Verbal Art across Cultures

m LITERATUR UND ANTHROPOLOGIE

Im Auftrag des Sonderforschungsbereichs
herausgegeben von Gerhart v. Graevenitz
Band 10 . 2001
511
The Aesthetics and Proto-Aesthetics of Communication

edited by
Hubert Knoblauch and Helga Kotthoff

~ Gunter Narr Verlag Ttibingen

Neil Roughley

Of Dentistry and Artistry

The Concept and some Contexts of the Aesthetic

In the context of a sociolinguistic discussion of the Aesthetics anti Proto-Aesthetics

o[ Communication, it seems to me, as a philosopher, worthwhile trying to shed
some light on how we might understand the concept of 'the aesthetic'. In re-
cent times a number of social theorists and cultural critics have used the term
to formulate claims about changes in the value-orientation of members of our
societies. An example of this is the slogan "the aestheticisation of the life-
world".1 The claim seems to be that certain kinds of properties are being given
a new evaluative prominence in the everyday life of at least certain members of
our societies. As a philosopher it isn't my job to ask whether these claims are
correct. I merely want to ask here whether it is possible to isolate conceptually
the kinds of properties about which such claims are being made. My answer will
be that a sociological trend to 'aestheticisation' in contemporary western cultural
formations would entail the increased production of conditions conducive to a
focus on essentially first-hand, qualitative experience. Similarly, what is aesthetic
about certain pervasive forms of communication plausibly present in all human
societies is their triggering of this kind of experience, whether this be directly
causal or by means of frarning devices which institute norms of attention.
What I have to say is structured along the following lines: I begin with a his-
torical look at the introduction of 'aesthetics' as a technical term. I contend
that its significance grounds in the irreducibility of first-person experience (1). I
compare the analysis on these lines with a proposal which sees 'aesthetic' as
primarily a term used to distinguish 'showing' from 'stating' symbolic func-
tions (2). I then argue that when we are talking about the aesthetic, we are
talking first and foremost about a form of value (3), and that the peculiar form
of value in question has components which are close to both theoretical (4) and
practical (5) value. This anthropological suggestion is set into relation with the
semiotic analysis of the concept of the 'aesthetic' sphere advanced by Nelson
Goodman (6). I then attempt to explain the relationship between aesthetic
experience, the aesthetic attitude, aesthetic objects and aesthetic qualities (7).
And finally (8), I turn to the question of how the aesthetic, thus conceived,
relates to the poetic function, as conceived by Jakobson.

1 Cf. for instance: Rdiger Bubner, "Mutmaliche Umstellungen im Verhltnis von Leben
und Kunst"; and, "sthetisierung der Lebenswelt" , both in his sthetische Erfahrung,
Frankfurt 1989, 121ff., 143ff.; Axel Honneth, "sthetisierung der Lebenswelt" , in: Desinte-
gration. Bruchstcke einer soziologischen Zeitdiagnose, Frankfurt 1994, 29ff.
122 Neil Roughley
1. Our starting point is the idea of the 'sensual'. For Kant, aesthetics is quite
simply the "theory of the senses" ("Sinnenlehre").2 Understood this way, 'aes-
thetics' clearly cannot be identified with the philosophy of the ans. The t~e-
ory of the sens es belongs first and foremost to the theory of knowledge, w~ch
in Kant's view has the bipartite structure of a theory of the senses (aestheucs)
plus a theory of the understanding OogiC).3As we are, permanently 0volved in
processes of assigning sense-impressions to concepts m o~der to onentate our-
selves in the world, the difficulty would actually be to fmd some area of hu-
man activity in which we are not 'aesthetically' involv~d. This. consequen~e,
which has a somewhat bizarre ring, is a result of the philosophical context m
which 'aesthetics' was first introduced as a technical term.
As is well known, the philosopher responsible for this step in the eighteenth
century was Alexander Baumgarten. It is important that Baumgarten's move w~
directed against the reigning Rationalist conception of knowledge, as formulated m
the writings of Descartes and Leibniz. Baum~arten intended, ~ one fell swoop, to
give philosophical dignity to a number of different areas which had be~n held to
be equal1y unworthy of genuine philosophical attention. In European elghteenth-
century Rationalism, the criteria of clar:it; and 4istinctness permltt~d only thos~
entities whose components can be explicltly deslgnated - ~xemplarl~Y: geo~e,tn-
cal figures - recognition as objects of ~owledge. ,Acqu~tance v.:1th empmcal
objects, on the other hand, involves havmg sense lffipreSSlOns,which are them-
selves unanalyzable. Like geometrical figures, sense experiences rnight be recog-
nizable if we have them a second time. However, we are, so it seems, unable to
provide necessary and suffi~ient ~onditi0I?-s for ~heir ,instantiation. T~e. c?rr~
sponding concepts are thus clear (recogmzable, ldentifiable), ~)Utnot. dis~mct
(definable). This means that the intraduction of the concepts m quesuon lS de-
pendent on ostension: "look at the x over there!"; "sniff thatl"; "listen to this!"
