aesthetic aspects and aesthetic qualities

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Aesthetic Aspects and Aesthetic QualitiesAuthor(s): Peter KivySource: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Feb. 22, 1968), pp. 85-93Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2024481 .

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THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY VOLUME LXV, NO. 4, FEBRUARY 22, I968

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AESTHETIC ASPECTS AND AESTHETIC QUALITIES *

I

IN two recent essays, Frank Sibley has written about some very special kinds of critical expressions which he calls "aesthetic terms."' Their unusual status is twofold: (1) "no non-aesthetic

features ... serve in any circumstances as logically sufficient conditions for applying aesthetic terms"; 2 and (2) the correct application of such terms "requires the exercise of taste, perceptiveness, or sensi- tivity, of aesthetic discrimination or appreciation" over and above the normal faculties of mind and body (63-64).

What exactly does the "exercise of taste" involve? Sibley is not alto- gether as explicit as one might wish. But he does say at least this: "It is with an ability to notice or see or tell that things have certain qualities that I am concerned" (65). Thus we apply aesthetic terms correctly, it would seem, by picking out the qualities to which they refer in the exercise of some special perceptual faculty. And from what has already been said about the nature of this faculty, it becomes clear that the qualities this faculty perceives are far from being the ordinary kinds. They are not, ex hypothesi, the kinds that normal eyes are sufficient for seeing, normal ears for hearing, normal palates for savoring, normal noses for smelling. They begin, in fact, to look very much like the kinds of nonnatural qualities that have often been associated with ethical intuitionism.

It would not, I should add, be fair to saddle Sibley with the term

* I am grateful to Arthur C. Danto of Columbia University, J. Ronald Munson of the University of Missouri at St. Louis, and Alan Tormey of Rutgers University, Newark College of Arts and Sciences, who provided many valuable suggestions for the improvement of this paper. I alone, of course, am responsible for any errors.

1 "Aesthetic Concepts," Philosophical Review, LXVIii, 4 (October 1959): 421-450; "Aesthetic and Nonaesthetic," Philosophical Review, LXXIV, 2 (April 1965): 135- 159.

2 "Aesthetic Concepts," reprinted with extensive minor revisions in Philosophy Looks at the Arts, ed. Joseph Margolis (New York: Scribner's, 1962), p. 66.

85



86 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

'nonnatural'; for he insists that there is nothing strange about aesthetic qualities:

Nor does there seem any good reason for calling the qualities them- selves esoteric. It is true that someone with perfect eyes or ears might miss them, but we do after all say we observe or notice them. . . . In fact, they are very familiar indeed. We learn while quite young to use many aesthetic words . . . and our mastery and sophistication in using them develop along with the rest of our vocabulary. They are not rari- ties; some ranges of them are in regular use in everyday discourse (78).s

Still, if Sibley's aesthetic qualities were not "odd" in some sense or other, they would hardly stand in need of this rather self-conscious defense. The more Sibley protests their innocence, the more we sus- pect their guilt. And whether or not we call them "nonnatural," they are not the kinds of qualities that I for one would wish to coun- tenance if I could help it.

The notion of "taste," or aesthetic sensibility, also presents prob- lems. It has been suggested that Sibley's position in this regard is a throwback to the eighteenth century; 4 and there is some truth to the allegation. In particular, there comes to mind the "inner sense" school of which Francis Hutcheson was the leading light. Without entering into a lengthy exposition of Hutcheson's value theory, with all its vagaries, let us recall that he postulated a "sense of beauty" one of whose chief characteristics seems to have been its complete autonomy. And it was just this autonomy that exasperated his many critics. There was among them a mistrust of the tendency to conjure up a faculty or "sense" whenever some perceptual phenomenon re- quired explanation. It was an explanation in name only, and a vio- lation of the law of parsimony as well. Thus Diderot remarked in the Encyclope'die, "Hutcheson and his followers try to establish the necessity of an internal sense of beauty; but they only succeed in demonstrating that there is something obscure and inscrutable in the pleasure which beauty occasions in us." 5 And Edmund Burke warned those of his contemporaries who spoke "as if the Taste were a separate faculty of the mind, and distinct from the judgment and

3'Familiar' and 'nonnatural', by the way, may not necessarily be incompatible. There are many "unfamiliar" qualities that we would hardly call "nonnatural." Conversely, being "familiar" may not necessarily signify that a quality is "natural." Goodness, after all, is a very familiar quality indeed (though not perhaps as familiar as we might wish); yet G. E. Moore nevertheless claimed it was a "nonnatural" quality.

