What does aesthetic judgement mean

No notes for slide. Aesthetic judgement 1. To date, aesthetics is mostly ignored in studies dealing with computational design support systems. The lack of an external reference point makes it harder for a good artist and for the audience to assess the quality of the art work. Regarding the ethological approach, it was precisely the analysis of movement patterns, A rasa denotes an essential mental state and is the dominant emotional theme of a work of art or the primary feeling that is evoked in the person that views, reads or hears such a work.

For instance, Hasya arises out of Sringara. The Aura of a frightened person is black, and the aura of an angry person is red. Bharata Muni established the following. They are described by Bharata Muni in the Natyashastra, an ancient work of dramatic theory. Rasas are created by bhavas: the gestures and facial expressions of the actors.

The Rasa method of performance is one of the fundamental features that differentiate Indian cinema from that of the Western world. Total views 1, On Slideshare 0. From embeds 0. Number of embeds 0. Downloads These are very hard questions. But there are some things we can say about the pleasure involved in finding something beautiful without raising the temperature too high. Unlike such pleasures, pleasure in beauty is occasioned by the perceptual representation of a thing.

These days, we might feel more comfortable putting this by saying that pleasure in beauty has an intentional content. This means, very roughly, that it is a pleasure that does not involve desire — pleasure in beauty is desire-free. That is, the pleasure is neither based on desire nor does it produce one by itself. In this respect, pleasure in beauty is unlike pleasure in the agreeable, unlike pleasure in what is good for me, and unlike pleasure in what is morally good.

It may be that we have desires concerning beautiful things, as Kant allows in sections 41 and 42 of the Critique of Judgement ; but so long as those desires are not intrinsic to the pleasure in beauty, the doctrine that all pleasure is disinterested is undisturbed. Some critics of Kant miss this point. This is all important as far as it goes; but it is all negative. We need to know what pleasure in beauty is , as well as what it isn't. What can be said of a more positive nature?

In order to see what is special about pleasure in beauty, we must shift the focus back to consider what is special about the judgment of taste. Kant's idea is that in a judgment of taste, we demand or require agreement from others in a way we do not in our judgments about the niceness of Canary-wine, which is just a question of individual preference. In matters of taste and beauty, we think that others ought to share our judgment.

That's why we blame them if they don't. Now, if the above quotation were all that Kant had to say by way of elucidating the judgment of taste, then he would not have said enough.

For the following question is left hanging: why do we require that others share our judgment? We might want others to share our judgment for all sorts of strange reasons. Maybe we will feel more comfortable. Maybe we will win a bet.

And if we say that they ought to judge a certain way, we need to say more. In what sense is this true? What if someone cannot appreciate some excellent work of art because they are grief-stricken?

What if it would distract someone from some socially worthy project? We can recast the point about how we ought to judge in austere terms by saying that there is a certain normative constraint on our judgments of taste which is absent in our judgments about the niceness of Canary-wine.

The most primitive expression of this normativity is this: some are correct , others incorrect. Or perhaps, even more cautiously: some judgments are better than others. We do not think that something is beautiful merely to me , in the way that we might say that some things just happen to give me sensuous pleasure.

And that means that we think that the opposite judgment would be incorrect. We assume that not all judgments of beauty are equally appropriate. Of course, some people just know about food especially in France and Italy. There are experts and authorities on making delicious food and in knowing what will taste good Kant , pp.

But what these people know is what will taste pleasurable to a certain kind of palate. In a sense, some things just do taste better than others; and some judgments of excellence in food are better than others. There is a sense in which some are even correct and others incorrect. There is no idea of correctness according to which someone with very unusual pleasures and displeasure is at fault, or according to which the majority of human beings can be wrong.

But in the case of judgments of taste or beauty, correctness is not hostage to what most people like or judge. This may be inevitable. We are dealing with a normative notion, and while some normative notions may be explainable in terms of others, we cannot express normative notions in non-normative terms. In some cases the correctness of a judgment of taste may be impossibly difficult to decide.

We may even think that there is no right answer to be had if we are asked to compare two very different things. But in many other cases, we think that there is a right and a wrong answer at which we are aiming, and that our judgments can be erroneous.

If we don't think this, in at least some cases, then we are not making a judgment of taste — we are doing something else. It is part of the intellectual air, in certain quarters. And in particular, many intellectuals have expressed a dislike of the idea that judgments of taste really have any normative claim, as if that would be uncouth or oppressive.

However, if we are describing our thought as it is, not how some think it ought to be, then it is important that philosophers should be persistent and insist — in the face of this Zeitgeist — that normativity is a necessary condition of the judgment of taste. Two points ought to embarrass the relativist.

Firstly, people who say this kind of thing are merely theorizing. In the case of judgments of beauty, relativist theory is wildly out of step with common practice. As with moral relativism, one can virtually always catch the professed relativist about judgments of beauty making and acting on non-relative judgments of beauty — for example, in their judgments about music, nature and everyday household objects.

Relativists do not practice what they preach. Secondly, one thing that drives people to this implausible relativism, which is so out of line with their practice, is a perceived connection with tolerance or anti-authoritarianism.

