Arnold Berleant

This essay traces the steps to social aesthetics. It begins by affirming the central place of sense experience for aesthetics and its refinement in the perceptual acuity of a developed sensibility. This leads to associating aesthetic appreciation with such perceptual experience. Rejecting the identification of disinterestedness with such appreciation, the present paper proposes the full participatory involvement in the experience of appreciation as expressed by the concept of aesthetic engagement. This describes the appreciative situation as an aesthetic field in which the perceptual, creative, focusing, and activating factors are in reciprocal interaction. It characterizes not only appreciation in the arts but occurs as well in appreciating natural, built, and social environments. Aesthetic engagement in social aesthetics is exemplified by the gaze in the experience of four well-known paintings I shall consider. Following these a series of related ideas are developed that lead to the concept of a social aesthetics. Finally, the essay returns to the paintings for an enhanced understanding of social aesthetics.

Zaradi svoje vsenavzočnosti v izkustvu ima estetska čutnost mnoge manifestacije, tako očitne kot prikrite. Članek preučuje nekatere večinoma skrite načine, v katerih sta okus in estetska sodba, ki se kažeta v čutnem izkustvu, prefinjeno prisvojena in izrabljena. Te postopke opisujem kot prilastitev estetske čutnosti in imajo škodljive posledice za zdravje, družbo in okolje. Omenjene prakse so oblika estetske negacije, ki izkrivlja čutno izkustvo in manipulira z njim, kot je v interesu množičnega trženja in njegovih dobičkov. Ta vzorec imenujem prilastitev čutnosti. Tovrstne prakse imajo resen etičen pomen in nosijo družbene ter politične implikacije. Estetska analiza navadnega življenja ima pomen, ki sega onstran akademske vednosti in sugerira drugo vlogo estetike, in sicer kritično: estetika kot orodje družbene analize in politične kritike.

Music has not been as prominent in philosophy or as influential in aesthetics as the visual arts, at least in the Western tradition. Reflecting on my years of experience as both a philosopher and a musician, I am increasingly intrigued by speculating if and how today’s aesthetic discourse might have taken a different direction if music been its central focus. It is tempting to wonder whether, in some cases, the musical art may indeed have had an influence, even if less conspicuous than some other arts.

The business practices of multinational corporations raise many provocative moral issues and offer a touchstone for some fundamental ethical concepts. This essay identifies a wide range of problems but centers on the matter of consistency in corporate policy between foreign and domestic practices and the kind of generality of standards that is required to achieve consistency. Two considerations are singled out for illustrative discussion: wage scales and bribes. Proposals are offered for achieving consistency and generality in each case, the principle of contextual generality for the first and the notion of structural universals for the second.

Stone represents the firmness and intransigence of the world within which we live and act. But beyond the perception and appropriations of stone, diverse meanings lie hidden between the hardness of stone and its uses. At the same time meaning must be grounded in the stabilizing presence of a common world. Yet if all that can be said is not about stone simpliciter but only an aesthetics of its perception, uses, and meanings, have we not gained the whole world but lost its reality? The underlying issue is therefore not aesthetic but ontological.

By the close of the eighteenth century, many features of Western intellectual history had become incorporated into a coherent body of aesthetic doctrine that soon acquired the standing of tradition. "The three dogmas of aesthetics" is Allen Carlson's fitting designation of the main principles by which I have characterized this theory: that "art consists primarily of objects," that "these objects possess a special status," and that "they must be regarded in a unique way." Held against the practice and experience of the arts, each of these, I claim, is assumptive and misleading.'

Although artistic activity has been a major social phenomenon in the western world, aesthetics has not always reflected the changes in techniques, processes, themes and uses through which the arts have developed and had their effect. Theory most often comes after the fact, and properly so. Yet aesthetics in its history has not only displayed an unfitting hubris, with thinkers attempting to legislate about style, suitability and materials to the artist; aesthetics has also lagged far behind the living edge of artistic activity and discussed it in anachronistic terms.

Environmental aesthetics is an emerging discipline that explores the meaning and influence of environmental perception and experience on human life. Arguing for the idea that environment is not merely a setting for people but is fully integrated and continuous with us, The Aesthetics of Environment explores the aesthetic dimensions of the human-environmental continuum in both theoretical terms and concrete situations. From outer space to the museum, from architecture to landscape, from city to countryside to wilderness, this book discovers in the aesthetic perception of environment the reciprocity that constitutes both person and place.

Attempts to justify the objectivity and universality of aesthetic judgment have traditionally rested on unsupported assumptions or mere assertion. This paper offers a fresh consideration of the problem of judgments of taste. It suggests that the problem of securing universal agreement is false and therefore insoluble since it imposes an inappropriate logical criterion on the extent of agreement, which is irrevocably empirical. The variability of judgments of taste actually forms a subject ripe for inquiry by sociologists, psychologists, historians and anthropologists, as well as by aestheticians. Scenic beauty provides a vivid test for the variability of these judgments.