Tawfik. M .

Gab-Allah

Student at Zewail City of Science and Technology

201601366

"The relative and the absolute

in aesthetic experience"

Philosophical Thinking 101

 In the last two centuries, the world has witnessed many radical changes

that affected all aspects of life. From People's daily treatments to their beliefs and

concepts, many things have been changed forever. Due to the advances in science and

technology, the main attitude of humanity has been shifted towards practicality and

efficiency. Now, there are claims that beauty is what can be described as "relatable to

cultural conventions". This means that beauty is subjective, and for example, a piece

of art could be beautiful in one culture and not beautiful in another. Others claim that

a beautiful art is what most people appreciate and find bleasant. Others even claim

that beauty is an old fashioned concept that has been invented by metaphysicists to fit

in their "harmonious world". Despite all of these claims, it is still possible that

elements of beauty and the aesthetic value are the same, and it is only the aesthetic

experience may be dependent on cultural conventions.

Henry D. Aiken mentioned that setting definitions for art can lead to

ignoring important values in it. Furthermore, relevance in art means that an artist can

only achieve an aesthetic value if the meaning of his work can be obtained. And this
leads to only accepting shallow works. Now there is a distinct difference between a

relevant work and an easy relatable one. Relevance in art means that the work has met

the main criteria that are required to define it as art. For example, judging a piece of

music can be done by investigating the elements that formed it. Critiques mostly can

define a piece of music as being good, beautiful or brilliant independent of their

feeling about the work. To make a review of a piece of music you need firstly, to

identify the scales that it has been written on, for example minor scale, major scale,

pentatonic scale. Each scale is known to give a certain feeling, ie minor scale and

minor chords produces a feeling of sadness or grief while major scale is happier.

Writing a piece on one of these scales or a combination of them can make a good

piece that meets the standards of music. However, some artists could make

amendments to these scales that make the piece introduce more than one feeling at the

same time or changing the atmosphere of the scale. For example, the fifth note in the

standard minor scale can be replaced by a flat note which makes the piece more

energetic so you can obtain a meaning of grief and rage at the same time. Pieces like

this are beautiful and brilliant because they introduced new ways of making music

combining a mixture of meanings that make it more complex and deep, still it has met

the basic criteria of a piece of music that is to be harmonious and rhythmic. Talking

about complexity, it's not necessary for an artwork to be understood; in fact,

ambiguity and complexity (to a certain extent) are considered an aesthetic value in

any beautiful artwork. Of course making an art work way too complex that it fails to

give any meaning to the audience will not make it beautiful at all, but beautiful works

are genius that they give rise to new meanings/ feelings that is is not necessary to get

those feelings from the first exposure to the piece. For example, there are genius

directors like Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, Jean Luc Godard,…etc. A lot of
their movies discussed philosophical problems that are mostly symbolized in their

scenes without stating it directly. In Ingmar's master piece "Winter's light" a monk's

friend has committed suicide because he could not beer "The indifference of our

father to all the evil in this world" then a symbol of Jesus crucifix has appeared. The

director wanted to say that the greatest pain Jesus had suffered was not being crucified

or tortured, but being forsaken by his father. Of course a meaning like this may take

more than one exposure to the scene to understand it, despite of its stunning beauty.

There are other claims that a more objective perspective to study art is by

studying the techniques it uses. But, how can we define the beauty of the great

pyramid in terms of the techniques that the Pharaohs used to build it. It's true that they

exerted a huge effort to cut the stones from the quarries in Aswan then carry it to Giza

without any advanced means of transportation. Also, the construction of the Great

pyramid has been mostly perfect that it could standstill throughout all of these years.

Although it was the tallest building for centuries and it was mostly impossible to

construct something like this, but still all of these elements can describe the beauty of

the process of construction not the beauty of the pyramid itself. It doesn’t describe

how magnificent is its design nor the symmetry in it. Also it doesn’t describe the

spiritual beauty of the ancient Egyptian religions and rituals. Even if we define the

beauty of human artworks in terms of their techniques, how can we define the beauty

of nature? Does it make sense to describe the beauty of a mountain to be the beauty of

the erupting volcanoes which threw lava that precipitates and makes mountains? More

generally, it doesn’t make sense at all to say that the beauty of our universe is the

beauty of the big bang, or the beauty of biological systems is the beauty of the process

of evolution. On the other hand, there are many artworks that are so simple in their
structure yet they are beautiful. Moreover, an artistic movement like "minimalism"

depends on very simple techniques to produce art, yet there are many great minimalist

artworks like Philip Glass' opera "Akhenaten". Hence, a beautiful artwork doesn’t

necessarily use complex techniques, a work could be redundant or boring while it uses

very complex techniques and vice versa.

Another proposition is that judging an artwork doesn’t affect its aesthetic

response. For example, critiques can describe many neo-pop songs by the absence of

creativity and lack of meaning. However, there are still millions of people who find

these songs beautiful, so it should be considered beautiful. Here we should consider

Kant's genius distinction between "fine" and "agreeable art". In his book "critique of

the power of judgment", Kant defines agreeable art: That it produces pleasure only

through sensations and is not beautiful in itself. This definition can be applied to show

that it's not necessary for an artwork that appeals to many people to be beautiful.

