Aesthetic Perception

Aesthetic PerceptionAuthor(s): Joseph MargolisSource: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Winter, 1960), pp. 209-213Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for AestheticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/428287 .Accessed: 01/06/2013 09:27

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JOSEPH MARGOLIS

Aesthetic Perception

Ir IS WORTH remarking that we are obliged to qualify, in certain characteristic ways, our philosophical habit of speaking of the "perception" of a work of art.' For instance, one speaks of an aesthetic "spectator," but though the term is nicely suited to observing the performance of a drama or a dance, it is not so nicely suited to attending to the performance of a musical composition and even less well-suited to the reading of a poem or a novel. We seem to "watch" dramas anti dances, to "listen" to music and the recital of poetry, to "look at" paintings and sculp- tures, to "read" literature. And these auto- matic adjustments in our language serve, I believe, as warnings about the complexities of what we choose to speak of, in a com- pressed way, as the "perception" of a work of art.

To speak in the same breath of "aesthetic perception," that is, of the perception of objects that are aesthetically significant, may be to speak of a special kind of perception-perhaps then even of a special faculty of perception. And with the multiplying of faculties goes the multiplying of entities. One hears remarks for instance about the perception of "beauty" and the discovery of specifically "aesthetic objects."2 Much the same kind of talk may be noted in certain companion fields; one hears, for instance, of "moral intuition" and of the perception of "goodness." The dangers at least

JOSEPH MARGOLIS is associate professor of philosophy and senior research associate in psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati.

Presented in a shortened version at the meeting of The American Society for Aesthetics in Berkeley, California, October 30 to November 1, 1958.

are apparent, though the correctives are usually less so.

Now, the complications that follow from speaking of the perception of a work of art, that is, from speaking more or less generi- cally of aesthetic perception, regardless of the kind of art object involved, have less to do with the achievement of such perceiving than with the properties of the objects so perceived. Nor can the generic notion of aesthetic perception be clarified by com- paring it, so to say, with hearing, with seeing with one's eyes, or even with imagining; this much we can guess simply by noting that all sorts of such abilities are called into play in aesthetic perception: hearing is crucial to the perception of music, and seeing is crucial to the perception of paintings, and understanding language is crucial to the perception of literature. And still we speak of the perception of a work of art-as if that had nothing to do with the special matters of hearing and seeing and imagining and understanding. And in fact it does not have anything directly to do with those special matters taken severally. Stated in another way, we begin by allowing that, whatever they are, the properties of works of art and of other aesthetically eligible objects are perceivable; we do not start with a special model of perception, say, one re- stricted to sensory reports, and then ask whether the alleged properties of works of art are perceivable. We could, of course; and on the provision of obvious models, the properties of works of art would be promptly labelled "illusory" or "impercepti- ble."3

This is not to say that aesthetic percep-


210 JOSEPH MARGOLIS

tion is irresponsible as far as knowledge claims are concerned, but rather that the concept is neutral in this respect. Anyone who speaks of the perception of a work of art is committed also to explicating how, whatever is discriminated in such perception, is open to confirmation. And when the comments about works of art are as con- glomerate as they appear to be-as in "The music is sad," "Alice in Wonderland is a phallic fantasy," "His last novel is really quite baroque," and the like-we may well wonder about the confirming procedures involved. But the concept of aesthetic perception is neutral in that it does not, by itself, specify the set of objects or kinds of properties these objects have, that could be known, but merely requires that the kinds of objects alleged to be known and their corre- sponding procedures for becoming known be specified. "Perception," in this sense, is a term very much like "experience"-it merely announces the inclusion of a set of objects in the general domain of public scrutiny; what these objects are and how we come to have knowledge of them is presup- posed in announcing their public status, but these matters are not detailed in the an- nouncement itself.

