The Logic of Aesthetic Concepts

Abstract

There are two sorts of descriptions, or accounts, that we can give of works of art or of anything else that makes up our world of relatively stable objects. I can describe a painting, a chair, a mountain, or a man in terms of colors, shapes, spatial relation of parts, and so on. I can also describe the same four objects by talking about the dynamic tensions of the first, or its lack of visual balance; the grace and elegance of the second; the gloominess or majesty of the third; and the trimness or gawkiness of the fourth. The first sort of description, or account, may answer a wide variety of general purposes, central among them that of identifying particular objects. A museum curator might so describe a painting for future reference in identifying the particular work of one painter; an auctioneer identifies pieces of furniture by such descriptions; a map-maker, a mountain; and a police department, a Man Wanted. The second sort of account of the same objects could not usefully serve such purposes. The second sort, usually if not always, is found in the context of the evaluating of objects. "This is a fine Sheraton chair-it is graceful, but sturdy." Here, relevant reasons are furnished for an aesthetic rating of an object, and the first sort of description does not, and could not, serve this function. Furthermore, there are the following prima facie differences between the two sorts of features attributed to things in the two sorts of description. The features corresponding to terms like "garish," "graceful," "balanced," seem to require for their apprehension a special sensitivity or training on our part and their presence or absence does not appear to be determinable-at least, not in a straightforward way-by intersubjective tests. (I shall call both features and terms "aesthetic" and employ A and "A", respectively, as short-hand for aesthetic features and terms.) The features corresponding to terms like "red," "rectangular," "continuous to," seem, in contrast, to require for their apprehension no special sensitivity or training beyond the ordinary and their presence or absence appears'to be determinable by intersubjective tests