4 R. David Broiles, "Frank Sibley's 'Aesthetic Concepts,'" Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, xxiii, 2 (Winter 1964): 219-226), p. 222.

5 Denis Diderot, Oeuvres Esthetiques, ed. Paul Verniere (Paris: Gamier Friems, 1959), p. 401.



AESTHETIC ASPECTS AND AESTHETIC QUALITIES 87

imagination": "To multiply principles for every different appearance, is useless, and unphilosophical too in a high degree." 6

One exit from these predicaments may lie in the concept of "aspect- perceiving" which Wittgenstein was mainly responsible for introduc- ing into contemporary philosophy. Wittgenstein discussed at some length a figure that can be "seen as" either a duck or a rabbit.7 In some sense or other we want to say that we see the same thing whether we are seeing the duck or the rabbit; but we want to say that we are seeing something different too. Common to both the duck and the rabbit is, as Virgil Aldrich puts it, "a certain determinable some- what-a figure in printer's ink on white paper" which "accommo- dates the various aspects." 8 Perceiving aspects is "an affair of seeing a material thing (the figure) as a number of other things."

Perhaps, it might be urged, what Sibley calls "aesthetic qualities" are analogous rather to the "aspects" of figures like the duck-rabbit and not proper qualities at all; and what he calls "taste" may merely be the ability to perceive these "aspects." 9

There is little doubt that aspect-perceiving deserves to occupy a prominent position in aesthetic theory. But I think it a mistake to assume over readily that the concept of perceiving as will either cir- cumvent all of Sibley's troublesome aesthetic qualities or obviate all the difficulties involved in the notion of taste. I want to consider both of these assumptions in the present paper. My remarks about the latter, though, will be quite brief; so I have thought it best to slip them in now, before going on to a more extended discussion of aesthetic qualities.

6 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. J. T. Boulton (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), pp. 26-27. Cf. Joseph Margolis, "Sibley on Aesthetic Perception," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, xxv, 2 (Winter 1966): 155-158: "Now, Sibley says that, in aesthetics, we are concerned with a 'kind of perception.' If he means this in the sense in which moral intuition is alleged to be a kind of perception, his account is rendered invulnerable but at the familiar extravagant price of multiplying faculties" (p. 155).

7 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1953), pp. 194ff.

8 Philosophy of Art (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 20-21. 9 It is difficult to tell whether Aldrich himself puts forth aesthetic aspects as an

alternative to or an explication of Sibley's aesthetic qualities. He writes: "The stage is set nicely for my task by certain remarks in an essay by Frank Sibley ['Aes- thetic Concepts']. His main concern there, [is] the logic of aesthetic terms.... But he mentions aesthetic 'perceptiveness' as a special 'ability to notice or discern things,' distinguishing this from mere subjective preference or liking on the one hand, and from the good eyesight of people with 20-20 vision on the other. This kind of perception is precisely what I am trying to isolate and characterize for what it is worth" (ibid., 20).




II

Part of the history of eighteenth-century British aesthetic theory is, it seems to me, the history of attempts to heed Burke's admonition against multiplying principles by subsuming the "aesthetic sense," or "taste," under some other head, for example, the "association of ideas." I think the same penchant for parsimony might well moti- vate us to give up Sibley's aesthetic qualities for Aldrich's aesthetic aspects if, ceteris paribus, some reduction in "faculties" or "abilities" could be effected thereby. No one disputes, after all, that most of us have an "ability" to "perceive as"-to perceive "aspects." And if aesthetic "taste"-the "ability" to perceive aesthetic "qualities"- can be identified with the "ability" to "perceive as," haven't we re- duced two "abilities" to one and satisfied the law of parsimony? I do not think we have, even if we can understand all aesthetic perceiving as some kind of aspect-perceiving.

