Poll: Is Beauty Objective?
There is massive disagreement about the ontology of beauty. For many today, beauty is merely in the eye of the beholder. For others, beauty is an objective reality. I’ve thought a lot about this over …
Aesthetics
10 Days of Aesthetics: Conclusion (Day 10)
*Read this series from the beginning.* Language is a clear problem in articulating the concepts this essay addresses. We tend to apply only one adjective to a noun. So we may say Human Drapery 3 …
10 Days of Aesthetics: The Sublime (Day 9)
*Read this series from the beginning.* Kant’s distinctions about the sublime, and, in fact, the two forms of sublime Mathematical and Dynamical, are extremely nuanced and cannot be fully addressed here. But, there are some …
10 Days of Aesthetics: Disgust (Day 8)
*Read this series from the beginning.* If ugly is the ontological opposite of pretty then disgust may be the ontological opposite of beauty. Kant closely ties the concepts of disgust and ugly. However, while Kant …
10 Days of Aesthetics: The Beautiful (Day 7)
*Read this series from the beginning.* Historically beauty and aesthetics go hand in hand. The question of beauty is the primary question of aesthetics. In the Thomist tradition, beauty is considered a transcendental with concepts …
10 Days of Aesthetics: The Ugly (Day 6)
*Read this series from the beginning.* Ugly is the ontological opposite of pretty and fills the other side of the Sensual Axis. Where pretty causes sensual delight, the ugly causes sensual discomfort. This is relatively …
10 Days of Aesthetics: Kitsch (Day 5)
*Read this series from the beginning.* Kitsch Kitsch is often very clearly linked with the pretty. Certainly, that is the case with the work of Kinkade. Roger Scruton says, “The world of kitsch is a …
10 Days of Aesthetics: The Pretty (Day 4)
*Read this series from the beginning.* The Pretty It is often said that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” For Kant such an idea was absurd. “It would be…laughable if a man who …
10 Days of Aesthetics: Axis Theory (Day 3)
*Read this series from the beginning.* Axis Theory The Axis Theory takes cues from historic conceptions of the sublime and the beautiful, especially Kant, and seeks to harmonize those terms with contemporary usage and my …
10 Days of Aesthetics: Continuum Theory (Day 2)
*Read this series from the beginning.* Continuum Theory For most people today there is a continuum of aesthetic ranking. Thomas Leddy addresses this paradigm in his work on Everyday Aesthetics.[1] There are many terms that …