1000-Word Philosophy

Aesthetics vs. Art

Author: Brock Rough

Category: Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art (h ps://1000wordphilosophy.wordpress.com/85-2/aesthetics-and-philosophy-of-art/)
Word Count: 1000

1. The Distinction

While some people take the eld of aesthetics, broadly construed, to include the philosophy of art, it is instructive to examine whether and where
the two notions diverge. Recognizing the distinction between the appropriate scopes of these concepts is important because there has been
confusion over their denitions ever since Alexander Baumgarten appropriated the term aesthetic in the mid-18th Century to stand for the study of
taste according to the senses. The distinction was further blurred by a long tradition of misunderstanding Kants Analytic of the Beautiful as
pertaining to art, rather than merely to aesthetics. But the distinction can be made clear: the study of aesthetics is the study of the felt quality of
perceptions of the senses, while the study of art is the study of the historical practice of making art objects. Some have argued that these are co-
extensive pursuits; we will see that this is not so. In this essay, I will show that aesthetic properties are neither necessary nor sucient for art, and
identify some issues that remain.

The distinction between the two is perhaps made most perspicuous by showing the dierence between aesthetic and artistic properties. Roughly,
aesthetic properties are those that are the properties of sensory taste that we perceive in the things we experience: properties like beautiful,
dynamic, graceful. Frank Sibley was fond of listing aesthetic properties, and characterizes them as not merely perceptual properties, but as
depending on perceptual properties, requiring taste to perceive them and resisting discovery by means of what he called condition-governedness

(i.e. being reducible to underlying physical properties).1 Meanwhile, artistic properties are those that are relevant to artworks: facts about the
(i.e. being reducible to underlying physical properties).1 Meanwhile, artistic properties are those that are relevant to artworks: facts about the
2
context of creation, who the artist was, when they made the work, what their intentions for the work were, etc. Some have argued, and continue to
3
argue, that art is dened by the aesthetic. However, there are several reasons to resist this conclusion.

Intuitively, we use aesthetic terms to describe nature, as when we call a sunset beautiful, but we do not thereby think of nature as a literal work of
art.4 Conversely, much art, especially of the last century, is not primarily concerned with having a high aesthetic quality, e.g., Marcel
Duchamps The Fountain, or in the case of conceptual art, with having any aesthetic properties at all, lacking a physical object to support aesthetic
judgment (e.g., Robert Barrys Telepathic Piece).

There is much research into the aesthetics of various domains that do not standardly contain artworks. Some of these domains are dened by not
being about artifacts at allby most denitions, by their non-art-objecthood. These include:

The aesthetics of design.5

The aesthetics of nature.6
The aesthetics of everyday life.7
The aesthetics of our sense of touch.8
The aesthetics of our sense of proprioception.9
The aesthetics of the experience of scratching an itch.10
The aesthetics of the pleasurable experience of eating disgusting food.11
The aesthetics of the microscopic and the cosmically gigantic (and elephants too).12

With such a large scope of things to be approached aesthetically, and with some arguing that all perceptual objects have aesthetic
properties,13 unless we want to expand the scope of art to include all perceptual objects, there is clearly a distinction to be made between the study
of art and the study of aesthetics.

The distinction becomes even clearer when one considers cases of forgery. If art really were solely concerned with the aesthetic properties of works,
and if those properties depended solely on the physical properties of the work,14 then a perfect forgery should be as artistically valuable as the
original. This, however, is not the case. This case serves to show why the conation of art and aesthetics is untenable.

One might worry, however, that the history of art, and its longstanding concern with making beautiful objects, is being unduly ignored; in other
words: how do we make sense of the fact that so many artists have focused on making beautiful objects? It is true that many objects in the history of
art are beautiful, and are largely concerned with the aesthetic. However, focusing exclusively on the beauty of artworks has been called a kind of
historical myopia by many; the conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth said, It is necessary to separate aesthetics from art because aesthetics deals with
opinions on perception of the world in general,15 and that, Formalist painting and sculpture can be granted an art condition, but only by virtue
of their presentation in terms of their art idea.16 Kosuths view is certainly not the nal word on the debate, but his is representative of an

increasingly dominant view in the artworld since Duchamp, and by some accounts, much earlier.17 The idea driving the distinction is that making
increasingly dominant view in the artworld since Duchamp, and by some accounts, much earlier.17 The idea driving the distinction is that making
art is about something other than a concern for the aesthetic, though traditionally, an aesthetic concern has been swept up into art practice. So while
there is historical overlap, we can see that the two remain logically distinct.

2. Remaining Issues

Even if one agrees that the concepts art and aesthetics pick out dierent things, clarifying their dierences remains problematic.

For instance, it remains to be discovered just which properties are artistic ones rather than aesthetic ones and whether some properties can do
double duty.

Another diculty is determining just which properties are purely aesthetic. Many people want to preserve yet another distinction: that between
aesthetic properties and merely sensory properties. Even acknowledging the vague boundary between these, there is no obviously principled way
of distinguishing between, say, the pleasure felt by slipping into a hot bath, the awe one feels before a brilliant sunset, and whatever aesthetic
response is felt when one contemplates a Caravaggio.

Finally, though there seems to be a distinction between aesthetic and artistic properties, what about the aesthetic properties of works of literature?
Books as physical objects have aesthetic properties, but given the abstract nature of the content of a book, what is there for our taste to perceive in a
way that is appropriately analogous to how we perceive aesthetic properties of physical objects?

Notes

1
See Sibley (1959).
2
See, for example, Levinson (2011).
3See, for instance, Iseminger (2004).

4Though there is room for an interesting theistic argument to be made here.

5See Forsey (2013).

6See, for example, Allen Carlsons Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art, and Architecture (2000).
6See, for example, Allen Carlsons Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art, and Architecture (2000).

7See Thomas Leddy (2012).

8See Carolyn Korsmeyers Touch and the Experience of the Genuine (2012).

9
See Barbara Monteros Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense (2006).
10
See Sherri Irvins Scratching an Itch (2008b).
11See Carolyn Korsmeyers Delightful, Delicious, Disgusting (2002).

12See Hans Maess Elephants, Microscopes and Free Beauty: Reply to Davies (2009).

13
See Irvin (2008a).
14
Not everyone agrees that they do, at least not solely. Sibley (1959) argues that they do, but Walton (1970) gives a compelling argument that
context plays a larger role in determining aesthetic properties than one might initially think, though in the end he also thinks that aesthetic
properties depend on the physical properties of the work.
15See Kosuth (1973, 76).

16See Kosuth (1973, 78).

17See art historian and critic Michael Fried (1980).

References

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Forsey, J. (2013). The Aesthetics of Design. Oxford University Press. (h p://www.amazon.com/The-Aesthetics-Design-Jane-

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Fried, M. (1980). Absorption and theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot. University of California Pr.
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Brock is a graduate of Northern Illinois University (2010, MA in Philosophy), and currently a PhD Candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park,
Department of Philosophy. His research focuses on the art status and ontology of videogames, their role as a test case for theories of art, and the ontology and
intersection of games and art. Before pursuing philosophy, Brock spent several years working as a portrait painter.

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