We see from this that we must, in speaking of aesthetic perception, provide for characteristic instructions thought to facilitate the required aesthetic perception of some given object; thus we say, "Look at this," "Watch that movement," "Read this," "Lis- ten to that," "Now, do you see?" And the reply eventually comes: "Yes, I see." We are led to try to examine things according to directions given; we make the necessary be- havioral adjustment that is listening or watching or imagining or reading, all in the hope that a suitable discovery will be forth- coming. And so we see also that we must provide for appropriate testings by which claims we may make about certain suitable objects, on the strength of our aesthetic perception, are to be confirmed or disconfirmed. But what it is to perceive in an aesthetically significant way is not clarified by such instructions and such testing. For, presumably, the same sort of instructions may be given for both aesthetic and non-aesthetic perception (looking and listening are not peculiarly

aesthetic endeavors, on any familiar view); and it is altogether possible to confirm hy- potheses about objects without perceiving them in any clear sense. We require the concept of aesthetic perception then in order to mark out initial instructions and eventual testings as relevant to a certain interest we are all aware we take at least in works of fine art. And of course we require the instructions and the testings to make it possible to extend public participa- tion in perceiving of the aesthetic sort and to guarantee the responsibility of critical remarks made on the occasion of such perceiving.

One of the difficulties in the usual dis- cussions of aesthetic perception is provided by the dominance of visual illustrations. It becomes possible thereby to suggest that perceiving of the aesthetic sort requires attention to appearance as opposed to objects.4 It is not clear how this generalization would apply in, say, an art like that of music: where, that is, the relevant sense verb ("hear") has a tautologous accusative ("sound"), where the distinction between "appearance" and "object" seems ill-ap- pointed-are there aesthetically eligible and aesthetically ineligible sounds? Or to archi- tecture, where, surely, our attention is at least sometimes directed to objects (think of functional considerations proper to archi- tecture); of course, if one insists that archi- tecture can sustain only "mixed" perceptions, one has already dropped the pretense of debate. Even graver difficulties would, of course, arise for the literary arts, where the very applicability of a vocabulary of sensory appearance and material object is itself more than dubious. And even in the visual field, if one may speak of the "appearance of an object," what can possibly be meant by denying that the perception of objects (admitted to occur) is never an instance of aesthetic perception? Either there are aesthetic and non-aesthetic appearances that can be segregated;5 or else, the reason the perception of an object (rather than of an appearance) is excluded from the aesthetic range is the presence of a non-perceptual factor, namely, a particular kind of attention to what is perceived.6 But that has the curious consequence of transforming what


Aesthetic Perception 211

appeared originally to be a perceptual distinction into an attitudinal one.7

The difficulty with an attitudinal definition is very easy to trace. One supposes that we are dealing with an attitude of a determinable sort toward some determinable engagement. The question is, what sort of engagement? Is it being engaged in perceiving things? The differences among the vari- ous arts, at the least, come to mind again and the problems that have suggested themselves from these. So, for one thing, an ac- count which emphasizes attitude or interest will inevitably be subordinate to another which identifies the sort of engagement the appropriate attitude or interest concerns. The factors mentioned in attitudinal defini- tions regularly include disengagement from the so-called "practical" concern with the world of objects,8 the purity, steadfastness, intensity of our attention once so disen- gaged. But here we must note that the com- patibility of different attitudes or interests will have to be taken as empirical and con- tingent.9 For another thing, these attitudes and interests must be taken to form a con- tinuum of mixed tendencies-it would be misleading to describe the characteristic aesthetic experience as rapt or to define aesthetic experience as having among its es- sential ingredients such pure and rapt attention.10 For a third, we must be careful not to allow such "quantifications" of our attention (as of purity, steadfastness, intensity) to be retransformed into perceptual distinctions; we should then have made a complete circuit. In fact, Edward Bullough's celebrated essay on "psychical distance" suf- fers from such a transition."