One aspect of Baumgarten's intention, then, was simp~y to exten~ ~he
boundaries of what can be seen as genuine knowledge to mclude empmcal
concepts. That intention is one which is not coherently possible for anyon~ to
share taday. Whatever certain philosophical sceptics may say, the na~ral SClen-
ces have become our paradigm of knowledge. What Baumgarten de~lgnated .by
his terrninological transformation of the Greek atcr~n1C6<; (meanmg: h~v:ng
to do with feeling or perception) would today not only cover the empmcal
sciences, including just about the entirety of empirical psychology, but also
epistemology, the philosophy of science and the p~ilosophy ?f mind. .
Once this is clear, one wonders whether anything at allls to be gamed by
making use of a predicate originally used to situate the arts in ~ f~eld of enqui,ry
which has long since become so differentiated that we have difflculty concelV-
ing it as a single field at all. This doubt can be reinforced by a I?-umber .of fur-
ther considerations, of which I just want to name one here: Smce Anstotle,
2 Immanue1 Kant, Critique offudgement, trans\. J. c. Meredith, Oxford 1978, first version of
the Introduction, XI,
J Immanuel Kant, Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, trans\. Norman Kemp Smith,
Houndmills/London 1989 B 76.
Of Dentistry and A rtistry 123
sl?e~ifi~ally linguis~ic forms of art were already dealt with in the independent
disClplines of poeucs and rhetoric, so that throwing these together with other
forms of art, never mind with all the other perceptual phenomena, threatens
to b~ ~ step in the direction of lack of differentiation rather than of conceptual
preclSlon. D? we then have here what we must see as a purely historical con-
Ju~cture, or lS there some systematic connection which would justify tying the
philosophy of the arts to the theory of perception?
Baumgarten, it seems to me, was onto something substantial. There is indeed
something. about perception which connects it to experience of the arts, al-
though .nelther phenomenon is anything like exhausted by this common fea-
ture. It ls,.h~wever" a fea~r~ ,to which humans characteristically attach a high
value. This lS the zrreduCtbzlzty 01first-hand experience. There are conditions
under which the subject of an experience cannot be substituted by someone
else, however much such a substitute explains what they saw, h~ard or felt. Of
course, there are many everyday situations in which beliefs we arrive at as a
result of perception could equally weH be acquired by inference or second-
hand,description ..The pragmatic role of perceptuaHy induced beliefs in every-
day hfe makes thlS the usual case, although there are times when we want the
certainty only attainable through direct perception. In the arts, the situation is
reverse,d..~ e may read a review of a theatre or musical performance, a film or
an exhlbmon and feel weH-informed. Clearly however, this is no substitute for
actually witnessing the event oneself. In this respect, it turns out that the arts
a~e cultur~l syst~ms whic~ exploit a significant dimension of everyday expe-
nence, a dimenslOn that, m the course of everyday life, can be foregrounded
to a greater or lesser extent. This dimension is foregrounded when people
pa,:!p'articular at~ention to their experiences as their own experiences. They do
thlS m the expenence of a beautiful sunset, and more mundanely in sex and
eating, as weH as when feeling cold or being subject to pain by an incompe-
tent dentist. In th~ l~tter kind of situation, one of the things we expect from
a.c?~petent denus~ lS that she has taken precautions which exclude the pos-
slblhty of t~at partlcula~ form of aesthetic experience. The appropriate kind
of preventauve measure lS, of course, known as an 'anaesthetic'.
In sum~ ,,:,hat I think Baumg.arten was onto is the fact that human persons are
charactensucal1y able, and at urne unable not to take on a perspective in which
~ng a subject 01exJJe:ienceoneself matters. What that precisely involves, in par-
t~cular, what on~ologlcal and me,taphysical status the contents of such essential1y
first-hand expenence have, contmues to be the object of heated debates within
analytic philosophy. In 4 below, I will say a word or two about one dimension
of thes~ debates which is of particular importance for an understanding of the
aestheuc. C?ne way?r ano~her, what can hardly be reasonably disputed is, firstly,
that there lS somethmg umque for human persons about their own experiences
and, secondly, that this is something to which they attach particular value.
