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    Plan détaillé Texte intégral 1. Introduction 2. The Narrow Question 3. The Broad Question Bibliographie Notes de bas de page Auteur

    Des propriétés esthétiques

    Ce livre est recensé par

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    Table des matières

    What is meant by the term ‘aesthetic property’?

    Derek Matravers

    Entrées d’index

    Mots-clés : aesthetic property, Frank Sibley, Malcolm Budd, Dominic Lopes, Nicholas Riggle, the Network Theory

    Texte intégral Bibliographie Notes de bas de page Auteur

    Texte intégral

    1My topic today is what counts as aesthetic, or, more formally, what is the extension of the term ‘aesthetic property’. The paper falls into two parts. First, I shall consider what I shall call ‘the narrow question’ about the term’s extension. Second, I shall consider what I shall call ‘the broad question’ about the term’s extension. The narrow question assumes the traditional, individualistic notion of the aesthetic: roughly, aesthetic properties are those that show up in perception to ground certain experiences of value. The broad question is more revolutionary: it holds that aesthetic properties are those that bring value to certain kinds of social practices.

    1. Introduction

    2In 1959, in his classic paper, ‘Aesthetic Concepts’, Frank Sibley faced the problem of how to introduce his readers to the domain the interested him —the aesthetic. His approach had two elements to it. First, he provided lists of words that are the kind of words he will be talking about: ‘unified, balanced, integrated, lifeless, serene, sombre, dynamic, powerful, vivid, delicate, moving, trite, sentimental, tragic’. Second, he claimed that non-aesthetic properties are those that are detectable to ‘anyone with normal eyes, ears, and intelligence’ while aesthetic properties ‘require the exercise of taste, perceptiveness, or sensitivity’. This might, at first glance, look to be an attempt at a definition: aesthetic properties are those properties that are detected via an exercise of taste. However, it is not. Sibley does not define ‘taste’ in a non-circular manner —indeed, he defines it as ‘aesthetic discrimination or appreciation’ (Sibley, 1959/2001, p.1) (my italics).

    3A quick caveat on Sibley’s list of words. Each of these, he says, is ‘an aesthetic term or expression’ or an ‘aesthetic concept’. It looks, then, as if our task is to pick out the properties to which these terms refer —those would be the aesthetic properties (correlatively, non-aesthetic predicates would pick out non-aesthetic properties). However, in a footnote he says:

    I shall speak loosely of an ‘aesthetic term’, even when, because the word sometimes has other uses, it would be correct to speak of its use as an aesthetic term. (1959/2001, p. 1)

    4Hence, Sibley’s distinction is not between semantic types, but between aesthetic and non-aesthetic uses of words. It may be, as we shall see, that the distinction can be cashed out in terms of properties. That is, for any term, that term is used aesthetically if and only if it is being used to pick out an aesthetic property and used non-aesthetically if an only if it is being used to pick out a non-aesthetic property. However, this would invite an explanation as to why the same term can be used on some occasions to pick out something and on other occasions to pick out some distinct thing and it is clear from the outset that any such explanation is likely to be difficult to give (Scruton, 1982, p. 38-39).

    5The usual procedure, when attempting to give a definition of a concept is to find an intuitive intension to match an intuitive extension. That is, we come up with a meaning that applies in all and only instances where it would be correct to use the word that manifests the concept (think ‘justified true belief’ matching all and only correct uses of the word ‘knowledge’). The procedure requires that we have a grasp of the intuitive extension: that is, we know when the relevant word is used correctly. Hence, for the debate that we are interested in here, in order to come up with a definition of ‘aesthetic property’, we would need to know when to apply that term.

