judgment, then this judgment is like that of a young adult. As people mature their level of understanding deepens and so it is with aesthetic judgments. As we mature in our knowledge of a thing we can make a more mature aesthetic judgment on a thing.

The next step does not directly involve the thing itself. It is a step from extrospection to introspection. How does the thing effect us? We think introspectively (or at least one capable of doing so) at each level. But here we do so purposefully. Shakespeare's sonnet has touched my very soul. The Dali painting made me think about how I see the world, etc., etc. This level is higher than viewing the thing itself because it takes deeper levels of maturity to really look inside one's self. The level of maturity and determination of truly examining one's self will determine the maturity of the aesthetic judgment at this juncture.

After this stage (which we shall call the adulthood of aesthetic judgment) there is the union of object and self. This is a mystical union of world and I. It is an achieving of oneness that makes both art and artist great. If one cannot achieve this level than maybe the art object is not as aesthetically beautiful as we suppose or the viewer is not as aesthetically in tune as he/she ought to be. In the late 90's teenage girls achieved this oneness with pop music sensations like Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears. The fact that this was achieved  makes them aesthetically noteworthy, but only if we could all exist as young, teen females.

Outta Time...