This is what they see as attractive in it. But this is upside-down. Only those who think that there is a right and wrong in judgment can modestly admit that they might be wrong. What looks like an ideology of tolerance is, in fact, the very opposite. Thus relativism is hypocritical and it is intolerant.

As I formulated the normative claim of judgments of taste, other people do not figure in the account. Given this account, we can explain the fact that we think that others ought to share our judgment. They ought to share it on pain of making a judgment which is incorrect or inappropriate.

And this would be why we do in fact look to others to share our judgment; we don't want them to make incorrect judgments. Kant's reference to other people in characterizing the normativity of judgments of taste has dropped out of the picture as inessential. However, Kant would probably not go along with this; for he characterizes the normativity in a way that ties in with his eventual explanation of its possibility.

Kant expresses the normative idea in a very particular way. He writes:. However, in my austere characterization, I hope to catch a more basic idea of normativity — one that might serve as the target of rival explanations. As far as explaining how subjectively universal judgments are possible, Kant has a complicated story about the harmonious interplay of the cognitive faculties — imagination and understanding — which he thinks constitutes pleasure in beauty Kant , p. But we can see why Kant gives it.

For Kant, the normative claim of a judgment of taste has its roots in the more general workings of our cognitive faculties, which Kant thinks we can assume others share.

Thus we have the beginnings of an explanation of how such a pleasure can ground a judgment that makes a universal claim. It is no accident that Kant phrases the obligation in interpersonal terms, considering where he is going. And it may be no great fault on his part that he does so. But for our purposes, we need to separate what is being explained from its explanation. For if Kant's explanation does not work, we want to be left with a characterization of the normativity he was trying to explain.

We need to separate Kant's problem from his solution, so that the former is left if the latter fails. Maybe there is an alternative solution to his problem.

As I have described it, normativity attaches to judgments of taste themselves. What does this imply for pleasure in beauty? Since judgments of taste are based on responses of pleasure, it would make little sense if our judgments were more or less appropriate but our responses were not. The normative claim of our judgments of taste must derive from the fact that we think that some responses are better or more appropriate to their object than others.

Responses only license judgments which can be more or less appropriate because responses themselves can be more or less appropriate. If I get pleasure from drinking Canary-wine, and you don't, neither of us will think of the other as being mistaken.

But if you don't get pleasure from Shakespeare's Sonnets , I will think of you as being in error — not just your judgment , but your liking.

But moral judgements refer to the ideal of supreme Good. All of them are appreciative or critical judgements. But moral judgements are always accompanied by moral obligation and moral sentiments do not accompany logical and aesthetic judgements. We can understand other aesthetic kinds of things in terms of aesthetic judgments: aesthetic properties are those that are ascribed in aesthetic judgments; aesthetic experiences are those that ground aesthetic judgments; aesthetic concepts are those that are deployed in aesthetic judgments; and aesthetic words are ….

First, they are disinterested, meaning that we take pleasure in something because we judge it beautiful, rather than judging it beautiful because we find it pleasurable. Aesthetics, also spelled esthetics, the philosophical study of beauty and taste.

It is closely related to the philosophy of art, which is concerned with the nature of art and the concepts in terms of which individual works of art are interpreted and evaluated. Form includes the way that the parts and materials are put together and organized.

The parts of the work of art must be arranged in a way that will stir our aesthetic sentiment. Aesthetic judgments about form apply to both representational and abstract visual art; lines, shapes, perspective, light, colors, symmetry — all of these elements contribute to the aesthetic experience. Other forms of art for example, music have their own sets of formal attributes.

Kant was an early advocate of formalism. Such formal elements of an object as shape, arrangement, and lines, he argued, contribute in an important way to aesthetic judgements. Functionalist theories expect a work of art to serve a purpose, and the value of a work of art is determined by how well it satisfies its purpose. In order to explain or understand the meaning of a work of art we must know what it is for or what it is supposed to do.

Functionalist theories are usually, but not always, concerned with art that has a practical purpose. Functional excellence of a practical object is often looked at together with form. That good form follows from good functionality became a 20th-century principle for industrial design and modernist architecture.

There are functionalist theories that look beyond practical purposes. A rewarding aesthetic experience might to be a legitimate purpose or function in its own right.

The following reading assignment develops the idea that having purely practical function is not in and of itself an adequate measure aesthetic value.

Recall that emotionalism requires that works of art effectively express feelings or ideas. Russian writer Leo Tolstoy wrote in his work What is Art? Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings that he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them. Perhaps aesthetic judgement from a purely disinterested attitude requires discipline when experiencing highly expressive art.

There may be something counter-intuitive afoot if the feeling conveyed is not pleasant. Is it still art? Humans, in fact, are drawn to art that conveys feelings such as sadness or terror, for example, in movies, fiction, and even certain music or paintings.

The following TED talk by designer Richard Seymour refers to some of the judgement theories we have covered in making his interesting case for the importance of beauty in product design. How beauty feels. Enjoys this minute video.