If aesthetic perceiving were aspect-perceiving pure and simple, it would seem to follow that the ability to perceive aesthetically could, with proper training, become as widespread as the ability to see duck-rabbits and the like. Aldrich apparently accepts this implica- tion of the aspect theory without question; for he writes: "The way in which the artist formulates his subject matter, and the parlance of art-critics, show that the image-aspect of something is in question, and this can, in principle, be 'seen' by anyone who is not aspect- blind." 10 But surely the experience of art critics since before the flood indicates that such a conclusion is patently false (unless, of course, by 'possible in principle' is meant merely "logically possible").

None of this is fatal to the aspect theory of aesthetic perception by any means. But it is fatal to the notion that aesthetic perceiving is aspect-perceiving simpliciter. The aspect theorist must postulate some aesthetic "ability" or "talent" over and above the "ability" to perceive nonaesthetic aspects in order to explain the obvious fact that "aesthetic blindness" is far more widespread than "aspect-blindness," even among the aesthetically "educated"; and thus, as regards the law of parsimony, Sibley and Aldrich are equally well or badly off-there is no economy in the aspect theory on the subjective side.

Turning now to the objective side, many, I think, will agree that there would be a distinct advantage in ridding ourselves of as many "esoteric" or "nonnatural" qualities as possible. And if "aspects" are less objectionable and better understood, then let it by all means be "aspects" rather than "qualities" wherever the former are feasible. But, as I have already suggested, there are some cases where the anal-

10 "Pictorial Meaning, Picture-Thinking, and Wittgenstein's Theory of Aspects," Mind, LxvII, 265 (January 1958): 70-79, p. 79.




ysis of what seem to be aesthetic-quality ascriptions into aesthetic- aspect ascriptions will not go through. In support of this contention, I want to adduce some examples drawn from the general area of musical analysis. That they are musical examples is of no special sig- nificance; examples drawn from literary criticism or the visual arts would have done just as well. I had better add, too, that I make no claim, in what follows, to be presenting or defending a position that Sibley would recognize as his own.

III

It is Sibley's view that although no nonaesthetic remarks (about nonaesthetic features) ever logically entail any aesthetic remarks (about aesthetic features), there are nonetheless certain "logical" relations that obtain between nonaesthetic and aesthetic concepts: (1) "certain nonaesthetic qualities seem to be logically necessary for some aesthetic qualities"; (2) "some nonaesthetic qualities might be appro- priately spoken of as logically presupposed by certain aesthetic qualities"; (3) "there may be a characteristic association or relationship which, though still not merely contingent, is much less stringent than logical necessity or presupposition." 11 So, for example: (1) "If all lines and movements were either straight or sharply angular, never being or giving the impression of being curving or flowing, there might be no use for the term 'graceful'"; (2) "only something con- sisting of parts in relation can have or lack unity or balance"; (3) "sad" music is typically characterized by "slow tempo, quietness, low pitch, pauses, falling intervals, minor key, and so on," although "One can conceive of sad music which is not slow and soft, as one cannot conceive of a graceful line which is completely straight."

Now aesthetic "unity," like "sadness," is often associated with certain clearly recognizable features.

Example 1: "It is typical of Haydn's art that a slightly modified repe- tition of the main idea is used instead of the subsidiary subject.... The andante of the second movement [of Symphony 104] is in three- part form; however, Haydn gives it a greater amount of coherence by using for the contrasting minore of the middle part material from the first section." 12

As the above example suggests, the musician often ascribes "unity" or "coherence" to a work in virtue of its possessing "monothematic" structure or something of the kind. However, monothematic structure and the other sometime accouterments of aesthetic unity in music

11 "Aesthetic and Nonaesthetic," pp. 153-154. 12 Karl Geiringer, Haydn: A Creative Life in Music (London: Allen & Unwin,

1947), p. 293.




are far from being as frequently associated with it as, for example, pauses and falling intervals are with sadness. In fact we are often at a complete loss to say just what it is that does constitute the unity of a particular musical composition. Ofttimes it seems, in the favorite phrase of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century critics, a je ne sais quoi. (Nor, incidentally, are we always in a position to tell just what it is that makes a theme "sad," although I think this is a rare occurrence, whereas the absence of obvious "unifying" features is common enough to be unremarkable.) In Haydn monothematic structure is common; in Mozart, on the other hand, it is not. Yet we find Mozart's music coherent-unified. We can always say, of course, that a musical composition is unified in virtue of its having "parts in relation"; but that would be about as helpful as saying that a syllogism is valid in virtue of its having premises and a conclusion.