It is also sometimes supposed that aesthetic perception is somehow valuationally privileged. John Dewey for instance is in the habit of speaking of aesthetic perception or experience as being peculiarly bound up with the perception of a certain "satisfying" coherence and order.12 But this has the odd result that, taken in a non-trivial sense, his view precludes the possibility of examining aesthetically a poorly constructed work of art; such perception, being by hypothesis unsatisfying, must be non-aesthetic, though as far as mere discrimination is concerned (as distinct from valuation) the kind of per-

ception involved will not be noticeably different from that involved in the other. So that even if we did preempt the term "aesthetic" for certain discriminations valued in a certain way, we see that we are still left with a larger and logically prior effort merely to make perceptual discriminations themselves.13

Aesthetic perception has however some puzzling features to be noticed. One may hint at these by recalling that we speak of "grasping" the melodic line of a musical movement, "understanding" a poem, "feeling" the colors of a painting. And we may focus these features somewhat more clearly by citing some characteristic comments by aestheticians. One writer remarks:

I think there is a simple way out of the dilemma of the poem's immediate aesthetic value and the symbolic nature of its medium. This is to rec- ognize that linguistic meanings are, like colors and sounds, themselves particular qualities.14

Note please that he wishes to treat the meanings of words in a poem as discernible qualities of the poem.15 Another writer remarks:

If this is what, as I believe, feeling import is [i.e., the intuitable intrinsic quality, the "suchness" of (an entity)], then we may say: with regard to any entity whatever, whether it be some- thing perceived, sensed, imagined, conceived, or in some other way brought before the mind... if we are receptive simply and solely to the intrinsic quality, "the what," or "suchness" of it; if what we do with the quality is feel it, rather than interpret it, then our attitude is aesthetic, the entity has the status of aesthetic object, and we are "savoring" its feeling import.16

Note please that he wishes to provide for aesthetic discriminations that may engage sensing, imagining, and conceiving. What I wish to draw attention to are the diverse ele- ments that appear to be admissible in aesthetic perception and the diverse sorts of things that are said so to be perceived. Aesthetic perception could be taken promis- ingly only as a phenomenal concept, referring to our awareness of qualities, regardless of the specific mechanisms entailed or the specific qualities discriminated, referring to whatever is "before the mind," to what C. J. Ducasse very tellingly titles "savoring" (if we free the term from any value im- putations).17 It refers to the achievement of


212 JOSEPH MARGOLIS

seeing in the largest sense, to whatever we are aware of, to whatever is the content of our attention. Whether what we are aware of corresponds to the properties of objects under examination depends on testing cri- teria; aesthetic perception relates only to the having of these discriminations. And the concept is necessary because it points to the commensurability of perceiving qualities that include sensory qualities, imagined qualities, meanings, implications, and oth- ers, and because it points to the complexity of what we refer to as the immediacy of aesthetic perception.

Aesthetic perception as such has no cog- nitive privilege. The single large advantage of our proposal is that the problem of perception in the aesthetic domain is seen to be continuous with that of any other domain. It is merely the "use" of such perception that changes, if I may be allowed to express the point this way. What aestheticians insist on is that we are distinctly interested in merely having our perceptual discriminations without any developed regard for ulterior uses. But to see this is to see why the concept of aesthetic perception is philosophically uninteresting, except as a corrective to otherwise extravagent tendencies that take the experience of art as an important and privileged philosophical clue. It must also be urged, however, that to say this is not to say that the several kinds of perceiving comprehended by "aesthetic perception" or the kinds of objects and qualities so perceived are without philosophical interest. On the contrary, it is precisely here that our interest chiefly lies.

1This is a revised version of a paper first presented before the American Society for Aesthetics (Fall 1958), at Berkeley, California.

2 For a particularly extreme instance, cf. C. E. M. Joad, Matter, Life and Value (London, 1929). 3 Cf. Henry David Aiken, "A Pluralistic Analysis of Aesthetic Value," The Philosophical Review, LIX (1950), 497-498. 4 Vincent Tomas, for instance, holds such a view; cf. "Aesthetic Vision," The Philosophical Review, LXVIII (January 1959), 52.

Tomas is most certainly not holding this very unpromising view.

61 believe this is the point of Tomas' entire dis- cussion; cf. op. cit., 58-60 particularly. It also ex-

plains his sympathy for writers like Schopenhauer, Bergson, Roger Fry, and Croce, all of whom incline, unlike Tomas himself, toward theories of a privileged kind of aesthetic perception; cf. 52-55. De- tailed difficulties in Tomas' views regarding appearances and objects are discussed in Frank Sibley, "Aesthetics and the Looks of Things," Journal of Philosophy, LVI (November 5, 1959), 905-910.