2. There is an alternative way in which one might attempt to make sense of
what Baumgarten was getting at. Shying away from fuzzy talk about irreduci-
ble features of subjectivity, one could see the distinction between 'distinct' and
124 Neil Roughley
'confused' perception or ideas as best understood in terms of modes of sym-
bolisation or reference. A predicate or concept would be 'clear' if we can pro-
vide some precise condition of its correct instantiationj correspondingly, it
would be 'confused' if it can only be 'defined' ostentively.4 This non-mentalistic
transposition of the distinction to the level of semantics opens up a way of
characterising the arts which seems to retain the spirit of Baumgarten's sugges-
tion. This is in terms of the distinction between showing and stating. The arts
are all forms of symbolisation of which it is the case that - even if language is
their medium - their point is not propositional. Even when a work of literature
consists entirely of sentences which have the form of assertions5, the truth or
falsity of those assertions cannot be the point of the exercise. Of course, non-
propositionality is insufficient as a characterisation of the aesthetic sphere. The
'performative' dimension of language-use, to which we can attend by abstract-
ing from a speech act's propositional content6, need have nothing to do with
the aesthetic. But if we are indeed dealing with a linguistic work of art - and I
think the same goes for forms of everyday verbal artistry, such as joke-telling-
then its sentences have to be put together in such a way that they show the
reader something that exceeds their propositional content.7
T aking the distinction between showing and stating as fundamental has the
advantage of focussing on a dimension which is fundamental not only to the
arts, but also to a whole set of everyday practices which one might want to see
as proto-aesthetic. I can show you the way something tasted by giving you a
sampie of it to try yourselfj a child might draw a picture to show you what her
friend looks likej or she might do a frantic dance to show you how excited she
is, or perhaps how excited her friend was yesterday. Maybe she might even
show you such things by dancing without being aware that she is showing you
them. An obvious disadvantage of the approach, however, is that it cannot
account for an aesthetics of non-artefacts. If there is no intentionally acting
being behind an object, then there is no way it can show me anything. T aken
literally, it would imply the necessity of some sort of super-mind behind natu-
ral phenomena, if one wants to make sense of an aesthetics of nature. I think
one should attempt to do so, and so doing is clearly in line with Baumgarten's
project. This is one simple reason why the concept of the aesthetic should be
grounded in a notion of the experiencing subject, rather than in a distinction
between types of symbolisation. There is a second, more substantial reason, to
which I shall turn below. Before doing so, it is worth pausing for abrief meth-
Cf. GottfriOOGabriel, "Klar und deutlich", in: Jrgen Mittelstra (00.), Enzyklopdie Philosophie ticular specifications. An analysis of this kind would then be valid if there
und WlSSeI1SChafistheorie,vo!. 2, MannheimlViennaiZurich 1984, 403; Definitionen und Inter-
essen. ber die praktischen Grundlagen der Definitionslehre, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1972, loH.
S Many poems fulfil this criterion, as anyone who reads Wordsworth's "Lyrical Ballads" or
Eliot's "Poems 1920" can confirm.
6 John Langshaw Austin, How to Do Things with Words, Oxford 1962, 14.
7 Gottfried Gabriel, "Erkenntnis in Wissenschaft, Philosophie und Dichtung. Argumente fr
einen komplementren Pluralismus", in Logik und Literatur. Erkenntnisformen von
Dichtung, Philosophie und Wissenschaft, Stuttgart 1991, 214ff.
Of Dentistry and A rtistry 125
odological reflection on what is precisely going on when someone attempts, as
I am doing, to say how we ought to understand the term 'aesthetic'.
3. What precisely are the conditions 01validity of an analysis such as that which
is being proposed here? In spite of the widespread use of the term by cultural
critics in the media, 'aesthetic' is actually a technical term with no clear place
in everyday use. So the aim of an analysis cannot consist in the reconstruction
of some core meaning in ordinary language. Here, we have a different situation
to that which is the case in respect to the concept of art. With 'art', although
there is disagreement about certain sorts of cases, we do have a very large set of
objects to which the label is applied with a great deal of consensus. There it is
the task of the conceptual analyst to mark and then attempt to explain the
boundaries of what falls under the concept. In the case of 'aesthetic', however,
we are looking for arguments for setting the boundaries in a certain way. Now
of course, in one sense, anyone can define anything in any way they like. So it
might seem that the entire exercise is something of a waste of time. What
might be the point of arguing for some kind of stipulative definition here?
In order to answer this, it again helps to take a look at the history of the
philosophical reflections in which the concept is implicated. A good case can
be made for the argument that the term only attains its peculiar significance at
the historical juncture where the concept of beauty loses its universal applica-
bility as the central value-predicate in the arts. For Baumgarten, beauty simply
is aesthetic perfection, what we are aiming at whenever we are in the aesthetic
sphere8 - actually a rather bizarre claim, when one considers everything that
belongs to that sphere in his conception. More significantly, it is precisely
Kant's analysis of beauty in the Critique 01]udgement which serves as a model
for an understanding of 'the aesthetic', long after the predicate 'beautiful' came
to appear appropriate only in the face of landscape and non-contemporary
forms of music and painting. If 'beauty' is in the meantime returning as a term
of commendation in western art, it is returning at the most as one positive
value-predicate amongst others. Beauty is one positive value within a set of
value-kinds which are to be distinguished in some way from moral and epis-
temic values. What is at stake then in the question of the definability of 'aes-
thetic' is the possibility of locating a central component of what is significant
about the arts in a broader context of forms of human valuation. Aesthetic
value is a sort 01value eminently accessible to beings constituted as humans are. Its
definition would have to be wide enough to include specific, possibly
merely local values such as beauty, without being restricted to such par-
indeed is such a form of value, a value which, firstly, constitutes at least a
central dimension of wh at is valuable in the arts and, secondly, extends
beyond the sphere of the artistic to take in both non-artefacts and artefacts
which have been granted no place within the institutions of the art-world.
8 Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Theoretische sthetik. Die grundlegenden Abschnitte aus der
''Aesthetican (1750/58), trans!. Hans Rudolf Schweizer, Hamburg 1988, 14.
