Philosophy - the aesthetic attitude and the sublime

1. The Aesthetic Attitude
and the Sublime
By: John Paul Espino
De La Salle University – Dasmarinas
Facebook.com/Johnpaul.dss

3. Aesthetic Attitude
the thought is not that there are certain people who
generally see things, so to speak, in an aesthetic light,
but more aligned with what is meant by the request
that someone “have a more optimistic attitude” or “take
a more positive attitude” about a given circumstance.
 Two Major Implications
( according to Bullough )
First, it locates the aesthetic primarily on the side of
the observer or audience. ‘The aesthetic’ is not a type of
thing, but a way of seeing or hearing or touching (or
tasting possibly).
 Second, this way of viewing the world makes
anything and everything aesthetic, potentially at any
ART AND BEAUTY 20 rate. If the heart of the
aesthetic is a distinctive attitude, then whatever this
attitude can be and is applied to, will constitute an
aesthetic experience.

4. George Dickie
• He is a Professor Emeritus of
Philosophy at University of
Illinois at Chicago. His
specialties include aesthetics,
philosophy of art and
Eighteenth Century theories
of taste.
• He subjects to close scrutiny
both the ideas of ‘distance’
and ‘disinterestedness’.

5. Edward Bullough• was an English aesthetician and scholar
of modern languages, who worked at the
University of Cambridge. He did
experimental work on the perception of
colours, and in his theoretical work
introduced the concept of psychical
distance: that which "appears to lie
between our own self and its affections"
in aesthetic experience. In languages,
Bullough was a dedicated teacher who
published little. He came to concentrate
on Italian, and was elected to the Chair
of Italian at Cambridge in 1933.

6. Two parts to the aesthetic attitude:• Attitude
is a certain state of mind. In particular, it is
a way of approaching experiences or orienting
oneself toward the world.
It may help to think of someone with an
optimistic attitude. He has a tendency to see
things in a positive light.
• Aesthetics
is the subject matter concerning, as a
paradigm, fine art, but also the special, art-
like status sometimes given to applied arts
like architecture or industrial design or to
objects in nature.

7. The Critique of Judgement
Sublime
is found most obviously in nature.
>Kant seems more interested in
natural than artistic beauty. But
whereas a flower, say, strikes us as
beautiful because of its delicacy and
the interplay between colour and
form it displays, a mighty waterfall
such as Niagara Falls impresses us
by the sheer chaos of its power .

9. William Blake’s
famous poem
• The Tyger
is a poem by the English poet William
Blake published in 1794 as part of the
Songs of Experience collection.
Literary critic Alfred Kazin calls it "the
most famous of his poems", and The
Cambridge Companion to William
Blake says it is "the most anthologized
poem in English".

10. Two concepts
• Contemplation
• Distance
• These are the principal elements in
what has come to be known as
‘the aesthetic attitude’.

11.  According to Bullough
We can also view it in a
psychically distant way, one that
allows us to free ourselves from
this practical attitude and
contemplate the fog in and of
itself, as a visual and perhaps
tactile phenomenon.