Brady, Chapter 5
The Integrated Aesthetic I
Multi-sensuous Engagement and Disinterestedness
- Brady calls her view the "integrated aesthetic"
- It draws on Kant and Ronald Hepburn's views
- It involves
- Multi-sensuous engagement
- DI
- Imagination
- Emotion: "We can identify emotional responses and expressive
qualities that are justifiable rather than mere subjective projection"
- A (limited?) role for thought and knowledge
- Her view is non-cognitive like Kant's
- Like Kant allows indeterminate concepts and basic organizing
concepts needed for exp the world
- But unlike Kant sometimes okay to feed in background kn as
well
- 127: "My delight in graceful flight of birds, soft fragrance of
wildflowers, and elegant pair of swans in ponds was
heightened by background kn of debate about whether to
preserve the place and the history of the place, but aes value
found there did not depend on such knowledge, but on
perceptual interest and immersion"
- I would have thought that greater delight was a sign of
greater aes value and so this value did depend on the
background knowledge
- "Integrated" as brings together subjective and objective components of
aes experience
- Involves a relationship between distinct appreciator and environment
acknowledged to be other
- Not Berleant's full-blown engagement where you become one with
the environment and every aspect of one's being would be part of
appreciation
- Puddleman image
- Brady on objectivity: Does not embrace all aspects of subject;
- DI helps filter out idiosyncratic features of appreciator
- Rules out aspects of appreciator not easily shared by others making
aes judge of same object
- She sees aes app as shared activity, rather than more
private/personal activity of expressing preferences
- MULTI-SENSUOUS ENGAGEMENT
- Perception essential for aes app
- Aes app begins (and ends?) in perception
- Conceptual (e.g., mathematical) though without images have
no aesthetic qualities?
- Immediate, first-hand exp basis of all aes valuing of nature
- Rolston requires participatory exp along with Kn
- All senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching) both alone
and in conjunction with other capacities (thoughts, imaginings and
beliefs) enable perception of aes qualities
- Both subject and object determine the sensuous perspective
- Subject: We can choose careful attention, or more cursory glance; we
walk slowly through environments or exp them from a car window
- Object: But envs and their objects significantly shape our perceptual
perspectives:
- Env qualities can stop us in our tracks and demand our
attention
- Vivid color of sea, melodious song of a thrush,
spectacular drama of thunder/lightening, inviting
fragrance of jasmine, luxurious feel of cool sand
underfoot
- Many of our most highly valued nature exp involve little
conscious choice and are spontaneous
- Subject's effort matters for app unscenic nature :
- App of aes qual via sensory engagement directed to great
degree by qualities perceived, but also what is picked out for app
depends to some extent on effort made in engaging perceptual
capacities
- With art, much depends on ability of artist to create engaging
artwork
- With nature, character of natural object significantly
determines how much perceptual effort is required.
- Easy to app beauty of grand landscape
- More difficult to app aes a "wasteland"
- Unscenic nature has aes value and perceiving it
depends on effort of individual
- Brady dances around (but seems to embrace) the idea that there are better and worse uses of the senses in aes app of nature
- Nature's careful app demands slow ambulation, rather than a fast cycle ride
- Though both perspectives offer legitimate appreciation
- Legitimate to appreciate nature carelessly?
- Sensuous engagement can be thick or thin, depending on how many
senses draw upon
- And thick is better than thin? (Yes)
- Like rest of our exp, aes exp dominated by most common senses
(seeing and hearing)
- Broader sensuous approach to env (beyond vision) needed to do
justice to nature's dynamic qualities
- Argues for multi-sensuous enagement
- Without other three senses, app fails to meet its full potential
- Using all senses takes an effort
- Nature calls for active perception and sensuous participation, not
passivity and laziness
- Passive and lazy perception is worse as does not do nature her
due
- Multi-sensuous perception "may lead to greater aes sensitivity and
closer relationship with natural surroundings"
- I think she wants to say muti-sensuous perception of nature is better or at least that it typically leads to greater aes sensitivity and closer relation with nature
- ANALYSIS OF PARTICULAR SENSES
- Here are concrete suggestions for enhancing one's app of nature
- Sounds of nature
- Nature's tranquility (not silence, but natural sounds)
- May balk at intrusion of human noise upon it
- Tranquility cited by visitors to natural areas as second most
important aes feature they enjoy (scenic beauty first)
- Birds (though beautiful close up) don't sig affect visual appearance of
a landscape, whereas daily cycle of their sounds have powerful affect
on soundscape-as do crickets and cicadas we seldom see
- Touch
- A most intimate way to explore nature, least distance and most
interactive sense
- Reach out to touch nature, it touches back
- Touch invites bodily engagement
- Consider looking at a lake versus swimming through it
- Examples: Wet moss, textures of tree bark, pine needles underfoot,
sand, fur fish skin scales, cold water pebbles, rose pedal
- Pain, irritation, abrasion, lick, pat, wipe, fondle, knead,
prickling, bruising, tingling, brushing, scratching, banging,
fumbling, kissing, nudging
- Note some of these tactile sensations are negative
- Squish of wet sand between toes
- Nature's smell scape (olfactory aes judgments)
- Distinctive environing quality
- Contributes as much to aes character of env as hearing/touching
- Smells and tastes have been neglected (for bad reasons below)
- Prejudice against bodily qualities (versus those that are mental)
- Smells seen as lacking features of other aes objects
- Limited to mere sensation w/o reflective component, no
strucuture and passing duration
- Brady thinks smells have duration, complexity, and structure
- Have expressive properties and evoke associations from imagination
and memory
- Smell is a very powerful emotional mover
- Examples: wine-tasting, culinary arts, perfumery ("scenting our
bodies each day")
- Often unaware of smells around us in nature; like sounds, constitute a
sensuous backdrop app only when attend to them or impose
themselves on us
- Fragrance of pine forest operates at a general level
- More specific smells: moist smell of rotting log or putrid odor
of animal carcass
- Tastes:
- Gustatory experiences less common than olfactory in env. context
- Examples: Drinking spring water on way up a mountains, tasting sale from sea
air
- Hiking to collect and eat dewberries or huckleberries, not merely
instrumental or consumptive but appreciate gustatory qualities for
themselves
- MISCELLANEOUS
- SENSUOUS AES APP NOT HEDONISTIC (reducible to a search for
pleasure)
- Feelings of enjoyment or displeasure accompany many of aes exp,
these feelings are other-directed-they closely related to qualities of
the object
- Beside the Kantian cats of beauty, ugliness, sublime, Brady includes other aes cats: The magical, humorous, unappealing, marvelous