Philosophy - Aesthetic Experience, Part 2: The Questions

In the following posts in this series I'm going to articulate some particular issues related to my views on aesthetic experience. There are two questions we have to address. The first question is what we mean when we say that aesthetic experience is primary. I've already been talking about this the preceding part to this post, where I mentioned some of the influences on my thought and why aesthetic experience does not devolve to mere Emotivism.

The second question is easy to ask but difficult to answer: what are the mechanics of an aesthetic theory of experience? This simple question leads to a variety of other more complex questions, such as: Which parts of experience are we talking about? How do these parts relate? What is the relation between experience and "reality?" Ultimately, all these questions push us in the direction of asking about the relationship between experience and meaning.

This also points to my ultimate goal with an aesthetic theory of experience. Ultimately I argue for the value of moral psychology. Most philosophies, political systems, religious systems, or other traditions of thought have their own way of looking at the world. This is not controversial. However, what is less accepted is that each of these has ways to engage experience that allows for therapeutic treatment and restoration of a humanitarian orientation. That's my goal, right there - to argue that aesthetic experience provides the conditions for therapeutic moral psychology in many different traditions.

Philosophy - Aesthetic Experience, Part 1: General Thoughts

Aesthetic Experience as an Alternative to the dichotomy of Reason and Emotion

The history of western philosophy is a history of our understanding of thought. In the process of undergoing this journey from the Pre-Socratics to the present day, one of our most recurring themes is the objectivity of rational discourse. This objectivity is usually understood as a contrast between reason and emotion, privileging reason and disparaging emotion. This has, of course, been challenged by a number of voices in the history of western philosophy. My understanding of contemporary philosophy is lacking, but I suspect much of the conversation has shifted to meta-ethics and studies on consciousness.

This post is more a reply to the tradition of rationalism, which is not a current mainstream project. However, some of these thoughts relate to a theory of experience which I think is relevant to contemporary projects, especially theories of consciousness (discussions of which will follow later). For the moment, consider this a general reflection on a reaction to rationalism in the history of western philosophy.

What I propose is that the dichotomy between reason and emotion is a red herring; the conflict between reason and emotion has become something of a smoke-screen that obscures the role that aesthetic experience plays in philosophy. I'm thinking in particular of the manner in which aesthetic experience shapes how practice philosophy and, by proxy, how we live the rest of our lives.

Emphasis on the aesthetic itself is not new, but I appeal to a smaller tradition that places aesthetic experience in the foreground of personal experience. This tradition includes Vico, Cassirer, James, Thoreau, Dewey, and others. Each of these thinkers regard aesthetic experience slightly differently, but they all regard aesthetic experience as being primary to human experience. In this light, I contend that the manner in which we develop attachments to different kinds of aesthetic experience is related to the kinds of philosophical system to which we found ourselves most attracted - which in turn, affects the manner in which we interpret and understand the world.

This is different from Emotivism, because emotivism claims that all meaning is ultimately reducible to emotion. This doesn't mean subjectivity is an infinite downward spiral of self-recursivity. It means that we, as active subjects within the world, are constantly interacting within the world. We are in constant conversation with the world, speaking to the world via a variety of mechanisms.