Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Toward a Comprehensive Interpretation of Aesthetics

Toward a Comprehensive Interpretation of Aesthetics Walter B. Gulick I. Introduction: A Cursory Historical Preview What is the nature and scope of aesthetic sensibility and thought? Answers to this question have varied greatly over the centuries. In recent decades, however, there have been few attempts to describe the nature and scope of aesthetics within the ambiance of a far-reaching context that takes account of contem- porary developments in relevant disciplines. My intention in this essay is to sketch out the contours of such a comprehensive theory. Toward that end I will first offer a brief impressionistic account of the varied ways aesthetic qualities of experience have been treated during the unfolding of Western thought. In Plato’s Symposium, the loving attention devoted to facets of beauty interprets them as but varied expressions of the objective Form of Beauty. Experiences of this Form are presented as central to meaningful existence. Subsequent to the attention accorded aesthetics in classical times, derivative versions of aesthetics as an independent reality lingered until the seventeenth century. Then gradually, concomitant with the rise of modern philosophy, with its increased attention to epistemology, aesthetic judgments became interpreted by such thinkers as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume as subjective matters of taste, in contrast to http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png American Journal of Theology & Philosophy University of Illinois Press

Toward a Comprehensive Interpretation of Aesthetics

Download PDF
24 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/university-of-illinois-press/toward-a-comprehensive-interpretation-of-aesthetics-BZfol9q9V9

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
University of Illinois Press
ISSN
2156-4795

Abstract

Walter B. Gulick I. Introduction: A Cursory Historical Preview What is the nature and scope of aesthetic sensibility and thought? Answers to this question have varied greatly over the centuries. In recent decades, however, there have been few attempts to describe the nature and scope of aesthetics within the ambiance of a far-reaching context that takes account of contem- porary developments in relevant disciplines. My intention in this essay is to sketch out the contours of such a comprehensive theory. Toward that end I will first offer a brief impressionistic account of the varied ways aesthetic qualities of experience have been treated during the unfolding of Western thought. In Plato’s Symposium, the loving attention devoted to facets of beauty interprets them as but varied expressions of the objective Form of Beauty. Experiences of this Form are presented as central to meaningful existence. Subsequent to the attention accorded aesthetics in classical times, derivative versions of aesthetics as an independent reality lingered until the seventeenth century. Then gradually, concomitant with the rise of modern philosophy, with its increased attention to epistemology, aesthetic judgments became interpreted by such thinkers as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume as subjective matters of taste, in contrast to

Journal

American Journal of Theology & Philosophy – University of Illinois Press

Published: Mar 24, 2021

There are no references for this article.