    2. The Narrow Question

    6That there is a problem here is recognised by no lesser thinker than Kant, in one of the founding texts of aesthetics. Even if we restrict ourselves to the Analytic of the Beautiful, Kant returns again and again to things that other people count as beautiful and that he does not. He notes that ‘most people will declare a mere colour, such as the green colour of a lawn, or the mere tone (as distinct from sound and noise), as for example that of a violin, to be beautiful in themselves’ (Kant, 1987, p. 224). As well as disagreeing with ‘most people’, he disagrees with ‘critics of taste’:

    It is true that critics of taste commonly adduce geometrically regular figures, such as a circle, square, or cube, etc., as the simplest and most indubitable examples of beauty. And yet these are called regular precisely because the only way we can present them is by regarding them as mere exhibitions of a determinate concept that prescribes the rule for that figure (the rule under which alone the figure is possible). Hence one of these two must be erroneous: either that judgement by critics which attributes beauty to such figures, or our judgement that requires purposiveness without a concept. (1987, p. 241)

    7In addition, Kant rejects the following as falling within the extension of ‘the beautiful’, all of which would surely have their supporters: ‘the English taste in gardens’, ‘the baroque taste in furniture’, ‘everything that shows stiff regularity’, ‘human song’, and ‘the changing shapes of the flames in a fireplace or a rippling brook’ (1987, p. 242-43).

    8The problem of having to fix the extension of ‘the aesthetic’ prior to coming up with a definition is one that is squarely faced by the person who has assumed Sibley’s mantle: Malcolm Budd. In his collection, Aesthetic Essays, he explores a range of Siblean concerns including attempting to define the aesthetic (2008). Faced with the extension problem, Budd says the following:

    Any attempt to articulate the essence of the aesthetic runs up against the problematic scope of the aesthetic. For there are different conceptions of its scope, no one of which has a proper claim to be the right one. (2008, p. 33)

    9Budd goes on to consider a very Kantian example:

    Consider purely sensory (or sensuous) pleasure. The crucial feature of purely sensory pleasure, understood as pleasure in the perception of a single undifferentiated colour expanse, as such or in the perception of a sound of a constant pitch, loudness, and timbre or a taste or smell in which a single sensory quality, sweetness, or acidity, for example, is detected, is that there is no variety in the object as it is perceived, just a single, structureless, homogeneous quality. (2008, p. 34)

    10Budd is able, without much difficulty, to show that there is a distinction between purely sensory pleasure and pleasure that ‘involves variety in its intentional object’ (2008, p. 34). However, as Budd realises, this leaves open the question as to whether to apply the term ‘aesthetic pleasure’ only to the latter and not the former. This is indeed what Budd does; after a tour through Jerrold Levinson’s account (which firmly anchors aesthetics in relations between lower order and higher order elements) he ‘takes’ from Levinson the distinction between ‘aesthetic pleasure…and purely sensory pleasure’ (2008, p. 43).

    11Is there a principled way to sort this out? That is, is there a principled way to decide whether to exclude purely sensory pleasure from the domain of the aesthetic? I shall make an assumption here —at least when discussing the ‘narrow question’— that our interest is in aesthetic properties qua their role in the appreciation of art. It may be that such aesthetic properties also have a role outside art, for example in the appreciation of nature. However, I will assume that we are not interested in a property being an aesthetic property if it has no role in the appreciation of art. I give some retrospective justification for this assumption below.

    12Perhaps we could adapt Rawls’s ‘method of reflective equilibrium’ (Rawls, 1999, p. 42-45). For Rawls, this is a way of approaching ‘the truth’ about ethical judgements (Rawls, 1993, p. 395). That is, we decide upon a set of ethical judgements which are free, to the best of our knowledge, from distortion. Second, we formulate our principles that would account for those judgements. Finally, we consider what to do if the principles and the judgements diverge: that is, there are judgements in the set not accounted for by the principles, or the principles imply judgements that are not in the set. In our case, we would decide upon those concepts (or uses of concepts) that would count as aesthetic. We would then formulate principles that would account for those concepts counting as aesthetic. Finally, we consider what to do if the principles and the concepts diverge: that is, there are concepts in the set not accounted for by the principles, or the principles imply concepts that are not in the set. As Kant says, we have to balance whether to attribute beauty to geometrically regular figures (which would mean rejecting his principles) or accepting his principles (and revise our judgement on geometrically regular figures). Our intuition that geometrically regular figures are beautiful should lend weight to rejecting the theory, and independent support for the theory should lend weight to our revising our intuition.