71 find a related theory in Monroe Beardsley, Aesthetics, particularly pp. 31-32 (New York, 1958). Beardsley distinguishes, for instance, between a physical chair and a perceptual chair, the latter alone being a conceivable aesthetic object. Another related theory is developed by Virgil Aldrich, "Pic- ture Space," The Philosophical Review, LXVII (uly 1958), 346; Aldrich contrasts aesthetic perception with scientific perception ("basic imagination" and "observation"), treating them as basic categorial "aspects" (per Wittgenstein) of perceiving what is said to be originally "simply noticed in the neutral field." He thus makes the aesthetic a "mode of perception" and is able to speak of specifically "aesthetic objects" in contrast to "physical objects." Apart from the question of whether Aldrich would classify particular perceptions as aesthetic or non-aesthetic, or whether he would permit the apparently perceptual distinction to reduce to an attitudinal one, one may notice a somewhat more specialized difficulty-that concerning the propriety of using Wittgenstein's concept of "aspects" to cover an alternation between "modes" of perceiving. The analysis of the duck- rabbit picture (Jastrow) would seem to require distinct "aspects" of a thing for the same "mode" of perception: Aldrich would treat the "modes" themselves as basic categorial "aspects" of some "neutral noticing." The logic of the move would seem to oblige Aldrich to hold that particular perceptions may be segregated (on perceptual grounds) as aesthetic or scientific.

8 Cf. Tomas, loc. cit. 9Contrast L. A. Reid, A Study in Aesthetics

(London, 1931), p. 306; "pornography and art are in essence mutually exclusive."

10 Contrast Eliseo Vivas, "A Definition of the Aes- thetic Experience," Creation and Discovery (New York, 1955); but see also, "Contextualism Recon- sidered," JAAC, XVIII (December 1959), 222-240.

11Explaining his concept, Bullough remarks: "It has a negative, inhibitory aspect-the cutting-out of the practical sides of things and of our practical attitude to them-and a positive side-the elabora- tion of the experience on the new basis created by the inhibitory action of Distance," "Psychical Dis- tance as a Factor in Art and an Aesthetic Principle," in Eliseo Vivas and Murray Krieger, ed., The Prob- lems of Aesthetics (New York, 1953). Bullough does not seem to be fully aware that he is operating on two independent scales: (1) the inhibition of the practical (I should add, incidentally, that aesthetic attention, on this scale, must be a threshold phe- nomenon); (2) the imputation of emotional states to the object examined, by projection. But we see that a decrease along scale (1) may occur without any change of emotional projection; and we see that an increase along scale (2) may occur without any dis-


Aesthetic Perception 213

turbance of practical involvement (e.g., superstition, pathetic fallacy, romance, sentimentality). So changes regarding the two factors are not changes along the same scale; a decrease of distance is not the reverse of an increase of distance. The antinomy of distance, for which Bullough is so well known ("What is ... both in appreciation and production most desirable is the utmost decrease of distance without its dis- appearance") is merely an apparent antinomy; the second scale is quite gratuitously added to the first.

2 Thus Dewey writes, ". .. the [aesthetic] experience itself has a satisfying quality because it pos- sesses internal integration and fulfilment reached through ordered and organized movement"; and also, "... no experience of whatever sort is a unity unless it has aesthetic quality"; also, "To be truly artistic, a work must also be aesthetic-that is, framed for enjoyed receptive perception. Constant observation is of course necessary for the maker while he is producing. But if his perception is not also aesthetic in nature, it is a colorless and cold recognition of what has been done, used as a stimu- lus to the next step in a process that is essentially mechanical," Art as Experience (New York, 1934), Ch. III.