126 Neil Roughley
The aesthetic would thus be a concept which helped to clarify what is valu-
able in the ans without being definitionally tied to them.9
The suggestion, then, is that the term 'aesthetic' is used to mark out a spe-
cific value-sphere, which in some way is to be distinguished from pragmatic,
moral and cognitive forms of value, even though there are, as we will see, con-
nections between the spheres thus analytically separated. The aesthetic is a
particular respect in which questions 01 relative goodness or badness may arise
within human experience. T 0 come back to the two related suggestions I have
sketched so far: this form of value could, on the one hand, appear to be the
value of a certain kind of showing, as opposed to stating. On the other hand,
and this is what I will continue to argue for, it could result from the strang
evaluative stand human persons tend to take towards what is involved in being
an irreplaceable subject of experience.
4. If the first suggestion were correct, aesthetic value would be of cognitive, or
at least quasi-cognitive character. Aesthetic experience would involve qualities
which - either in principle or for contingent or pragmatic reasons - would not
be exhaustively translatable into proposition al terms. There are two central
types of case which need to be distinguished here, although aesthetic artefacts
will typically mix the two. In the first, the limits of propositionality would
result either fram the contingent limits of oUf cognitive capacities or else from
the semantic openness of a symbolising object. Faced with a manifold, multiva-
lent or undecidable semantic system, conflicting, fragmentary, inconclusive pro-
positional attitudes are likely to be appropriate. In the second case, non-transla-
tability is grounded in the phenomenal qualities of what is shown. What is
shown is thus what something feels, looks, sounds or smells like. In other words,
the irreducibility of this kind of showing cannot itself avoid appealing to subjec-
tive experience. How it feels to have certain things shown to you may be de-
scribable in words, but, if it is a genuine example of the kind of cases being called
'aesthetic' here, it won't be completely communicable to you, if you're not on
the receiving end yourself Giving an explication of 'showing' thus leads us fairly
directly to the second suggestion: that is, that 'aesthetic' is a predicate charac-
terising forms of experience in which the subject of experience is irreplaceable.
A second remark ab out this form of showing is in order here, aremark
which also carries over to the characterisation of the aesthetic in terms of sub-
jective experience. It is controversial whether what is shown, or what is expe-
That one can simply side-step the problem of the conceptual gap between the aesthetic and
the arts, by dismissing the traditionalline of thinking which links the aesthetic to the ety-
mology of the word, is shown by the historical example of Hegel and the more recent, ana-
lytically orientated suggestion of Kutschera. Both simply use 'aesthetics' to designate the
philosophy of the arts (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegeI, Vorlesungen ber die Asthetik, I,
Werke 13, Frankfurt am Main 1970, I, 13; Franz von Kutschera, sthetik, Berlin/New
York 1989, 3). Hegels's reason for doing so is, of course, grounded in his philosophy of
history. Alan Goldman's - undiscussed - decision to impose the same restriction is all the
more surprising in the light of his extensive use of the implications of the etymology. Cf.
Alan H. Goldman, Aesthetic Value, Boulder, Colorado/Oxford 1995, 4f.
01Dentistry and A rtistry 127
rien~ed,. in such cases is to be characterised in cognitive terms at all. One sug-
gestlon lS that.we don't ~ctually come to know anything at all in this way, but
come to acqUlre a certam type of ability - to remember, to imagine and to
recognize a certain type of experience.10 Now, although an ability is not a form
of knowing that, it is often characterised as a form of knowing how. At stake
here is, however, not so much the question of when the term 'cognitive' is
aprrol?riate, but ~ather what mechanisms are at work in such perceptual cases.
It lS ~lghly plauslble that such recognitional abilities need to be explained ei-
the~ ~nl~erms of .a form of repre~~ntation that is independent of linguistic ca-
pacltles or else m terms of speclflCally phenomenal concepts, demonstratives
that derive their reference fram a kind of internal ostens ion (Uthat feature of
experience o~ly accessible to me").12 If either of these kinds of analysis are
cor~ect, th.en It ~oes make sense ~o talk in terms of the cognitive components
of lrreduclbly frrst-person expenence. Note a difference in the status of the
untranslatability resulting fram the complexity and ambiguity of symbolic
systems and that resulting from the experience of phenomenal qualities. In
pu.re ~xamples of the first case, the resulting cognitive surplus is going to be in
~nnclple ~ranslatabl~ .(although this will normally be a distinctively unattrac-
tlve exerclse). CogllltlVe components of the second kind, on the other hand,
are going to be either logically resistant to exhaustive linguistic reformulation,
or else only representable in terms of first-person propositions, which retain an
essentially private character.