What I wish to argue is that, when we have such features (say) as monothematic structure (in the case of unity) or pauses and falling intervals (in the case of sadness), the ascription of unity in the first case, or sadness in the second, can be resolved into a "perceive as" locution. But when such features are absent, the ascription of these (apparent) aesthetic qualities does not seem amenable to this kind of treatment.

Let us return, for a moment, to Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit. Sup- pose someone says, "It's a duck," to which I reply, "You can also see it as a rabbit." How might I go about "revealing" the rabbit aspect of the figure? Well I would doubtless point to some crucial feature, (say) the two long protrusions on the left and remark: "Instead of seeing those long pointy things as a duck bill, try to see them as rabbit ears." There must be certain characteristic features present for something to be seen as one thing or another. The duck-rabbit can be seen as a duck because (in part) the long protrusions can be seen as a duck bill. It can be seen as a rabbit because (in part) they can be seen as rabbit ears. But it cannot be seen as a camel because there is nothing in the figure that can be seen as a feature of camels.

With these preliminary remarks in view, let us consider an instance of "perceiving as" in an aesthetic context that parallels the kind of aspect-perceiving involved in Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit.

Example 2: "The melodic line in 'Der greise Kopf' [a song from Schu- bert's Der Winterreise] has always ranked as an example of 'draughts- manship'-a silhouette in music." 18

18 Alfred Einstein, Schubert: A Musical Portrait, trans. David Ascoli (New York: Oxford, 1951), p. 305.



AESTHETIC ASPECTS AND AESTHETIC QUALITIES 9I

No one, I think, would be tempted to claim that example 2 is predicating any special "quality" of the music. Rather, this is a case of what Aldrich calls an aspect "perceived in an imaginative way" (op. cit., 74). We are asked to perceive the melodic line of "Der greise Kopf" ("The Grey Head") as a line drawing-the silhouette of a man's head encrusted with snow and ice.14 How might I bring someone to hear the song as the outline of a face? As in the case of the duck-rabbit, my strategy would be to pick out some crucial feature or features that can be perceived in an appropriate way. I might say, for example: "Notice how the melodic line of the piano introduction climbs, pauses, as if to demarcate the nose and mouth, climbs again, to the brow as it were, and then descends in one long unbroken gesture that outlines the back of the head." We do not stand mute before an instance of aesthetic aspect-perceiving; we are prepared to point out the features that are involved in perceiving one aspect or another.

The problem of resolving statements that seem to predicate esoteric or nonnatural aesthetic qualities of objects into statements having to do with aspects of aesthetic objects devolves, it appears to me, on just this point. If an aesthetic remark is to be understood as a "perceive as" locution, we must be prepared to support such a remark by pointing out crucial features, just as we can point out the crucial features of the duck-rabbit or "Der greise Kopf." For this seems to be the way aspect ascriptions operate. To illustrate this further, let us consider how an apparent aesthetic-quality ascription might be understood as a "perceive as" locution by citing a specific instance: one of the familiar emotive "qualities" that have been associated so long with our Western musical tradition.

Example 3: "The first episode [of the second movement of Beetho- ven's Eroica] is a regular trio in the major mode, beginning in con- solation and twice bursting into triumph. Then the light fails and the mournful theme returns . . . the movement concludes with a final utterance of the main theme, its rhythms and accents utterly broken with grief." 15

Perhaps Sibley would want to say that we are attributing a mournful "quality" to the final appearance of the main theme; for such emotive "qualities" certainly appear in his catalogue of aesthetic

14 The text of the song begins: "Der Reif hat einen weissen Schein/ Mir iubers Haar gestreuet...." ("The hoar-frost has sprinkled a white luster over my hair. . . .')

