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AESTHETICS

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the


nature of art, beauty and taste, with the creation and
appreciation of beauty.
Broadly it can be said that aesthetics is critical reflection
on art, culture and nature

Aesthetics [esthtique]
Aisthanomai

Aisthetikos

(sensitive,perceptive)

(I perceive, feel, sense)

(esthetic,sensitive,sentient)

Coined by Alexander
Baumgarten in 1734

Indian Aesthetics
Indian art evolved with an emphasis on inducing
special spiritual or philosophical states in the
audience, or with representing them symbolically.
According to Kapila Vatsyayan, Classical Indian
architecture, Indian sculpture, Indian painting, Indian
literature (kaavya), Indian music, and Indian dance
evolved their own rules conditioned by their
respective media, but they shared with one another
not only the underlying spiritual beliefs of the Indian
religio-philosophic mind, but also the procedures by
which the relationships of the symbol and the spiritual
states were worked out in detail."

Pan Indian philosophical definition of the Supreme is very simple Satyam Shivam Sundaram.

SAT

(True Value)

SHIV

(Good Value)

SUNDARAM
(Beauty
value)

The most important characteristics of Indian


aesthetics is that there was no break inspite of the
volatile socio-political and religious history. Art never
suffered and was given the utmost priority by all
successive rulers be it the Guptas, Chalukyas,
Hoysalas, Rajputs and the Mughals.

Art in India was not a matter of sensuous


enjoyment, nor a luxury to be enjoyed by the
rich or the rulers and certainly not to amuse
oneself! But had a deeper meaning and
objective.

PERSPECTIVES
SUBJECTIVE PERSPECTIVE
It is ruled by the
knowledge residing in the
emotions and thoughts of
the viewer

OBJECTIVE PERSPECTIVE
It is the one that focuses on
the objects physical
characteristics as the main
source of information

Aesthetics: Philosophy of Art


Plato: art imitates reality. By focusing
on
mere appearances, art distracts us from the
truth and appeals to socially destructive
emotions. It provides no real knowledge and
undermines personal and social well-being
Aristotle: art does not imitate particular
things; rather it identifies universal
ideals and values. It also purges us of
our erotic and aggressive passions (catharsis)

Plato
Plato is one of the world's best known and most
widely read and studied philosophers. He was the
student of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle, and
he wrote in the middle of the fourth century B.C.E. in
ancient Greece. Though influenced primarily by
Socrates, to the extent that Socrates is usually the
main character in many of Platos writings, he was
also influenced by Heraclitus, Parmenides (theory of
Forms), and the Pythagoreans.

Plato
Platos middle to later works, including his most famous work,
the Republic, are generally regarded as providing Platos own
philosophy, where the main character in effect speaks for
Plato himself. These works blend ethics, political philosophy,
moral psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics into an
interconnected and systematic philosophy. It is most of all
from Plato that we get the theory of Forms, according to
which the world we know through the senses is only an
imitation of the pure, eternal, and unchanging world of the
Forms. Plato's works also contain the origins of the familiar
complaint that the arts work by inflaming the passions, and
are mere illusions

Philosophy
The changing physical world is a poor, decaying copy
of a perfect, rational, eternal, and changeless
original.
The beauty of a flower is an imperfect imitation of
Beauty itself.
Other essences such as Justice is impossible in the
real world.
A geometrical shape such as a Circle is a
mathematical ideal.

PLATOS FORMS
According to Plato, things which fall under a
common name, like chair, or table, bed, must
have something in common By virtue of which
they are called by that name.
This something in common is the essence of that
kind of thing, which Plato calls the form or idea
of that thing.
Today, Platos forms or ideas are more commonly
called universals, and it is the nature of a
universal that it can have instances. Thus, there
can be any number of instances of chairs, tables,
or beds, and that which all chairs, for instance,
share is the essence of chair or chairness.

Platos Forms
Beauty, Justice, and the Circle are all examples of Forms or
Ideas.
Forms or universals are perfect ideals but they are also
more real than physical objects.
The world of Forms is rational and unchanging; the world of
physical appearances is changeable and irrational, and only
has reality to the extent that it succeeds in imitating the
Forms.
The mind or soul belongs to the ideal world; the body and its
passions to the physical world.
The best human life is one that strives to imitate the Forms as
closely as possible. That life is the life of the mind, the life of
the philosopher

PLATOS FORMS
A form or universal can be apprehended by the
mind, but not by the senses.
In apprehending the form of something, the mind
is acquainted with the reality of that thing, and
knows the truth about it.
Thus it is the mind which knows, not the senses,
and this is the beginning of rationalism in
philosophy.
Each concept named by a word such as bed has
its own single form or universal.

PLATOS FORMS
For Plato, the forms are more real than the
copies of them in the world of space and time.
Plato: The forms in nature are due to God,
whether from choice or necessity.
Here nature does not refer to the world of
space-time, but to the world of forms, which
is an abstract, spaceless, timeless reality.

Platos Forms
Only one form of each thing is possible, since, if two
forms of something like a bed existed, they would
each have bedness in common, and so there would
be a third form which each shared.
This third form would seem to be the real or ideal
form which the other forms have in common.
However, the first and third form would also have
bedness in common, and so there would be a fourth
form shared by the first and third form. But then the
form shared by the third and fourth form would have
bedness in common, and so a fifth form would be
needed to account for the bedness shared as
indicated.
This generates an infinite regress of forms, not a
single form, and because God knew this would result,
he/she created a single bed which is the form of bed.