    13What, then, are the considerations that give independent support to a theory? At least in A Theory of Justice Rawls says little about this, although there is much in Political Liberalism that bears on the question. We can borrow from this later work two conditions that seem the right place to start: that any theory should begin with relatively uncontroversial premises and it should not contain errors of reasoning. However, that does not seem enough: two theories could meet those conditions and still come up with different extensions for ‘the aesthetic’. That is, it does not seem to be those conditions that will sort out whether we include sensory properties.

    14What we need to find is a way to compare two definitions of a term with respect to the set of things picked out by one definition being a more coherent/unified/interesting set than the set of things picked out by the other definition. That is, we want to find a way to compare definitions of the sort ‘objects designed to cut wood’ (interesting) from others such as ‘objects made on a Tuesday’ (not interesting).1

    15There are probably an indefinite number of answers to the question ‘What makes a set of things picked out an interesting set of things?’ I shall, with reference to Budd’s work, discuss three which are particularly relevant to aesthetic properties.

    • Function: Do all the elements of the set have a common function?

    • Epistemology: Do we come to know about each element in the set in the same (or similar) way?

    • Phenomenology: Do the elements in the set share a phenomenology?

    16If we can give a positive answer to these questions and show that we would not have been able to give a positive answer with different candidate set, we have some reason to think we have picked out the right (that is, the most coherent/unified/interesting) set in our definition of ‘aesthetic properties’.

    17I need to say a little about what Budd takes aesthetic properties to be. He thinks they are ‘a mixed bag’ (2008, p. 82) and that ‘there are indefinitely many terms (…) that are used to ascribe aesthetic properties’ (2008, p. 75). Furthermore, the same (type) sentence can be used to make different claims on different occasions (2008, p. 77). Thus, there is a great deal of complexity here: the story told for one aesthetic term might be very different from the story told for another aesthetic term. Even then, the story told about the use of that aesthetic term on one occasion might be very different from the story told about the use of that aesthetic term on a different occasion. Hence, the content of an aesthetic judgement will need to be determined on a case-by-case basis. This does not mean, however, that nothing general can be a said about aesthetic properties, as Budd makes clear when he gives the following definition.

    An aesthetic property of an item is any relation among the elements or any higher-order property of it that, as realised in the item, is fit to make the perception or imaginative realisation of it intrinsically rewarding. (2008, p. 47)

    18The key claim here, in terms of understanding the extension, is that the properties in question are those that are fit to constitute aesthetic value, provided that one understands aesthetic value as Budd understands it; in terms of an experience being ‘intrinsically’, that is, non-instrumentally, rewarding. There are two further constraints. First, aesthetic properties are not simple properties: they are either a relation among the elements, or (another?) higher-order property of the object. Second, although this does not come out directly in the definition, there is a return to something like Sibley’s notion of ‘taste’. To be clear, Budd does not think that an exercise of taste is a necessary condition to use a term aesthetically. However, he does think that we have ‘an aesthetic attitude’, which is an attitude conducive to the ‘reliable perception’ of aesthetic properties (2008, p. 47). In sum, aesthetic properties are higher-order properties that are fit to contribute to aesthetic value, which generally require some sensitivity (‘taste’) to detect. These then fall into two types: they can either be perceived or be imaginatively realised.

