Aestheticism: Philosophy of Beauty Essay

Aestheticism is presently defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica as intended to designate a scientific ism or account of looker, in temper and art, and for the enjoyment and originating beauty which exists in man. In early(a) words, aestheticism is a school of thought of beauty. An Aesthete has a cracking appreciation for nature. One may look at an object, place, or somebody and perceive it a different way than a nonher person may perceive it. For an Aesthete to obtain pleasure, it is the perspectives of perception that is necessary to an appreciation of both appreciation and creation.Aestheticism is a truly thick(p) and important philosophy whose meaning has been changed and interpreted by many historical figures such(prenominal) as Alexander Baumgarten, Immanuel Kant, and Oscar Wilde. The philosophical discipline of aesthetics did not set out its name until 1735, when the twenty- whizz year old Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten introduced it in his H eithere contains thesi s to mean episteme aisthetike, or the perception of what is sensed and imagined.Initially, the centering of aestheticism was not so much on art as it was on the experience of, and judgments about, beauty in all its forms. Aesthetics is necessarily interdisciplinary and may be interpretive, prescriptive, descriptive, or a combination of these. The younger Baumgarten started at the university at sixteen (in 1730), and studied theology, philology, poetry, rhetoric, and philosophy, especially Leibniz, whose philosophy was not banned.He began teaching there himself in 1735, upon the strikeance of his thesis on poetry, and make his Metaphysics in 1739. In 1740, the same year as he publish his Ethics, he was called to a professorship or more precisely, ordered to accept it at another Prussian university, in Frankfurt an der Oder. The starting line plenty of his Aesthetica appeared in 1750. It was written in Latin, like Baumgartens other works, and was the first work ever to use th e name of the unfermented discipline as a title.The next year, however, Baumgartens health began to decline and a randomness volume of the Aestheticacame out only in 1758, under pressure from the publisher. Baumgartens Meditations on Poetry conclude with his famous introduction of the term aesthetics The Greek philosophers and the Church fathers have always closely distinguished amongst the aistheta and the noeta,that is, between objects of sense and objects of thought, and while the latter, that is, what after part be cognized through the higher(prenominal) faculty of mind, are theobject of logic, the aistheta are the subject of the episteme aisthetike or AESTHETICS, the science of perception. However, in the eighteenth century, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant defined aestheticism as both the abbreviation of taste and the analysis of sensible cognition or intuition. Immanuel Kant was a Prussian philosopher who is widely considered to be a central figure of red-brick phi losophy. He argued that human concepts and categories structure our view of the world and its laws, and that reason is the reference work of morality.One part Kants philosophy of aestheticism was the Deduction of Taste, which instilled that everything fire and fundamental happened in the formation of concepts, or in the receiving of intuitions. But now Kant argues that judgment itself, as a faculty, has an fundamental principle that governs it. This principle asserts the purposiveness of all phenomena with respect to our judgment. In other words, it assumes in advance that everything we experience can be tackled by our powers of judgment. Normally, we dont even notice that this laying claim is being made, we exclusively apply concepts, and be done with it.But in the case of the beautiful, we do notice. This is because the beautiful draws particular attention to its purposiveness but also because the beautiful has no concept of a purpose available, so that we cannot just apply a concept and be done with it. Instead, the beautiful deplumates us to grope for concepts that we can never find. And yet, nevertheless, the beautiful is not an alien and trouble experience on the contrary, it is pleasurable. The principle of purposiveness is satisfied, but in a new and unique way.For Kant, the other basic type of aesthetic experience is the proud. The sublime names experiences like violent storms or huge buildings which seem to overcome us that is, we feel we cannot get our head around them. This is either primarily mathematical if our ability to intuit is overwhelmed by size (the huge building) or dynamical if our ability to will or resist is overwhelmed by force (e. g. the storm). The problem for Kant here is that this experience seems to directly contradict the principle of the purposiveness of nature for our judgment.And yet, Kant notes, one would expect the feeling of being overwhelmed to also be accompanied by a feeling of fear or at least(prenomina l) discomfort, whereas, the sublime can be a pleasurable experience. In contrast, Oscar Wilde prefaced his novel, The flick of Dorian Gray, with a reflection on art, the artist, and the utility of both. After careful scrutiny, he concludes All art is quite useless (Wilde 4). In this one sentence, Wilde encapsulates the complete principles of the Aesthetic Movement popular in Victorian England. That is to say, documentary art takes no part in molding the social or moral identities of society, nor should it. artistic creation should be beautiful and pleasure its observer, but to point further-reaching influence would be a mistake. The explosion of aesthetic philosophy in fin-de-siecle English society, as exemplified by Oscar Wilde, was not confined to merely art, however. Rather, the proponents of this philosophy extended it to life itself. Here, aestheticism advocated whatever behavior was likely to maximize the beauty and happiness in ones life, in the tradition of hedonism. To t he aesthete, the standard life mimics art it is beautiful, but quite useless beyond its beauty, concerned only with the individual living it.Aesthetics found that through their great interest in beauty, pleasure that is derived from objects of art is more beautiful than other pleasures. Overall, many philosophers have interpreted the principle of aestheticism in their own ways. Without aestheticism, the deep understanding we now have of the connection of our lives with all forms of art would not be possible. Therefore, after centuries of conceptual making, aestheticism remains as a very complex subject which any poetic heart would be cheering to learn for the benefit of further understanding the purpose for the existence of art.Art through music, paintings, dance, and performance are all unique, but alike in one way they are products of an artists ability, and desire, to create beauty. workings CitedBurnham, Douglas. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Immanuel Kant Aesthetics. n . d. 9 February 2014 . Duggan, Patrick. The Conflict Between Aestheticism and piety in Oscar Wildes The Picture of Darian Gray. n. d. 9 February 2014 . Guyer, Paul. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 18th Century German Aesthetics. 16 January 2007. 9 February 2014 . Rohlf, Michael. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Immanuel Kant. 20 May 2010. 9 February 2014 .