5. Gr~)Unding the concept of the aesthetic in the irreplaceability of subjects of
expenence enables us to grasp a second central dimension of the aesthetic
which the alternative proposal cannot account for. A form of knowing i~
which the non-substitutability of the experiencing subject is a logical barrier to
full translation into publicly accessible meaning is only one way in which the
irreplaceability of the experiencing subject might be important. There are
othe~ forms of experience than merely epistemic (or quasi-epistemic). And if
the f~rst attempt to explicate aesthetic value sees it as a special form (or perhaps
9.uasl-form) of theorettcal value, these further forms of experience demonstrate
Its closeness to the practical sphere. Particularly prominent among such forms
are kinds of emotional affictedness. Being moved, for instance being moved to
lau~hte~ or tears, means finding a certain response pravoked in oneself, one
,;hlCh m the kind of case mentioned, involves a kind of behavioural expres-
Slon.. Althoug~ such behavioural manifestations are no necessary component
of bemg emotlonally affected - one can of course be moved without showing
10 Cf. David Lewis, "What Experience Teaches", in: Ned Block, Owen Flanagan and Gven
Gzeldere (eds.), The Nature o[ Consciousness. Philosophical Debates, Cambridge, MAILon-
don 1988, 591ff.
11 Cf. Michael Tye, "The Subjective Qualities of Experience", Mind 95 (1986), 13f.
12 Brian Loar, "Phenomenal States", in: Ned Block, Owen Flanagan and Gven Gzeldere (eds.),
1he Nature o[Consciousness. Philosophical Debates, ibid., 597ff.
128 Neil Roughley
it13 -, they are nevenheless closely bound up with the emotions. Moreover,
being moved may weIl provide us with a motive to act, that is, it may be caus-
ally connected not only to behavioural displays, but also to deliberate action.
On the other hand, this doesn't have to be the case: if we are moved to tears,
this may leave us either purified of the emotion or animated to act in some
relevant way. Which of these turns out to be the case will depend on funher
factors, but not on the nature of aesthetic experience itself. George Santayana
claimed that a life-form of pure consciousness, which only registered the quali-
ties of things, would be a life-form without aesthetic experience. That, he argued,
is only accessible to "emotional consciousness" .14 Because of the epistemic dimen-
sion of the aesthetic, largely captured by the idea of showing, Santayana was
wrong. Nevenheless, his pithy remark does pick out nicely what is a higWy
significant component of the aesthetic sphere. It is because this aspect of aesthetic
experience is imponant that emotivist theories of an had a cenain plausibility.
Clearly, however, an emotivist theory of aesthetic experience is inadequate as an
inclusive theory. Such an inclusive theory, which needs to take account of both
cognitive and emotive components, has to take as its staning point the concept
of an irreplaceable subject of experience. This also enables us to stick to the ety-
mology, according to which sensual qualities are at the centre of concern, whilst
still distinguishing specifically aesthetic concerns from those of epistemology.
Aesthetic value, then, rests in the peculiar value of being a subject of one's
own experience. There is aesthetic experience because there are individual
centres of perception and feeling. This entails that all sentient beings fulfil a central
condition for being susceptible to aesthetic experience. However, the assignment
of positive value to ones irreducibly first-hand experiences presupposes fulfilling
a set of funher conditons. Central among these are, firstly, the capacity to step
back reflectively from ones own immediate experience and, secondly, the capacity
for evaluation. Aesthetic experience is a dimension of the life of human persons
because of the specific conjunction of capacities that characterize the life-form of
such individuals. On the one hand, each one of us is both able to, and unable not
to, experience the world from a specific point of view that is irreducibly her or
his own. On the other hand, we can, every now and then, step back and recog-
nise precisely that, a recognition which goes hand in hand with recognising its
givenness for other such persons. Finally, we have enormous difficulty not in-
vesting the type of experience thus focussed on with considerable value.1S
6. Such an analysis, which grounds the aesthetic in immediate, non-substituti-
ble subjective experience, has appeared unsatisfactory to cenain modern philo-
sophers, who, understandably enough, would like to transform the somewhat
13 Pace theoretical positions inspired by a certain reading of the later Wittgenstein, e.g. Rom Harre,
Pbysu:al Being. A Theory for a Corporeal Psychology, Oxford/Cambridge, MA 1994, 142ff.
14 George Samayana, 7be Sense of &auty Being the Outlines of Aesthetic 7beory, Cambridge,
MAILondon 1988, 15. Cf. Arthur Danto's Introduction, ibid., xixff.
15 Otherwise, those world-views which claim that we can, and should, overcome the "prin-
cipium individuationis", for instance as it manifests itself in our susceptibility to pain,
would not need to recommend such rigorous techniques in order to overcome it.
Of Dentistry and Artistry 129
messy talk of subjective experience into something more scientifically exact.
One such suggestion comes from Nelson Goodnian, who analyses the aesthetic
in semiotic terms. He explains the distinction of showing from saying by the
conjunction of the two semiotic characteristics of exemplification and (syntaetic
and semantic) density. In exemplification, a symbol both possesses a property and
is singled out to stand for that property. A tailor's swatch exemplifies the texture
and colour of a piece of fabric; a painting might similarly exemplify colour,
texture, shape contrasts, etc.; language-use can exemp1ify features such as
rhythm, prosody or the way language is generally used in specific contexts. Syn-
taetic density characterises a signifying scheme whose characters are so ordered
that between each two there is always a third. This feature is possessed by 'ana-
logue' thermostats and drawings, but not by the alphabet, a musical score or a
digital watch. Semantic density, flllally, is given when the ordering of the set of
items denoted sirnilarly always yields a third between each two. Because reality is
in general not divided up into discrete units, the only symbol systems which are
free from semantic density are higWy artificial systems, where the class of items
that can be referred to contains no overlaps, being instead completely atomised.