15 Donald Francis Tovey, Essays in AMusical Analysis (London: Oxford, 1935), vol. I, p. 32.




concepts. But we might also understand this as a suggestion to "Hear the main theme as mournful," supported, if need be, by the further suggestion, "Hear the broken accents and rhythms as an utterance utterly broken with grief," or something of the kind. This would parallel pretty closely the paradigm case of the duck-rabbit: "See the figure as a duck (or a rabbit)," supported by the further suggestion, "See the two long pointy things as a duck bill (or rabbit ears)."

The trouble is that no such parallel can be drawn between the duck-rabbit and instances where there just is no feature that appears to make a theme mournful or a composition unified.

Example 4: "Only two arias can be omitted [from Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro]-the ones for Marcellina and for Basilio at the beginning of the fourth act. . . . Apart from this, the whole work, and each of its four (or rather two-times-two) acts, is a unity built up of arias, ensembles, recitatives, choruses, the splendid pompous march that ends the third act, and the Overture that introduces the 'mad day' with a prestissimo." 1l

Wherein lies the musical unity of Figaro? There seem to be no iden- tifiable features-certainly not monothematic structure-that can account for the uncanny impression of unity that it gives. In fact, the outward form of eighteenth-century opera seems almost to exist for the sole purpose of destroying such unity. Figaro is a "number" opera: that is, it consists of a succession of separate movements, musi- cally unrelated as regards thematic material. Yet Mozart has apparently managed to endue this basically fragmented form with a unity that is as inescapable as it is ineffable.

In example 1, we can perceive Haydn's andante as unified because we can hear the theme of the middle part as a variation of the first section. But so many cases of unity in music lack this kind of obvious unifying feature; and it is in these cases-which are far from excep- tional-that the parallel with aspect-perceiving breaks down. If, for example, we could point to certain melodies or melodic fragments of which Figaro is composed and say, "To perceive Figaro as unified, hear these melodies as variations of the same basic tune," we would have something like what we need. There are, however, no such features in the work. You cannot sensibly ask someone to hear any melody at all as a variation of some other. You might just as well ask someone to see the two long protrusions of the duck-rabbit as the humps of a camel. If hearing unity in music were always an instance

16 Einstein, Mozart, His Character, His Work, trans. Arthur Mendel and Nathan Broder (New York: Oxford, 1945), p. 433.




of aspect-perceiving, one could reasonably expect always to find features capable of being perceived as features of this unity in some characteristic way. Not all features will do, either, any more than all melodies can be heard as utterances of grief or all figures seen as duck bills or rabbit ears. Aspect-perceiving is not hallucinating, after all.

What 1 am suggesting, then, is that a distinguishing mark of aspect- perceiving situations seems to be the presence of crucial features to which we can point in support of aspect ascriptions. And if this is indeed the case, then there are going to be many instances of apparent aesthetic-quality ascriptions that are not analyzable into aspect ascriptions simply because these crucial features are missing. Aes- thetic unity provides many such instances although it is not the only aesthetic concept that appears at times as a je ne sais quoi. Not any cloud can be seen as a weasel or a whale; and it is hard to imagine seeing a cloud as a weasel or a whale but not being able to pick out the features that make it so appear. Whereas bafflement before the work of art is a common occurrence. How often have we experienced "unity," "balance," "rightness," and the like, and yet been unable to "put our finger" on the feature or features responsible? It is in such situations that the analogy with aspect-perceiving becomes far- fetched and we are tempted perhaps to invoke "esoteric qualities" of one kind or another.

Now I do not wish to claim that unity or any other aesthetic concept has thus been established as an aesthetic "quality." What has, I think, been established is that the "logic" of some apparent aesthetic-quality ascriptions is not the "logic" of aspect ascriptions and, therefore, that one inviting way of circumventing Sibley's aesthetic qualities-namely, the "perceive as" locution-does not appear alto- gether promising. Not all aesthetic concepts, as Joseph Margolis has observed, "behave in a logically uniform way," and "The sorting out of these very slippery notions deserves a separate hearing" (158). We have not, as yet, got very much beyond the rather crude method of squeezing aesthetic concepts into one or two ready-made and often ill-fitting suits of clothes. The aspect outfit is a case in point: it is not going to accommodate every customer.

PETER KIVY

Rutgers University, Newark College of Arts and Sciences



aesthetic aspects and aesthetic qualities

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