    19I shall simply state here, though I will not defend the claim, that I think Budd’s account fulfils our first two conditions: that is, it starts with relatively uncontroversial premises and it does not contain errors of reasoning. Indeed, I think Budd has pretty much solved the problems that Kant, via Sibley, bequeathed to us (although I think he has left us one area that merits further work). My interest here is whether Budd’s account sorts out ‘the narrow question’ for us; that is, whether the set he has picked out as the set of ‘aesthetic properties’ is the most optimal that could be picked out by that term. In particular, whether it is a better than the set that includes what is picked out plus the sensory properties.

    20Let us start with function. All the elements in Budd’s set have a common function: namely, the perception or imaginative realisation of them is intrinsically rewarding. These are the properties of an object one would cite in order to defend the claim that the object had aesthetic value. Without wishing to get into heavy metaphysics, these are the properties that ground aesthetic value. Our question, in solving the narrow question, is whether sensory properties share this function. Do purely sensory properties qua purely sensory properties ground aesthetic value?

    21I do not think they do when it comes to the aesthetic value of art. Pure colours can be found amongst the grounds for the attribution of aesthetic value to paintings, but as part of a complex of properties. In a well-known discussion of colour, Michael Baxandall points out, that, in the Fifteenth Century, painters’ contacts specified the cost of the pigments that were to be used. Ultramarine (made from lapis lazuli) was at least twice the price of ‘German blue’ —which was less splendid in colour and also unstable.

    The painters and their public were alert to all this and the exotic and dangerous character of the ultramarine was a means of accent that we, for whom dark blue is probably not more striking that scarlet or vermilion, are liable to miss. We can follow well enough when it is used simply to pick out the principal figure of Christ or Mary in a biblical scene, but the interesting uses are more subtle than this. In Sassetta’s panel of St. Francis Giving his Cloak to a Poor Soldier the gown St. Francis gives away is an ultramarine gown. In Masaccio’s expensively pigmented Crucifixion, the vital narrative gesture of St. John’s right arm is an ultramarine gesture. And so on. (Baxandall, 1988, p. 11)

    22Here it is not the blue as such that is expensive, but the brightness of the blue, combined with the knowledge of the cost of the pigment, that gives the informed viewer the complex experience of seeing the coat as expensive and hence as a great thing to give away. Thus, in as much as it grounds aesthetic value, the colour only does so via it being part of the kind of complex picked out by Budd. It certainly sound odd to my ear to defend the claim that a particular painting had aesthetic value by citing the fact that some patch of it was a pure red or a pure blue without reference to any relation that red or blue had to any other property.2

    23An interesting putative counter-example is monochrome paintings. I will take a particularly pure form: Yves Klein’s blue monochromes that he exhibited from 1957 onward. Although the earlier ones exhibit some variation, I think it is fair to assume that Klein was striving for an undifferentiated surface of his signature colour, International Klein Blue (‘IKB’). Here is looks as if there in only one property that could ground the aesthetic value of the painting: the sensory property of IKB. Hence, IKB must be an aesthetic property.

    24One difficulty in evaluating this putative counterexample is the difficult of knowing how to experience Klein’s paintings. For the experience to be relevant, it has to be an experience had on the basis of an understanding of the painting and it is difficult (for me, anyway) to be confident that I do understand the paintings. However, for the case to be a counterexample, the aesthetic value of the painting would have to be grounded in the colour as colour. That it, IKB would play the same role in the painting as it would, say, in grounding the aesthetic value of an interior decorator’s swatch. However, to state the obvious, this would not be to value Klein’s painting as a painting. As Jerry Levinson says, ‘Each work of art takes its place in an ongoing expressive endeavor, one in which the artist’s whole self and activity are implicated’ (Levinson, 1995/1996, p. 230). Thus, unlike in the swatch, the colour will need to be seen in relation to Klein’s other paintings, his Buddhist-inspired beliefs in the significance of monochrome, his belief in the virtual content of paintings, and (if we are to take the whole Danto-esque biscuit) ‘an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld’ (Danto, 1964, p. 580). Once again, the ‘pure sensory property’ enters into aesthetic value only as one element of a complex property.