THE INFINITE REGRESS OF FORMS


Bed 6

Bed 5

5
4
4

Bed 4

Bed 3

3
2
2

Bed 2

Bed 1

Bed 1 and bed 2 have bed 3 in common. Bed 2 and bed 3 have bed 4
in common. Bed 3 and bed 4 have bed 5 in common. Bed 4 and bed 5
have bed 6 in common, and so on, ad infinitum.

ART AND THE FORMS I


A carpenter makes a bed for use in accordance
with the form or idea of bed.
A carpenters bed is a copy of the form or idea of
bed. He does not make the form itself.
Plato calls an instance of a form or universal an
imitation of that form in being a copy of the
original. Hence a three-dimensional bed in spacetime is an imitation of the form of bed in the
abstract reality of Platos world of forms.

ART AND THE FORMS II


If a bed made by a carpenter is an imitation, then a
painting of a bed is an imitation of an imitation.
Platos view is the origination of the view of art as
imitation, and of the artist as imitator.
God is the maker of the form of bed, the bed of the
carpenter is a three-dimensional copy of this form,
and the painter of the bed is third in line who makes
a two-dimensional copy of the carpenters copy.

BEDS
THE FORM BED

A carpenters bed. For Plato,


such a bed is an imitation of
the form bed.

Vincent Van Goghs painting


of his bed, excerpted from his
painting Bedroom at Arles, 1888.
For Plato, a painting of a bed
represents an imitation of an
imitation.

PAINTING IS APPEARANCE, NOT REALITY


Plato says that you may look at a bed from
different points of view, obliquely or directly or from any other
point of view, and the bed will appear different, but there is no
difference in reality. All external world objects are seen, and
must be represented, in perspective, or from a particular point
of view. However, the mind grasps the form of the bed from no
point of view, and we grasp that a bed is an instance of the
form of bed no matter from what angle it is viewed. This is
what Plato means by saying that there is no difference in
reality. Thus painting can only give appearance, not reality. For
Plato, philosophy acquaints us with reality, not art.

ART AND THE FORMS III


For Plato, art is an imitation of an imitation like Van
Goghs bed - and hence goes in the wrong direction from
truth.
Art takes us away from, not closer to, the truth. For Plato,
it is through philosophy that we know the truth, not art.
Painting is not even an imitation of things as they are, but
only as they appear. And Plato thinks that The real artist .
. . would be interested in realities, and not in imitations.
Painting gives us, not truth, but appearance.
According to Plato, the arts, such as painting, are
concerned with appearance, whereas philosophy is
concerned with the truth. That is a main point of his
allegory of the cave, in which the prisoners of the cave
take shadows to be the truth when, in fact, they are only
appearances.

Platos View:
Art is Essentially Mimesis

Art was useless:


It serves no useful purpose in society.
As a "Imitation of Nature" it added no knowledge.
No intellectual value(The same value could be added by simply by
holding up a mirror to the world which would be far
less costly.)
According his metaphysics, art is an imitation of an
imitation, thus barely real at all.

Platos View:
Art is Essentially Mimesis
Art was potentially dangerous for several reasons:
A.) Art was essentially deceptive.

The whole aim of art was to deceive. Success was


achieved when the spectator mistook an imitation for
reality.
Furthermore, artists were unconcerned with
facts/truth. It made no difference to artists nor to the
success of their works whether the images or stories
they depict were real or their messages true or good.

Platos View:
Art is Essentially Mimesis
Art was politically dangerous, a threat to the common good.
Similar to the point made earlier (c), Plato worried that
strong art which appeals to emotions stirs up negative
emotions which we are trying to control.
But this is more than just a problem for the individual. For
a people with a history of "mania," strong, emotionstirring art is rightly seen as a threat to the good of
state/community.
It was, therefore correctly the concern of government.

Platos View:
Art is Essentially Mimesis
Art was potentially dangerous for several
reasons:
A.) Art was essentially deceptive.
B.) Art was mainly concerned with sensual pleasure.
C.) Further, Art was psychologically de-stabilizing. (for
the individual)
D.) Art leads to immorality.
E.) Art was politically dangerous. (threat to the common
good)

Platos View
there is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry; of
which there are many proofs, such as the saying of 'the
yelping hound howling at her lord,' or of one 'mighty in the
vain talk of fools,' and 'the mob of sages circumventing
Zeus,' and the 'subtle thinkers who are beggars after all'; and
there are innumerable other signs of ancient enmity
between them. Notwithstanding this, let us assure our
sweet friend and the sister arts of imitation that if she will
only prove her title to exist in a well-ordered State we shall
be delighted to receive her --we are very conscious of her
charms; but we may not on that account betray the truth.

Platos View
If her defense fails, then, my dear friend, like other persons
who are enamoured of something, but put a restraint
upon themselves when they think their desires are
opposed to their interests, so too must we after the
manner of lovers give her up, though not without a
struggle. We too are inspired by that love of poetry which
the education of noble States has implanted in us, and
therefore we would have her appear at her best and
truest; but so long as she is unable to make good her
defense, this argument of ours shall be a charm to us,
which we will repeat to ourselves while we listen to her
strains; that we may not fall away into the childish love of
her which captivates the many.

Platos View
At all events we are well aware that poetry
being such as we have described is not to
be regarded seriously as attaining to the
truth; and he who listens to her, fearing
for the safety of the city which is within
him, should be on his guard against her
seductions and make our words his law.

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