Artworks are not necessarily an entertainment, people listen to neo-pop songs in

celebrations and festivals, and it suits the mode they want to get into. Agreeable

works are works that fulfill the audience' needs, but you can't wonder about the beauty

or the geniusity them, it's all made for a certain moment, it can't introduce new

meanings nor convey a feeling. So, that’s the case for many of the mainstream songs,

movies,….etc, they are not artworks, and so having a huge audience doesn’t mean

that they are necessarily beautiful. However, there are many beautiful art works that

can be considered as an entertainment also. For example, The monologues of "Ismail

Yassin" are joyful and entertaining, Also they have meaningful script, the jokes, the
gestures, the dances, are all creative that they have reflections on the real life of

society. Another example is Ahmed Helmy's movie "Assal Aswad" it's a comedy film

that it is so entertaining to watch yet it criticizes the negative aspects in the Egyptian

society and system. Moreover, one can find astonishing beauty in folk music that was

originally made for celebrations and wedding parties like "Sesemeya" that is popular

in canal cities and "Serat Al helaly" that is being performed by Upper Egypt locals.

So, an agreeable work is made to please sensations of certain class of people, so being

popular among those classes doesn’t make the work beautiful.

Hence, Aesthetic experience in art and beauty can be absolute regarding its

elements. This means that the concept of beauty is universal ,i.e what makes an art

beautiful is the same as what makes it beautiful in another culture. The only thing that

varies is the method that each culture has used to fulfill beauty. That’s why; cultural

relativism has a role in the aesthetic experience that it's sometimes necessary to study

the nature of a culture before studying its art. For example, you may need to know

about the history of the French revolution before seeing a painting that describes it.

This knowledge is needed only to be able to perceive the aesthetic value. Although

studying the culture affects the Aesthetic experience, it doesn’t affect the aesthetic

value in itself. For example, on the walls of many ancient Egyptian temples and

tombs, kings were pictured with the Goddess "Maat" spreading its wings above the

pharaoh. One can't understand the beauty of such a scene without getting involved in

the Egyptian mythology and knowing that "Maat" was the Goddess of knowledge, so

spreading its wings means that the Goddess has granted the king with knowledge and

wisdom. Another contemporary example is that many of the art works use the yellow

vests as a symbol of revolution and freedom, but someone in the future may not
understand those works if he\ she didn't know the history about it, that these yellow

vests refer to the uprisings that began in France in 2018. It’s the same case for a

Philosophical artwork; you can't find it beautiful without having a background in

philosophy. One can find this claim to be sounder if we refer to abstract art like

music, it doesn’t use any elements that depend on culture or language. Music only

describes feelings, that’s why for example a person from China will have the same

feeling of a person from Canada when they listen to Mozart's "Lacrymosa" or

Beethoven's "moonlight sonata" ,and even Pink Floyd's "comfortably numb". Music

can pass through all the layers of language, culture, ideologies,…etc. Unlike music,

Aesthetic experience of other types of art like literature or sculpture can be highly

affected by person's background and beliefs. Although the work may be beautiful in

itself, but those factors can hinder the audience from perceiving the beauty, and that’s

what also could be considered as relative from one to another. For example, a

conservative person may find a masterpiece painting like "Nude Woman and a Crying

angel" to be very unpleasant however its fascinating beauty. Also, a fanatic

communist may find beautiful constructions like palaces, theatres, operas, …etc, to be

just buildings that are built by people's money to entertain the bourgeoisies.

In a nut shell, although beauty can’t have a distinct definition, it can be found in

certain elements that are universal for each type of work. A beautiful work doesn't

necessarily need to be complex, but also it can't be shallow. Also, a beautiful work

needs to introduce its meaning in a beautiful way that finds its impression in the mind

of the audience and it doesn’t need to irritate their sensations. The impression about

an art work or the "Aesthetic response" is subjected to relative factors like culture

conventions and the persons' own background and ideology.

Reference list:

1- Crowley, D. J. (1958). Aesthetic judgment and cultural relativism. The Journal of Aesthetics

and Art Criticism, 17(2), 187-193.

2- Ducasse, C. J. (1969). The Subjectivity of Aesthetic Value. repr. in Introductory Readings

in Aesthetics, ed. J. Hospers, London.

3- Aiken, H. D. (1947). The concept of relevance in aesthetics. The Journal of Aesthetics and

Art Criticism, 6(2), 152-161.

4- Tsugawa, A. (1961). The objectivity of Aesthetic Judgments. The Philosophical

Review, 70(1), 3-22. doi:10.2307/2183402

5- Kant, I. (2001). Critique of the Power of Judgment. Cambridge University Press.

6- Nattvardsgästerna, IMDB, Ingmar Bergman, Ingmar Bergman, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar

/Björnstrand, Gunnel Lindblom, 1963, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057358