BEAUTY chapter 20

click here for my sketches on beauty,

Mothersill's causal theory of beauty

Genuine judgements of beauty presuppose aesthetic theory and aesthetic theory presupposes principles of taste (this is called redundancy). 

The causal relation between the beautiful object and the pleasure it evokes in the subject might be identifiable and illuminating without resulting in laws and hence principles of taste.

An aesthetic theory has to explain the difference between the pleasure evoked by beauty and other kinds of pleasure. 

Now, is this implying that "I like Picasso's Guernica"? is very different from "I love Zak's the Baker's baguettes?"

AW's evoke pleasure in the observer by virtue of its aesthetic properties: this is the basis of a genuine judgement of beauty.

All that is required of a subject is that there be something he takes to be beautiful and further that at least one such taking be allowed by him to be an aesthetic conviction. He can then concur in the claim that some judgements of taste are genuine judgements.

Is she saying that the strength of my belief that "Picasso's Guernica is a masterpiece" is genuine and the reason is IN Guernica's aesthetic properties?  

According to Mothersill, aesthetic properties are those qualities of objects that have no simple names and are revealed only by acquaintance. 

Disinterested pleasure 

For Aquinas (thirteenth century), the pleasure aroused by beauty is distinct from biological pleasures associated with physical desires and satisfactions.

Shaftesbury (eighteenth century) recognizes in the pleasurable response to beauty an impartiality, a lack of self-interest. He adopts the term "disinterested" from ethics to describe the pleasure recognized as associated with beauty.

Kant (1987) The pleasure of beauty according to this tradition is a pleasure caused by an object which is not accompanied by desire for the object. It should not be confused with the pleasure taken in the sensuous for its own sake; such as that which sparks that poignant sensation of our physical being in the world. Neither should it be confused with un-interest. Disinterest does not mean disengaged.

The pleasure of beauty is like perceiving a solution to a problem, and enjoying it for its own sake, rather than because personal rewards are anticipated.

The pleasure-principle tradition 

Beauty evokes a pleasurable response. If while perceiving an object you do not experience pleasure, you are not perceiving beauty.


Sircello's theory (1975), an object is beautiful when it contains a Property of Qualitative Degree to a very high degree. 

A Property of Qualitative Degree (henceforth a PQD) is a property that cannot be measured in a quantitative sense, such as can temperature or weight. Sircello further delineates a PQD by excluding those qualities that are experienced as deficiencies. 

So there is no PQD in deficiency. It seems that if a fundamental quality of the object cannot become a deficiency. Example: the sliminess of a slug and the sourness of a lemon are not deficiencies in the context of a slug’s and a lemon’s nature. As it stands, this would mean that the slug’s sliminess and the lemon’s sourness are beautiful. 

Sircello says that only those with sufficient experience of the particular quality involved can judge whether it exists in the object to a qualitatively high degree, and hence whether it is beautiful.

This would mean that according to Sircello’s theory, the sourness of the lemon is beautiful. 

Sircello speculates that the reason the experience of PQDs pleases us is because we only experience PQDs when we are seeing clearly.

Perhaps no theory of beauty can offer non-contradictory conditions. The role of an aesthetic theory is to offer plausible approximations.

Perceptual principles in beauty: are there perceptual principles in beauty?

1- Perhaps there are perceptual principles of beauty that constitute a part of the architecture of the mind of HOMO SAPIENS... as such, they are not themselves represented explicitly and unequivocally in language (could not be matched with language schemata).

2- Hence, although there are no principles of beauty as such, there would be a physical basis (a rational basis) for genuine judgements of beauty. 

3- For example, we can look at Indian sculptures, Japanese tea ceremonies and Gothic cathedrals, and while we can enjoy their perceptual beauty, we may not be able to experience their intellectual beauty in the way that someone could whose world view was saturated with the outlook exemplified in these works. 

4- So, the apprehension of intellectual beauty, from scientific to moral beauty, would demand a shared background of knowledge or a shared world view. It would be possible for an art work to arouse a response to beauty through its perceptual form without providing the phenomenologically more total beauty experience, which is a combination of relations emerging within and between its perceptual form and conceptual content. It may be that the work simply does not provide the opportunity for the latter, or it may be that the viewer does not share the same world view (metaphysical/religious) as the artist, which makes the intellectual component of the work inaccessible to the viewer.