    25What, then, about the epistemology? Do we come to know about each element in the set in the same (or similar) way? Here Budd is strikingly like Sibley: we do require taste (or ‘an aesthetic attitude’) to detect aesthetic properties as aesthetic properties. Why does Budd think we need ‘an aesthetic attitude’ to pick out aesthetic properties? Recall, his disjunction: aesthetic properties are either perceived or imaginatively realised. Taste has one function for the first of these disjuncts, and two functions for the second. However, for our purposes we can put aside the second. If sensory properties made it into the set of aesthetic properties, they would do so under the first of the disjuncts. Hence, our question is whether the role of taste in coming to know properties that fall under the first disjunct does or does not cover the detection of sensory properties.

    26The first disjunct covers aesthetic properties that are perceived. If our perception of an object represents it as possessing a property that counts as us simply perceiving that property. So far there is no requirement for an aesthetic attitude. However, to perceive such a property as an aesthetic property is for the experience of it to be part of an experience with aesthetic value. Budd construes finding aesthetic value as taking non-propositional pleasure in it. That is, it must not simply be pleasure following from the perception of the object, it must be pleasure in the perception of the object. This would require a certain openness to the having of such an experience; in a grumpy mood, or on a bad day, we could perceive a property and not take pleasure in the experience of which it was a part. We need to be in a certain mood (or attitude) to take pleasure in the experience.

    27If we grant that we need to have some kind of attitude to perceive aesthetic properties as intrinsically rewarding, do we need to have the same attitude to perceive sensory properties as intrinsically rewarding? In certain moods, we could certainly perceive sensory properties and take no pleasure in them —in Coleridge’s words, ‘I see, not feel, how beautiful they are’ (On Dejection, II). There is, then, a difference between seeing a sensory property and seeing a sensory property and taking pleasure in it. Hence, it looks as if Budd’s epistemology of aesthetic properties also covers sensory properties. However, I think there is more to be said here, but to explore that we need to consider the third of our trio, phenomenology.

    28A striking feature of Budd’s view is that there is no unified phenomenology: aesthetic properties are either perceived or imaginatively realised. There are two things to say about this. First, it counts against the set of elements picked out being coherent/unified/interesting that they have a disjunctive phenomenology. The second thing is that sensory properties fall squarely within the first disjunct; they are (straightforwardly) perceived. However, as we have seen, them being perceived as aesthetic properties is them being perceived as intrinsically rewarding. So far, following Budd, I have construed ‘intrinsically rewarding’ as ‘taking pleasure in the experience’. However, Budd’s considered view is that the phenomenology is a little more complicated than that.

    The experience of a work of art can be intrinsically rewarding to undergo, worth undergoing for its own sake —rewarding to undergo independently of any beneficial consequences that might be anticipated to accrue to one as a result of having had the experience— for reasons other than the pleasure the experience might afford; and the right idea to use to elucidate the notion of artistic value is not that of pleasure but the more fundamental idea of the rewards intrinsic to experiencing a work of art with understanding. (2008, p. 46)

    29As aesthetic value is bound up with understanding, it looks as if sensory properties are not aesthetic properties as the pleasures of sensory properties are immediate. That, however, would be too quick: that we need to experience the work with understanding may not imply we need to appreciate each individual aesthetic property with understanding. Nonetheless, I take it that Budd’s view of the phenomenology of properties experienced as aesthetic properties is that we experience them under the aspect of their contribution to the whole. So once again we are driven to the conclusion that it is not our appreciation of sensory properties as sensory properties that is aesthetic, but our appreciation of sensory properties as they stand in meaningful relations to other properties that is aesthetic.

    30This wraps us what I have to say about the narrow question and I can conclude two things. First, Budd has given us a robust and defensible account of what it is to be an aesthetic property. Second, that sensory properties are not aesthetic properties when we experience them merely as such.

