Branches of Philosophy
Aesthetics
ess-THET-iks
Also Known As Philosophy of Art
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The branch of philosophy concerned with beauty, art, and taste: what makes something beautiful, whether beauty is a real property of objects or a response in the perceiver, and what art is for. The term itself was coined by Alexander Baumgarten in 1735 to name a science of sensory knowledge, but the underlying questions are ancient: Plato treated beauty as a form that particular beautiful things imperfectly share in, and worried that poetry and representational art could mislead the soul, while Aristotle's Poetics defended tragedy as a source of catharsis, an emotional purification, rather than a moral danger. Kant's Critique of Judgment later argued that a genuine aesthetic judgment claims universal validity, that everyone ought to agree a thing is beautiful, while resting on nothing more than a subjective feeling of pleasure, a tension that still structures debate over whether taste can be objectively wrong.
Facts
Disputed
Key DebateIntentionalism versus anti-intentionalism: whether the artist's intended meaning fixes the correct interpretation of a work, as intentionalists hold, or whether a work's meaning is independent of, and can exceed, what its maker intended, a dispute sharpened by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley's naming of the intentional fallacy. 1 W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley's essay naming the intentional fallacy did not end the dispute; intentionalist critics continue to defend the author's intended meaning as interpretively decisive. Central QuestionWhat makes an object or an experience beautiful, and is beauty a real property of the thing itself or a response that belongs to the perceiver? 1 Key DebateWhether beauty is objective, an intrinsic feature of things waiting to be perceived correctly, or subjective, residing in the response of the perceiver: Kant located aesthetic judgment in a subjective feeling of pleasure that nonetheless claims universal agreement, a position that satisfies neither a fully objectivist nor a fully relativist reading of taste. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Includes
Via the 1757 Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful, a genuinely aesthetic as well as political body of work.
In the Other Atlases
- Also in Arts and Music Atlas: Dada, was influenced by this subject there.
Sources
1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Informationentry: The Concept of the AestheticQuote, entry: The Concept of the Aesthetic
Introduced into the Western European philosophical lexicon during the 18th century, the term 'aesthetic' has come to designate, among other things, a kind of object, a kind of judgment, a kind of attitude, a kind of experience, and a kind of value.
1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Informations.v. AestheticsView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Informations.v. Kant's Aesthetics and TeleologyView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Informations.v. The Definition of ArtView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationAssociated With: Plato, entry: AestheticsView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationAssociated With: Aristotle, entry: AestheticsView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationAssociated With: Immanuel Kant, entry: Aesthetics; Kant's Critique of JudgmentView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: On the Aesthetic Education of ManView the Source 1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and InformationIncludes: Theodor W. AdornoView the Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Friedrich Schiller (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyIncludes: Friedrich SchillerView the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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