display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
20387 | Aesthetic experience involves perception, but also imagination and understanding [Davies,S] |
Full Idea: It was suggested that aesthetic experience isn't solely perceptual. It's infused by a cognitive but non-conceptual process described by Kant as involving the free play of the imagination and the understanding. | |
From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 1.2) | |
A reaction: This fits literature very well, painting quite well, and music hardly at all. |
20385 | The faculty of 'taste' was posited to explain why only some people had aesthetic appreciation [Davies,S] |
Full Idea: To explain why not everyone who is prepared to encounter a thing's aesthetic properties can recognise them, ...eighteenth century theorists posited the existence of a special faculty of aesthetic perception, that of taste. | |
From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 1.2) | |
A reaction: But there seem to be two aspects to taste - first the capacity to enjoy some sorts of art, and second the ability to discriminate the good from the bad. The latter is 'standards' of taste (Hume's title). Do non-musical people lack taste? |
20386 | The sublime is negative in awareness of insignificance, and positive in showing understanding [Davies,S] |
Full Idea: An example of the sublime is the vastness of the night sky. ...It includes negative feelings of insignificance in the face of nature's indifference, power and magnitude, but is positive in that we are capable of comprehending such matters. | |
From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 1.2) | |
A reaction: The negative part seems to be a very intellectual experience, with close links to religion, and may be the experience that leads to deism (belief in God's indifference). |