    3. The Broad Question

    31The broad question is a more radical challenge. Some philosophers have recently taken up a thread left for us by John Dewey and argued for a social conception of aesthetics (1934). This brings with it a different conception of an aesthetic property. That is, in thinking about aesthetic properties the recommendation is that we should not focus on the experience of an individual leading to judgement by an individual but focus on the role of properties in social practices. The most developed such theory has been provided by Dominic McIver Lopes (2018).

    32In its barest form, Lopes’s theory is as follows. Human beings indulge in many different social practices. Some of these are aesthetic practices (let’s not worry precisely which ones and why). Within those practices, there will be some property that grounds a reason for somebody to act in a certain way within that practice. For example, the fact that President Obama’s speech was powerful is a reason for someone within the practice of preserving political speeches to include it in an anthology (2018, p. 136). The fact that some piece of computer code is in danger of being lost is a reason for someone within the practice of enabling classic computer games to run to rescue it (2018, p. 22-23). Here is Lopes’ formal definition of his theory, which he calls ‘the network theory’, from which we can get an idea of what he means by ‘aesthetic property’ within his theory. In addition to the items explicitly defined, x is an object, A is an agent, φ is some action, and C is some circumstance.

    An aesthetic property, V, is reason giving = the fact that x is V lends weight to the proposition that it would be an aesthetic achievement for some A to φ in C, where x is an item in an aesthetic practice, K, and A’s competence to φ is aligned upon K’s aesthetic profile. (2018, p. 127)

    33Although Lopes does not give a formal definition of ‘aesthetic property’, the following is consonant with his approach:

    X is an aesthetic property if x is such that it would be a reason for someone who is within an aesthetic practice, to act within that practice.

    34Under Lopes’s conception, the extension of ‘aesthetic property’ is going to be broad. That is, it will include any property that provides a reason to act, within an aesthetic practice, where that action will be an aesthetic achievement. ‘Aesthetic practices’ include a vast range of practices such as reconstituting gardens, running classic computer games, promoting marginal artists, encouraging reading in the general public, and operating a dance school (2018, p. 15-25). Aesthetic achievements within those practices are also going to be broad: finding rare flower bulbs, reverse-engineering computer code, trawling around auction houses, negotiating prime-time television shows, and eschewing leotards for working-class boys.

    35What Lopes has proposed is a revolution in the way we think about and write about aesthetics. Lopes thinks we have erred; he thinks we have focussed on one small aspect of aesthetic life (experience and judgement) and ignored the vast range of other practices and actions that are also aesthetic. Having pointed out this error, Lopes’s hope is that we will reform ourselves. Gone will be the hierarchy, with the fine arts at the top. Rather, what we will have will be attention to a range of familiar social practices and reasons to act within those practices. The background conception of aesthetic properties will also broaden: it will not be (as it is with Budd) tied to experience and judgement, but will encompass much, much else besides.

    36To what extent has Lopes picked out a set of properties that is coherent/unified/interesting? Earlier, I gave three criteria we could use to answer this question:

    • Function: Do all the elements of the set have a common function?

    • Epistemology: Do we come to know about each element in the set in the same (or similar) way?

    • Phenomenology: Do the elements in the set share a phenomenology?

    37The second and third of these would not be appropriate criteria to use to judge the extension of the term specified by Lopes. The third would beg the question: Lopes is explicitly trying to get away from approaching aesthetics via experience. The second begs the question in a different way: Lopes is avowedly an aesthetic pluralist —there is no reason to think that how we come to know where to find rare flower bulbs will have much in common, epistemologically, with eschewing leotards for working-class boys. It all rests on the function: aesthetic properties are those that ground actions that bring about aesthetic achievements in aesthetic practices. To the extent that this is a unified role, in a theory that provides an overall theory that is convincing, the set that he picks out is a defensible one.