Goodman argues that the application of these semiotic taols allows a demys-
tification and rational reconstruction of the characteristics traditionally associ-
ated with aesthetic experience. Syntactic density, typified by painting, and high
semantic density, also to be found in literature and music (a cenain level of
semantic density characterizes all language-use), explain what is traditionally
seen as the 'ineffability' of the aesthetic, its irreducibility to propositional con-
tent. And the claim that I have formulated as the necessity of first-hand experi-
ence, the 'immediacy' of the aesthetic, is to be reconstrueted in terms of
exemplification. This reconstruction is to be seen as corrective, according to
Goodman, because it reveals the essentially hermeneutic nature of aesthetic
processes. Immediacy is an illusion, because exemplification, like denotation, is
a case of a symbol standing for something else - in this case, of a sampie stand-
ing for a property. If the recipient doesn't read the exemplifying symbol in this
way, as pointing beyond itself, then there will be no experience wonh men-
tioning and cenainly none with any special value.16
There is a lot to be said for Goodman's analysis, although this is not the
place to do so in any detail. One of its great advantages is that it provides a
detailed explanation of why in most cases the irreplaceability of the subject of
experience correlates with an object which is also in some sense irreplaceable.17
In the context of the present discussion, it is imponant to note three qualifica-
tions with respect to its status. Firstly, Goodman's declared object of interest is
'the aesthetic' dimension of symbol systems, primarily those of the various
fine ans. Thus he deliberately excludes all those paradigmatic forms of aes-
16 See Nelson Goodman, lAnguages of Art. An Approa,ch to a Theory ofSymbols, Indianapolis
1976. For exemplification, SOff.;for syntactic density, 136; for semantic density, 152ff.; for
the semantic density (and thus 'proto-aesthetic' character) of everyday language, 199ff; and
for his rational reconstruction of the showing/telling distinction, 232ff., 252ff. Cf. also his
"When is Art?" in: Ways ofWorldmaking, Indianapolis 1988, 57-70.
17 On this point, see lAnguages of Art, chapter m, ibid., 99ff.
130 Neil Roughley
thetic experience with non-artefaets. Of course, he could argue that we only get
a kick out of the experience of a beautiful sunset because we associate some-
thing else with it. As an exclusive claim this would, I think, involve an under-
estimation of the strength of certain causal processes.
Secondly, Goodman's reconstruction of the idea of immediacy via the notion
of exemplification, although a valuable contribution to our understanding of the
reception of artworks, does not reconstruct the core notion of non-substitutable
first-hand experience. Irrespective of whether the presentation of certain formal
qualities does its work by means of symbolisation, thus breaking the intentional
focus on what is present, we still attach a high premium to being there - precisely
in order to experience the unique quality of being subject to thoseprocessesoneself
Wehave here a central point at which one can see the importance of the notion
of the aesthetic for an understanding of the workings both of the arts and of
other social practices: if you don't see the eclipse or the performance, read the
book, attend the funeral, match or political rally yourself, then you are going to
be missing something. The future regret which can be caused by missing out on
any one of these events grounds, at least partly, in the specific and irreducible
value that humans attach to forms of first-hand experience. The social and cul-
tural pressures obviously at work in these cases18are not the whole story.
Finally, when we are dealing with syntactically and semantically structured
artefacts - whether in the arts or in everyday communicative contexts - and
when we can agree that exemplification and density are significantly at work,
then we are still faced with the highly pertinent question: What is the point of
such processes? Goodman's answer is that their significance is exclusively cog-
nitive. Exemplification is a specific mode of enabling access to the way things
are; density involves the transportation of an inexhaustible complex of infor-
mation, which excites curiosity and spurs on to the joy of discovery.19 As my
remarks in the previous section make clear, this is a one-sided view of the mat-
ter. Aesthetic experience has components which are not only (quasi-)cognitive,
but also proto-practical. Although, as Aristotle knew, there is a great deal of
pleasure to be had from cognitive processes,2 there is something ridiculously
rationalistic about the claim that all aesthetic pleasure is to be reduced to such
processes. Cognitive disorientation can cause specific forms of fascination or
excitement. And certain sounds or sound-patterns and forms themselves cause
pleasure or displeasure in us, independently of whether they stand for any-
thing else. Again, those causal processes will themselves often have a cultural
history.21 But that doesn't alter the fact that their effects may be the results of
18 Analysed in detail by Bourdieu for the sphere of the art-world in terms of 'distinctions' in
his La distinction. Critique sociale du jugement, Paris 1975. Obviously, the pressures on
members of societies to 'be there' on specific occasions can be of multifarious kinds.
19 Languages of Art, ibid., 255ff.
20 Aristotle, On the Art ofPoetry 1448b 13f., in: Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Classical Literary
Criticsm; Harmondsworth 1977,35.
