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Full Idea
The formal objects which individuate the aesthetic attitude may be narrowly aesthetic, as beauty, and its subspecies, such as grace and elegance, or more broadly by other formalist criteria, such as Beardley's unity, complexity and intensity.
Gist of Idea
Formalists say aesthetics concerns types of beauty, or unity, complexity and intensity
Source
Berys Gaut (The Ethical Criticism of Art [1998], 'Objections 1')
Book Ref
'Aesthetics and the Phil of Art (Analytic trad)', ed/tr. Lamarque,P/Olsen,SH [Blackwell 2004], p.284
A Reaction
I'm not sure about unity or complexity, but intensity was endorsed by Henry James. Intensity doesn't sound very 'formal'. 'Beauty' doesn't seem the right word for the wonderful 'King Lear', or even for Jane Austen novels.
| 22685 | Good art does not necessarily improve people (any more than good advice does) [Gaut] |
| 22684 | Good ethics counts towards aesthetic merit, and bad ethics counts against it [Gaut] |
| 22689 | If we don't respond ethically in the way a work prescribes, that is an aesthetic failure [Gaut] |
| 22690 | 'Moralism' says all aesthetic merits are moral merits [Gaut] |
| 22686 | Formalists say aesthetics concerns types of beauty, or unity, complexity and intensity [Gaut] |
| 22687 | Maybe literary assessment is evaluating the artist as a suitable friend [Gaut] |