    38Before attempting to adjudicate how we should respond to Lopes’s challenge, I will look at a second social theory of aesthetics, due to Nick Riggle (Riggle, 2022). Riggle’s account differs from Lopes in one crucial respect: it is thoroughly normative, not descriptive. That is, Riggle does not think our error has been an exclusive focus on only part of the picture at the expense of the whole, he thinks that any focus on individual experience and judgement is an error. He would like to replace an individualist conception of aesthetics with what he calls ‘a communitarian conception’.

    The communitarian insists that I ought to live my aesthetic life in certain ways because and only because there is something we are doing in our aesthetic life, or because there is something our aesthetic life is doing for us. In one way or another, the communitarian stresses that we should not see aesthetic life as something individuals primarily have or that fundamentally benefits individuals. As a result, the aesthetic lives of others are not foreign lives with which we have little to no reason to engage. Aesthetic life is something we have but also something we have to continually create and sustain by exercising aesthetic sensibility in our judgments, our creative activities, and in our invitations to joint activity and appreciation. For the aesthetic communitarian, aesthetic life is deeply other-regarding and other concerning. (2022, p. 24)

    39Although Riggle does not give an explicit definition of ‘aesthetic property’, he does come close.

    Schematically, aesthetic life is worth living because it brings us communal goods that we cannot get without it. We can define the practice of aesthetic valuing, as a practice structured by these goods. Aesthetic value is then defined as whatever plays a certain role in the practice of aesthetic valuing —it is whatever is worthy of the practice of aesthetic valuing. To fill this in is to offer specific communitarian theories of aesthetic value, focused on specific goods. (2022, p. 25)

    40On Riggle’s behalf, then, we could say this:

    X is an aesthetic property if x is such that it would be a reason for someone to act in an aesthetic practice so as to bring about communal (aesthetic) goods.

    41Thus we face the broad question. We have on the table three candidates for the extension of ‘aesthetic property’.

    • Budd: The term picks out those properties that play a specific role in explaining the link between individual aesthetic experience and aesthetic judgment.

    • Lopes: The term picks out those properties that play a specific role in explaining action in aesthetic practices (very broadly construed).

    • Riggle: The term picks out those properties that play a specific role in explaining action in aesthetic practices (very broadly construed) so as to bring about aesthetic communal goods.

    42How do we decide which to use?

    43The first point to note is that Budd and Lopes are compatible in the following sense. Lopes does not exclude individual experience of art, resulting in aesthetic judgement, from his list of aesthetic practices. It is only that he does not think it is the only, or even a particularly important, aesthetic practice.

    44That is:

    • Budd has picked out a coherent/unified/interesting set of properties that has a significant role in the practice of experiencing and then judging art.

    • Lopes has picked out a coherent/unified/interesting set of properties that has a significant role in in explaining aesthetic practices generally, one of which will be the practice of experiencing and then judging art.

    45The difference is that Budd holds, and Lopes does not hold, that there is something particularly important about the practice of experiencing and then judging art. Hence Budd would, one suspects, be reluctant to extend the term ‘aesthetic properties’ to other practices. However, in as much as we are convinced by Lopes’s theory, this is a merely terminological issue. We could, say, call Budd’s properties ‘narrow aesthetic properties’ and Lopes’s properties ‘broad aesthetic properties’. Budd and Lopes could then debate whether the latter set of properties was, in fact, coherent/unified/interesting but we could leave that to another day.