21 Cf. Wilfried van Damme, "Universality and Cultural Particularity in Visual Aesthetics",
in: Neil Roughley (ed.), Being Humans. Anthropological Universality and Particularity in
Transdisciplinary Perspectives, Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2000, 259-283.
Of Dentistry and A rtistry 131
stimuli combining with specific dispositions, processes which circumvent any
further intentional directedness.
7. The approach I am suggesting has meant that a notion of experience has
been placed at the centre of the analysis: 'aesthetic' is primarily a predicate
applying to experience. But of course, we often find it applied to oth~r
sorts of individuals. In particular, philosophers like to talk of 'the aesth~tlc
attitude', as weIl as of 'aesthetic qualities' and 'aesthetic objeets'. Accordmg
to my analysis, these uses are to be seen as derivative.
First, the aesthetic attitude. Like aesthetic experience, this is clearly located
on the subjective side of things. There is, however, an important difference:
However much preparation goes into the production of an experience, in the
end it has to be undergone, to use Dewey's term.22 In this it differs from an
attitude.23 Although an attitude can be causally brought about in someone
without them wanting to take it on and they can even have a certain attitude
without being aware of it, nevertheless in general an attitude is a way of attend-
ing which we see as subject to the control of the person who has it. If it is de-
manded of people, they are usuaIly a?le to take on a more serious attit~de
towards a task or a more respectful attitude towards aperson. Now, there iS a
tradition in the philosophy of art which places the aesthetic attitude at the
centre of the analysis. In this tradition, the aesthetic attitude is conceptualized
as a way of attending characterised by disengagement from practical interest
and, as is sometimes added, from cognitive orientation.24 This characterisation
of what is aesthetic about the attitude in question is inadequate for two rea-
sons. Firstly, it is purely negative and so fails to provide us with any i?-forn~a-
tion about what sort of value we are after when we take on the attitude m
question. Secondly, it makes the disjunction with the practical an~ the co?ni-
tive a matter of definition, whereas our reflections have made it plausible
that aesthetic experience can have both a (quasi-)cognitive and a (proto-)
practical dimension.25 The aesthetic attitude, in the analysis I am offering, is
22 Cf. John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosopby [1920], in: The Middle Works Bd. 12,
Carbondale/Edwardsville 1982, 129ff.;Art as Experience [1934], New York 1980, 43ff.
23 Clearly, this everyday language use of 'attitude' i~ to be dist~guished ~rom th.e ter~no-
logical use now current in the philosophy of mmd, according to WhiCh all mtentlonal
states, above all believing and desiring, are 'propositional attitudes'. .
24 Kam provides the paradigm for this characterisation of th: ~esthetic, pa~icularly. m the
first and second moments of the judgement of taste, where It IS conceptualised as dIsmter-
ested and non-conceptual (Critique of Judgement, ibid., B3-B32). Modern variants are put
forward by Edward Bullough, in "Psychical Distance as a Factor in Art ~d Aestheti~ Prin-
ciple", British Journal ofPsychology V (1912-13), 87-118, and Jerome Stolmtz, Aesthetlcs and
the Philosopby 0/Art Criticism. A Critical Introductior:, ~o~don 1960. ..
25 How we precisely should draw the conceptual distmctlons between the co~mtlve, the
practical and the aesthetic depends on how the former two concepts are precisely under-
stood. If the cognitive is definitionally tied to the propositional, then the aesthetic can only
be quasi-cognitive. If the practical is, as in Kam, definitionally tied to freedom, then the
aesthetic will be at most proto-practical. I leave these issues undecided. What is, however,
c1earwithout any further definitional ado is that the aesthetic sphere, in the broad, anthro-
132 Neil Roughley
merely a way of attending to elements of a situation which enables the subject
in question to experience them aesthetically.
The conceptual dependence on the notion of aesthetic experience is also to
be found in talk of aesthetic objects or qualities. Certain characteristics of things
are particularly conducive to bringing about the kind of experience in which
the irreducibility of the first-person perspective is foregrounded. The aesthetic
attitude can actually be taken at any moment and towards virtually anything,
which includes the possibility of its appearance on occasions where it is inap-
propriate for other - moral or practical - reasons.26 Objects with aesthetic
qualities are objects in the presence of which it is worthwhile focussing on what
is only accessible to an irreplaceable subject of experience. That might mean
someone has the choice of focussing on the object in that way. It might also
mean that the mere presence of the object causes the person to see it in that
perspective. The experience of being overawed by certain natural phenomena -
those that have traditionally been described as 'sublime' - would be an exam-
pIe of such an effect. It is important to realise that we are not talking about any
absolute division here. What may transpose someone in one situation into a
state in which she is sensitive to particular phenomena may, under other con-
ditions, have no effect whatsoever. It seems to me highly implausible that there
is anything one might call an absolute aesthetic phenomenon, which would cause
aesthetic experience under any circumstances whatsoever.
