Central Concepts of Aesthetics:
A Proposal for Their Application¹

by

Wolfgang Ruttkowski

I. Prior Attempts at Sub-Dividing Aesthetic Concepts

II. Some Preliminary Questions:

1. How Do We Use the Term "Art"?
2. What Is The Difference Between "Art Object" and "Aesthetic Object"?
3. If the "aesthetic" and "artistic" value of an artifact are not the same, what is their relevancy for original works of art and their perfect copies?
4. Can Art - In Spite Of Its Dependency On The "Art World" and On Its Recipients - Contain Generally Valid Meaning?

III. The Central Concepts "aesthetic - artistic - beautiful"

IV. Intersections Of the Central Concepts

V. The Nomenclature Of Aesthetic Qualities, Experiences, And Objects

VI. Summary In The Form Of Suggestions

I. Prior Attempts at Sub-Dividing Aesthetic Concepts

Modifying an important essay by Frank Sibley², we could differentiate the following groups amongst the wide range of concepts occasionally used for the description of works of art (see diagram 1):

1. Terms which denote the aesthetic quality of an object (usually of a work of art), and (2) such concepts which seemingly name a quality of the object but in reality, however, only name our response to the latter, e.g., "magnificent", "moving" or "overpowering". What is magnificent about the observed object, why and how it overpowers, is not stated. - Within the first group (1), we can discern two kinds of concepts, those which expressly relate to the aesthetic character of the work of art (1.1) and those which don′t (1.2), e.g., "well preserved", "washed out", "bleached" etc. Again, within the first of the latter two groups (1.1) there are terms, which describe and/or evaluate qualities of the artwork (1.1.1) and others, which only evaluate (1.1.2), especially the pairs of opposites "beautiful-ugly", "good-bad", and "tasteful-tasteless". Within the first of these two groups (1.1.1), we find again two sub-groups, firstly the "aesthetic descriptives" in the narrow sense of the word (1.1.1.1) which differentiate qualities which are only discernible for sensitive recipients, and descriptives which can be verified by everyone (1.1.1.2), e.g., that a painting is "dominated by blue tones" or a sonata "consists of four movements" or a play "contains many short scenes". The truly "aesthetic" descriptions (1.1.1.1) can either be exclusively applied with a truly aesthetic meaning (1.1.1.1.1), e.g., "graceful", "elegant" or "sublime", or they can have a double function, meaning they can be used with a non-aesthetic and an aesthetic, quasi-metaphorical meaning (1.1.1.1.2), e.g., terms like "unified", "dynamic", or "balanced". The terms in group 1.1.1.1.1 we could name "truly and exclusively aesthetic" qualities.

[...]

Sibley is concentrating on clarifying the logical status of our group 1.1.1 and its sub-groups ("We cannot prove with arguments that something is graceful" etc.) and does not seem to consider the groups 1.1.2 and 2 worthy of a discussion.

Karl Svoboda³, on the other hand, wishes to acknowledge "only one truly and purely aesthetic category, the beautiful and the ugly", precisely those categories (1.1.2), which Sibley ignores. "The graceful constitutes a part of the Beautiful, and the other values -- the Sublime, the Base, the Tragic, the Comical, the Innovative, the Naive, the Artificial, the Realistic, the Idealistic, the Serious, the Baroque, the Classical, the Mysterious, and the Transparent -- are not categories or basic concepts, but rather styles of art, artistic convictions, or other values ... one cannot force them into a system."

Other authors, e.g. Max Dessoir⁴, differentiate within the aesthetic experience a limited number of aesthetic responses, e.g., Beautiful - Ugly, Base - Sublime, Comical - Tragical.

To my knowledge, Wolfhart Henckmann⁵ attempted the most comprehensive configuration of aesthetic concepts in our time. He arranged many terms within an "open, functional system" which does not claim to be strictly systematic and is "subjugated to changes caused by interior and exterior factors" because it is "sociologically and historically conditioned". Henckmann assumes that "aesthetic experience is constituted as a special relationship between subject and object" and therefore he posits "three rows of categories in which the subject, the object or the special relationship between those two determine the character of the individual categories". These three rows of concepts are further subdivided "according to the ontic quality of the three determinants of aesthetic experience": the "subject aspect" according to psychic functions like sense perception, imaginative power, emotion etc., the "object aspect" according to "material qualities, basic structures of genres or art styles", the "relationship aspect" according to "differences in the dynamics of aesthetic experience", its "narrowness, width or height". - This compilation embraces those terms discussed by Sibley as well as those excluded by Svoboda.

Henckmann also sketches the character of the "Aesthetic", "a concept of the aesthetic which permits dividing aesthetic categories into various groups". For that purpose, he relies on older definitions, following mainly Hamann′s⁶ keywords "isolation", "concentration", and "intensification". - He does not discuss the concept of the "Artistic".

II. Some Preliminary Questions:

In order to understand the relationship between the concepts of "the Artistic" and "the Aesthetic", we have to ask ourselves some preliminary questions.

1. How Do We Use The Term "Art"?⁷

[...]

1 Published in Acta Humanistica et Scientifica Universitatis Sangio Kyotiensis, Humanities Series No. 26 (March 1999) 203-222; and in German ("Kernbegriffe der Ästhetik. Ein Vorschlag für ihre sinnvolle Verwendung im Ästhetischen Diskurs in Kants Problemhorizont") in: Kants Schlüssel zur Kritik des Geschmacks, Sonderheft des Jahrgangs 2000 der Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, Hg. Ursula Franke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner 2000) 155-168.

2 "Aesthetic Concepts" in: The Philosophical Review (1950) 421-450.

3 "Über die sogenannten Ästhetischen Kategorien" in: Jahrbuch für Ästhetik VII (1962) 7-27.

4 Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft (Stuttgart 1906) S. 196ff.

5 "Über die Problematik der Ästhetischen Kategorien" in: Zeitschrift für Ästhetik 28/2 (1983) 169-182; comp. also my article: "",Camp` und `Kitsch`. Neue Konzepte der internationalen Ästhetik" in: Doitsu Bungaku 86 (Tokyo Spring 1991) 148-196.

6 Richard Hamann: Ästhetik. (Leipzig/Berlin: Teubner 1911, 2.Aufl. 1919) S. 22ffr.

7 David Novitz (in: "Art by Another Name", Brit. Journal of Aesthetics 38/1, 1998, 20) views the art concept as socially determined: "The word `art`, I want to argue, is [85] socially imbued, and it is this, I will show, that makes the identification of art across cultures a delicate and complex task that is much more prone to error than art critics and anthropologists sometimes suppose." And later: "According to M.H. Abrams, for instance, there were no `works of art` in our sense until about the seventeenth century, so that what we now see and understand as art was not so understood by Europeans much before that time."