"I may perhaps suggest here that "aesthetic experience" be taken to apply minimally to the having of perceptions, regardless of the emotional tone that attends our perceptions. This is not to advocate emotionally "colorless" perception but rather to avoid the difficulties inherent in such a way of speaking as Dewey's. It is, I think, just as significant as the

"satisfying," "fulfilling," "ecstatic," "rapt" qualities usually attributed to aesthetic experience (obviously relatively rare) to speak of sustained attention to what one perceives, concentrated awareness of qualities discriminated, and the like. Though even here, we see that if we emphasize discrimination as itself adequately aesthetic, developed attention may be superfluous. And if attention is regarded as critical, discriminations usually regarded as aesthetically significant would be denied such status. Cf. Frank Sibley, "Aesthetic Concepts," The

Philosophical Review, LXVIII (October 1959), 421- 450.

14Sidney Zink, "The Poetic Organism," The Journal of Philosophy, XLII (April 2, 1945), 423; cf. also, Zink, "Quality and Form in the Esthetic Object," The Journal of Philosophy, XLII (March 1, 1945), 119-120. 5 Though it is impressively diverse, C. J. Du- casse's list of aesthetic eligibles is misleading; cf. The Philosophy of Art (New York, 1929), p. 224. He says objects may be "ecpathized, i.e., from [them] may be extracted in contemplation [their] import of aesthetic feeling." But this suggests that meanings do not form a part of that "import." And Ducasse actually distinguishes between "lectical" contemplation (directed to meanings) and "aesthetic" contemplation (directed to feelings). 16 Vincent Tomas, "Ducasse on Art and its Ap- preciation," Philosophy and Phenomenological Re- search, XIII (September 1952), 73-74. 17 Ducasse, I might point out, fails to distinguish satisfactorily between a narrowly psychological use of "feeling" and the phenomenal use. His typical illustrations-pleasure, pain, anger, jealousy, rage- are illustrations of the psychological sort. Yet it is clear that he also intends the phenomenal. Thus, in speaking of aesthetic "feeling," he would wish to include sensations as well as feelings (in the psychological sense), but for some reason (presumably, a confusion between the two senses) he denies that "meanings" may be included in the "feeling import" of things. This distinction cannot be maintained, in terms of the range of experience to be accounted for; and if it is maintained on psychological grounds, the distinctive mechanisms underlying sensation and feeling, as well as memory and imagination, would have to be admitted as well. Ducasse's neat distinctions among endotelic activities-the lectical, the aesthetic, and the heuristic-would then founder. All of these difficulties are obviated if we speak, say, of "feeling" or "savoring" the meanings of literary pieces.


Article Contentsp. [209]p. 210p. 211p. 212p. 213

Issue Table of ContentsThe Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Winter, 1960), pp. 117-250Front MatterArt as Experience and American Visual Art Today [pp. 117-126]Some Reflections on John Dewey's Aesthetics [pp. 127-132]Meanings of "Naturalism" in Philosophy and Aesthetics [pp. 133-137]Prolegomena to Any Naturalistic Aesthetics [pp. 138-143]The Rococo as a Dream of Happiness [pp. 145-152]Formal and Symbolic Factors in the Art Styles of Primitive Cultures [pp. 153-166]Picturesque Beauty in Spain and England: Aesthetic Rapports between Jovellanos and Gilpin [pp. 167-174]Paul Tillich on the Philosophy of Art [pp. 175-184]The Giant Mouthless [pp. 185-189]Is the Creative Process Similar in the Arts? [pp. 191-195]Is the Music Really Sad? [pp. 197-207]Aesthetic Perception [pp. 209-213]Maritain's Interpretation of Creativity in Art [pp. 215-219]What Is an Initiation Story? [pp. 221-228]ReviewsReview: untitled [p. 229]Review: untitled [pp. 230-233]Review: untitled [p. 233]Review: untitled [pp. 233-235]Review: untitled [pp. 235-236]Review: untitled [p. 236]Review: untitled [p. 237]Review: untitled [pp. 237-238]Review: untitled [pp. 238-239]Review: untitled [p. 239]Review: untitled [pp. 239-240]Review: untitled [p. 240]Review: untitled [pp. 240-241]Review: untitled [pp. 241-242]Review: untitled [pp. 242-243]Review: untitled [pp. 243-244]Review: untitled [p. 244]Review: untitled [p. 244]

Books Received [pp. 244-246]Notes and News [pp. 247-248]International News and Correspondence [pp. 249-250]Back Matter

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Aesthetic Perception