WHY AESTHETICS IS TOO DIFFICULT FOR ME. SOME QUESTIONS FOR EXPERTS ON META-AESTHETICS

• Authors: Pelc J.
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

What is aesthetics? This question is answered by indicating the object, methods or tasks of aesthetics. Through the ages, the object of aesthetics has been variously described as the nature of beauty, the nature of loftiness, the aesthetic attitude, aesthetic experience, or as real or phenomenal or intentional objects, as cultural texts, etc. The methods and tasks of aesthetics depended on what was viewed as its object. Aesthetics is usually defined by means of normal definitions in which the specific difference is described by using the polysemic and vague terms 'art' and 'beauty', each of which is then defined using the other, resulting in circular definitions. Similar circular definitions arise in connection with the polysemic and vague concepts of aesthetic attitude, aesthetic experience, aesthetic object and aesthetic judgment, which are often being explicated with metaphors, personifications, hypostases, and polysemic and vague noun modifiers, which sometimes denote incompatibile attributes. This makes it difficult to distinguish between the aforementioned key concepts, for example, between descriptive, valuating and normative aesthetic judgments, which, to make matters worse, are harder to verify than descriptive judgments. Various doubts arise as a result, such as whether an experience becomes aesthetic thanks to our adopting an aesthetic attitude and therby endowing an object with aesthetic quality, or whether we adopt an aesthetic attitude by reacting to an aesthetic object, which is what evokes this attitude in us.

Keywords

EN

AESTHETICS (OBJECTS; METHODS; TASKS)

Discipline

• PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Umiejętności / Uniwersytet Jagielloński
• Journal: Kwartalnik Filozoficzny
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 35
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 5-21
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Pelc J.

• J. Pelc, Uniwersytet Warszawski, Instytut Filozofii, ul.Krakowskie Przedmiescie 3, 00-047 Warszawa, Poland

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

08PLAAAA03557229