Most objects which possess aesthetic qualities do so in a less spectacular
way. Architecture is an example of a phenomenon with which people are
confronted on a day-to-day basis, but which only becomes the explicit object
of their aesthetic attention under particular circumstances. Of course, it
depends on the people and the buildings in question. In this respect, architec-
ture is in modern western culture a somewhat unusual kind of an, in that it
is there all around us, often without being accompanied by any signs telling
us to take on some special attitude towards it. Contrast this with a phe-
nomenon such as street theatre, which announces its difference from every-
day life by means of masks or other props, so that passers-by realise that the
point of what is going on is not simply to be read off from the kind of actions
or the kind of speech-acts apparently being performed. Devices of this kind
substitute for famiar frameworks in such explicitly institutionalised con-
texts as the theatre or the art~gallery. In all these cases, certain framing devices
are indications that the recipient should - among other things - focus on
how the product or production in question strikes her. They signal the in-
stantiation of what one might call attitudinal norms.
pological sense defmed here, is a paradigmatic object of ethical reflection. The non-
substitutable first-person experiences to which people subject, or which they withhold from,
each other are constitutively involved in the ethica1ly central dimension of human weU-being.
26 The Italian Futurists' celebration of the new kinds of experience made possible by the
modern technologies of war is perhaps the best-known example of such moral inappopri-
ateness of adopting the aesthetic attitude.
O[Dentistry and A rtistry 133
In sum, aesthetic experience can come to us in one of three ways. It can be
directly caused; it can result from a voluntary, even whimsical choice to take
on the aesthetic attitude; or it can be the effect of the triggering of attitudinal
norms by features of certain cultural contexts. That triggering itself can be
more or less automatic, depending on whether the subjects in question see the
attitudinal changes as 'natural', whether they are 'carried away' by the fray
around them or whether they opt to enter into the goings on in the way pre-
scribed by the cultural cues or frarning devices.27
8. The enormous importance of such framing devices was largely ignored by
the tradition of the aesthetic attitude. Instead, the focus there was primarily on
characteristics which appear to inhere in the objects in question, independently
of their social contextualization. The kind of attributes given such prominence
were formal qualities. As a result of the focus on beauty, these were restricted
in traditional aesthetics to such qualities as symmetry, completeness and har-
mony of the elements.28 However, the analysis I have outlined leaves concep-
tual space for virtually any formal characteristics to take on such a role. On t~e
other hand, my suggestion is resistant to any attempts to restrict the aesthetlC
to the purely formal. Aestheticity remains tied to the criterion of the extent to
which being there oneself matters. It may well be the formal elements of an
experience which are lost if one attempts to 'tell it like it was' to someone else.
It is, however, often precisely the way in which the form and the content of an
art-work, or performance of everyday verbal artistry, are interwoven that one
cannot translate into propositional form. Of course, there are people who
possess great skill in 'telling it like it was', such skill that their listeners might
very well feel compensated for not having been present at the scene which is
being communicated. Their steners might even prefer listening to them or
watching them perform. That will be because the performance itself has quali-
ties which it is worth experiencingfirst-hand.
The same can undoubtedly also be true of performances which are in some
way standardized in their structure or other formal qualities. The issue of the
aesthetic aspect of such modes of communication is then, as I see it, not in itself
29
the issue of the poeticity of the language used, as defined by Jakobson. Lan-
27 My fairly restrictive and non-terminologica1 use of the word 'frarne' overlaps at least here
with the technical use of Goffman. At one point Goffman emphasizes the fact that what he
calls frarnes involve prescriptions of differing degrees of "involvement" for participants.
(Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis. An Essay on the Organization o[ Experience, Carnbridge,
MA 1974, 354f.) As his exarnples (an "understanding" of sexual intercourse versus that of
traffic systems) suggest, part of what being heavily 'involved' can involve is construing ones
first-person experience as non-substitutable. .. . . ..
28 Cf. Baumgarten, Aesthetica, 18-22 (Theoretische Asthetik, lbld., 13-15); Kant, CntUJue o[
Judgement, 15 (ibid., B43-48);John Dewey, Art as Experience, chapter. 3 (ibid., 35ff.); Clive
Bell, Art, London 1914, chapters 1-3.
29 Roman Jakobson, "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics", in: Thomas A. Sebeok
(ed.), Style in Language, Cambridge, MA 1960, esp. 356ff. The question of .whether the
dominance of this function is what makes a verbal message a work of art, which Jakobson
sees as the key question for poetics (ibid., 350), is a different question still.
134 Neil Roughley
. I
guage which is used to focus the recipient's attention on the linguistic form of
what is being said can certainly be one source of the aesthetic quality of a
communication situation. It is, however, only one possible source among
others. In social situations, the aesthetic aspect of such poetic language-use will
often be the way in which the effects achieved by such means are part 0/ an
overall experience which matters to the individual concerned. In a ritual con-
text, the effect of certain formal characteristics of the language used may be
structurally indispensable for the constitution of the ritual. The ritual's aes-
thetic quality will, however, be more than merely this, as the experience in
which being there matters to the individual is, if the ritual is succesful, an expe-
rience of more than simply effects of language. I suspect that experience of the
poetic and aesthetic experience only appear to coincide under very specific
conditions, such as the reception of certain forms of modernist literature.30
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