History of aesthetics

He had but a poor opinion of art, regarding it as a trick of imitation (mimesis) which takes us another step further from the luminous sphere of rational intuition into the shadowy region of the semblances of sense.

Accordingly, in his scheme for an ideal republic, he provided for the most inexorable censorship of poets, etc., so as to make art as far as possible an instrument of moral and political training.

[2] An example of Plato's considerations about poetry is: "For the authors of those great poems which we admire, do not attain to excellence through the rules of any art; but they utter their beautiful melodies of verse in a state of inspiration, and, as it were, possessed by a spirit not their own.

[7] Surviving medieval art is primarily religious in focus and funded largely by the State, Roman Catholic or Orthodox church, powerful ecclesiastical individuals, or wealthy secular patrons.

Objects of fine art from this period were frequently made from rare and valuable materials, such as gold and lapis, the cost of which commonly exceeded the wages of the artist.

Saint Thomas Aquinas's aesthetic is probably the most famous and influential theory among medieval authors, having been the subject of much scrutiny in the wake of the neo-Scholastic revival of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and even having received the approbation of the celebrated Modernist writer, James Joyce.

Thomas, like many other medievals, never gives a systematic account of beauty itself, but several scholars have conventionally arranged his thought—though not always with uniform conclusions—using relevant observations spanning the entire corpus of his work.

[8] The key concepts of the Baroque aesthetic, such as "conceit" (concetto), "wit" (acutezza, ingegno), and "wonder" (meraviglia), were not fully developed in literary theory until the publication of Emanuele Tesauro's Il Cannocchiale aristotelico (The Aristotelian Telescope) in 1654.

This seminal treatise - inspired by Giambattista Marino's epic Adone and the work of the Spanish Jesuit philosopher Baltasar Gracián - developed a theory of metaphor as a universal language of images and as a supreme intellectual act, at once an artifice and an epistemologically privileged mode of access to truth.

[12] In the essay "A Parallel of Poetry and Painting," which prefaces his translation of Du Fresnoy Latin poem De arte graphica, Dryden includes a lengthy excerpt from Bellori's Idea.

[7] Burke's speculations, in his Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, illustrate the tendency of English writers to treat the problem as a psychological one and to introduce physiological considerations.

He finds the elements of beauty to be:-- (1) smallness; (2) smoothness; (3) gradual variation of direction in gentle curves; (4) delicacy, or the appearance of fragility; (5) brightness, purity and softness of colour.

It is in these last paragraphs where he connects to his earlier works when he argues that the highest significance of beauty is to symbolize moral good; going in this regard even further than Ruskin.

[7] Curious developments of the Hegelian conception are to be found in the dialectical treatment of beauty in its relation to the ugly, the sublime, etc., by Hegel's disciples, e.g. C. H. Weisse and J. K. F. Rosenkranz.

In his dramatic criticisms he similarly endeavoured to develop clear general principles on such points as poetic truth, improving upon Aristotle, on whose teaching he mainly relied.

Among other writers who reflect more or less philosophically on the problems to which modern poetry gives rise are Wilhelm von Humboldt, the two Schlegels (August and Friedrich) and Gervinus.

The endeavour to determine with a like degree of precision the physiological conditions of the pleasurable effects of colours and their combinations by E. W. Brucke, Ewald Hering and more recent investigators, has so far failed to realize the desideratum laid down by Herbart, that there should be a theory of colour-relations equal in completeness and exactness to that of tone-relations.

He describes in his work on "Experimental Aesthetics" (Auf experimentalen Asthetik) a series of experiments carried out on a large number of persons, bearing on this point, the results of which he considers to be in favour of Zeising's hypothesis.

[15] The only elaborated systems of aesthetics in French literature are those constructed by the spiritualistes, the philosophic writers who under the influence of German thinkers effected a reaction against the crude sensationalism of the 18th century.

The several beautiful characters of an organic body — of which the principal are magnitude, unity and variety of parts, intensity of colour, grace or flexibility, and correspondence to environment — may be brought under the conception of the ideal grandeur and order of the species.

The inquiries of English thinkers have been directed for the most part to such modest problems as the psychological process by which we perceive the beautiful — discussions which are apt to be regarded by German historians as devoid of real philosophical value.

[15] In his Lectures on Metaphysics, Sir W. Hamilton gives a short account of the sentiments of taste, which (with a superficial resemblance to Kant) he regards as subserving both the subsidiary and the elaborative faculties in cognition, that is, the imagination and the understanding.

[14] Passing by the name of Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose theory of beauty closely resembles that of Pere Buffier, we come to the articulations of another artist and painter, William Hogarth.

He finds in this the following elements:-- (1) fitness of the parts to some design; (2) variety in as many ways as possible; (3) uniformity, regularity or symmetry, which is only beautiful when it helps to preserve the character of fitness; (4) simplicity or distinctness, which gives pleasure not in itself, but through its enabling the eye to enjoy variety with ease; (5) intricacy, which provides employment for our active energies, leading the eye "a wanton kind of chase"; (6) quantity or magnitude, which draws our attention and produces admiration and awe.

He seeks to differentiate aesthetic from other varieties of pleasurable emotion by three characteristics:-- (1) their freedom from life-serving uses, being gratifications sought for their own sakes; (2) their purity from all disagreeable concomitants; (3) their eminently sympathetic or shareable nature.

Aesthetic activities supply a similar mode of self-relieving discharge to the higher organs of perception and emotion; and they further agree with play in not directly subserving any processes conducive to life; in being gratifications sought for their own sake only.

The strongest statements on the subject of figural depiction are made in the Hadith (Traditions of the Prophet), where painters are challenged to "breathe life" into their creations and threatened with punishment on the Day of Judgment.

Rasa is an ancient concept in Indian arts about the aesthetic flavor of any visual, literary or musical work, that evokes an emotion or feeling in the reader or audience, but that cannot be described.

Instead of striving for perfect symmetry, asymmetrical and irregular forms are appreciated, both in art and garden design, where the aim is to create a natural sense of movement and balance.

Hogarth, for example, thinks that beauty consists of (1) fitness of the parts to some design; (2) variety in as many ways as possible; (3) uniformity, regularity or symmetry, which is only beautiful when it helps to preserve the character of fitness; (4) simplicity or distinctness, which gives pleasure not in itself, but through its enabling the eye to enjoy variety with ease; (5) intricacy, which provides employment for our active energies, leading the eye on "a wanton kind of chase"; and (6) quantity or magnitude, which draws our attention and produces admiration and awe.