Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Aesthetic attitude

« there is such a thing as the aesthetic attitude, it resists definition; and third, the claim that the aesthetic attitudeis a myth.

3 Characterizing the aesthetic attitude A recognition of truth, beauty and goodness as the principal concerns of the human mind has given rise to the idea that the aesthetic attitude must be distinguished from, onthe one hand, cognitive attitudes, and on the other, practical ones.

Whereas a cognitive attitude towards anobject is concerned with the acquisition of knowledge from it and a practical attitude with its utility, the aestheticattitude has a different focus.

Or so it is claimed.

How might this focus be defined? In fact, only a small number oflocutions have been used to characterize the aesthetic attitude.

Perhaps the most common has been in terms ofthe notion of disinterestedness.

That your attitude towards an object is disinterested does not mean that you arenot interested in it.

What does it mean? If ‘disinterested' means no more than ‘unbiased', this would not serve byitself to mark off the aesthetic attitude from paradigms of cognitive or practical attitudes, which can also beunbiased.

If it means that your attitude is not aesthetic if you are interested in determining what the object is,what to do with it or its suitability for some purpose, it is wide of the mark; for, leaving other considerations aside,it rules as unaesthetic those cases in which you consider whether an object is suitable for an aesthetic end, such as when you consider whether a vase is the right shape, size and colour for the collection of flowers you propose toarrange.

It is sometimes suggested that something is an object of aesthetic appreciation only if it is being attendedto for its own sake.

This idea can be understood in stronger and weaker forms.

On the one hand, ‘for its own sake'might mean ‘for no further reason but just for the sake of it'.

But this would yield a mistaken account of aestheticappreciation, for you can have a variety of reasons for attending to something that you are appreciatingaesthetically.

On the other hand, ‘for its own sake' might mean ‘not solely as a means to an end', thus allowing forthe possibility that an object is being attended to for its own sake, or as an end in itself, even when it is beingattended to for ulterior purposes.

If this requires a spectator's interest in the object not to be solely concernedwith some non-aesthetic end, it would render an account of the essence of the aesthetic in terms of the aesthetic attitude viciously circular.

But if the requirement is only that the interest should not be solely as a means to some end, then even if this were to be a necessary condition it would not be a sufficient one for the interest to beaesthetic.

Your interest in a mathematical proof or a game of soccer is not aesthetic simply because you areuninterested in any use to which these might be put.

Another suggestion is that your attitude towards an object isaesthetic if and only if, in interacting with it, you consider just the object itself - its elements and the relationsamongst its elements - not any relations in which it stands to anything other than itself.

Accordingly, the aestheticattitude is thought of as being an attitude of contemplative detachment from all considerations of utility, whichfocuses only on what the object is ‘in itself' (its shapes and colours, for example).

But, apart from any otherconsiderations, this overlooks the fact that works of art can be designed to serve non-artistic functions and thataesthetic admiration can encompass the appearance that an object presents of its suitability for discharging thesefunctions.

This is especially pertinent to works of architecture, for which harmony of form with function is anaesthetic merit.

So none of these suggestions, either in itself or combined with another, provides a definition of anattitude that satisfies the conditions required by the concept of the aesthetic attitude.

4 Transitive and intransitive particularity Wittgenstein drew a distinction between a ‘transitive' and an ‘intransitive' use of the word ‘particular'.

You use the word in the transitive fashion if you use it as a prelude to a description, comparison orspecification of the nature of the phenomenon you are referring to - a description that you intend to produce or,perhaps, that you wish to have produced by the person you are addressing.

When you use the word intransitively itis not thereby your intention to follow it up with a specification of anything.

Rather, you are using it, Wittgensteinsays, as what might be called an ‘emphasis': either it has some such force as ‘strong', ‘striking' or ‘impressive', or itmerely gives expression to the fact that your attention is taken up with the phenomenon you are indicating.

RichardWollheim ( 1980 ) has argued that although there is such a thing as the aesthetic attitude, which he equates with the attitude of treating or regarding something as a work of art, philosophers of art who refer to the aestheticattitude as a particular attitude are systematically ambiguous about whether they intend a 'particular attitude' inthe transitive or the intransitive sense.

And he claims that despite the many attempts to give a positivecharacterization of the aesthetic attitude, it can be conceived of as a particular attitude only in the intransitivesense.

It might seem that this is tantamount to denying the existence of the aesthetic attitude or to asserting thatthere is nothing distinctive of it.

But, Wollheim maintains, the point is rather that ‘there need not be anycomprehensive way of referring to what is distinctive of it other than as the aesthetic attitude'.

But Wollheim'sposition receives no support from Wittgenstein's distinction.

For consider saying ‘Jack has a particular way of askinga favour.' If you are using the word ‘particular' transitively, then you will continue in some such fashion as ‘namely,he drops his eyes and then looks to see how his request has been received.' If you are using the word in theintransitive sense, you will not continue in this fashion, for you are merely expressing the fixity of your attention onthe way John asks a favour.

However, it does not follow from the fact that your use is intransitive that there is noparticular way in the transitive sense in which Jack asks a favour.

Clearly, there is: Jack's way of asking a favourcan be characterized in other terms.

The same holds for the remark that the aesthetic attitude is a particularattitude.

The fact that the word ‘particular' is here being used intransitively does not preclude a positivecharacterization of the nature of the attitude.

Hence no reason has been given for believing that what is distinctiveof the aesthetic attitude cannot be captured other than by referring to it as the aesthetic attitude.

5 Myth or reality? Is the aesthetic attitude a myth? That depends, first, on the difference between a single attitude and a motley collection of attitudes, and, second, on what work the aesthetic attitude is supposed to do.

An attitudetowards an object is a disposition to think and feel about and to behave towards it in characteristic ways.

You havea hostile attitude towards someone if you are liable to think hostile thoughts about them, to experience hostilitywhen meeting them, to avoid their company, and, perhaps, to behave in ways that are harmful to them.

Now yourattitude towards an object can be such that you are disposed to thoughts about its aesthetic character, tofeelings aroused by its aesthetic qualities, and to aesthetically relevant behaviour.

But there is no hope ofcircumscribing aesthetically relevant behaviour without using the concept of the aesthetic, as can be easily seenfrom the fact that it might on occasion consist in nothing more than walking away from an aesthetically. »