    46The second point to note is that Budd and Riggle are incompatible. That is, Riggle denies that the practice described by Budd is a legitimate aesthetic practice: he wants to replace ‘individualistic’ aesthetic practices with ‘communal’ aesthetic practices. It is true that Riggle has arguments for this that I have not, for reasons of space, considered. However, and this is the reason I spent so long spelling out Budd’s theory, this is a very counter-intuitive result. Even if one thinks there is merit in investigating the role of aesthetics in the production of communal goods, it is implausible to hold that the practice described by Budd —that is, the practice of experiencing works of art and coming to a judgement upon their quality— makes no sense. After all, it is a practice with which we are all familiar and which people have been indulging in, and attempting to illuminate, at least since the middle of the Eighteenth Century (and arguably for many centuries before). It might be that we could attribute to Riggle the weaker position that did not deny the sense of the practice Budd describes, but instead maintained that the term ‘aesthetic’ and its various conjunctions and cognates does not properly belong to such a practice but belongs instead to some socially-oriented practice. However, as a terminological recommendation that has little to recommend it.

    47My conclusion, then, is that wherever the current Deweyian recommendations take us, they overreach themselves if they end up either denying that ‘traditional’ aesthetics makes sense or denying that it is properly aesthetic. Whatever the answer to the broad question, aesthetics, traditionally construed, must survive as an area of enquiry. The traditional conception of ‘aesthetic property’ is safe and (I should add) their metaphysics is as Budd has described. To that extent, the social turn in aesthetics is less revolutionary than some of its proponents make it out to be.3

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    Notes de bas de page

    1 By their nature definitions at least aspire to be independent of context, so I will put aside the role of context here. The issue of context is interesting; although interest of another time.

    2 This represents a change of mind from my (Matravers, 1996). There I maintained that sheer size could be an aesthetic property.

    3 I am very grateful to Professor Claudine Tiercelin for the opportunity to present this paper – and have it improved by the feedback – at a conference at the Collège de France in October 2022. I am also grateful to Alexandre Declos for his help on that occasion.

    Auteur

    • Derek Matravers
      The Open University and Churchill College, Cambridge.
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    Qu'est-ce qu'un système philosophique ?

    Qu'est-ce qu'un système philosophique ?

    Cours 2007 et 2008

    Jacques Bouveresse

    2012

    Dans le labyrinthe : nécessité, contingence et liberté chez Leibniz

    Dans le labyrinthe : nécessité, contingence et liberté chez Leibniz

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    2013

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    Études de philosophie du langage

    Jacques Bouveresse

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    C. S. Peirce et le pragmatisme

    Claudine Tiercelin

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    Hilary Putnam, l’héritage pragmatiste

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    1 By their nature definitions at least aspire to be independent of context, so I will put aside the role of context here. The issue of context is interesting; although interest of another time.

    2 This represents a change of mind from my (Matravers, 1996). There I maintained that sheer size could be an aesthetic property.

    3 I am very grateful to Professor Claudine Tiercelin for the opportunity to present this paper – and have it improved by the feedback – at a conference at the Collège de France in October 2022. I am also grateful to Alexandre Declos for his help on that occasion.

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    Matravers, D. (2024). What is meant by the term ‘aesthetic property’?. In A. Declos & C. Tiercelin (éds.), Des propriétés esthétiques (1‑). Collège de France. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.cdf.15651
    Matravers, Derek. « What Is Meant by the Term ‘aesthetic property’? ». In Des propriétés esthétiques, édité par Alexandre Declos et Claudine Tiercelin. Paris: Collège de France, 2024. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.cdf.15651.
    Matravers, Derek. « What Is Meant by the Term ‘aesthetic property’? ». Des propriétés esthétiques, édité par Alexandre Declos et Claudine Tiercelin, Collège de France, 2024, https://doi.org/10.4000/books.cdf.15651.

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    Declos, A., & Tiercelin, C. (éds.). (2024). Des propriétés esthétiques (1‑). Collège de France. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.cdf.15173
    Declos, Alexandre, et Claudine Tiercelin, éd. Des propriétés esthétiques. Paris: Collège de France, 2024. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.cdf.15173.
    Declos, Alexandre, et Claudine Tiercelin, éditeurs. Des propriétés esthétiques. Collège de France, 2024, https://doi.org/10.4000/books.cdf.15173.
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