Cheerskep's wish to limit the quest for understanding aesthetic experience to something akin to sexual orgasm suggest to me a simple desire for more sex.
I wonder if the people who actually make art - being so engaged in the process, etc., don't have the 'orgasm' Cheerskep considers the proof of aesthetic experience because they must maintain distance. Wc Sent from my iPhone On Dec 28, 2013, at 9:55 AM, [email protected] wrote: > For what it's worth, fellow aestheticians, I report that I hereafter will > try to avoid using the term 'aesthetic experience', and replace it in my > lexicon with the term 'aesthetic ecstasy'. > > The reason is that many listers use 'aesthetic experience' to indicate a > broader range of notion than I have had in mind with that term. In particular, > they include what I'll call the initial raw perception -- the seeing, > hearing, reading -- that must occur prior to any ecstatic feeling. > > They are not wrong to do this. It's absurd to insist that any such terms as > 'experience' "have" fact-of-the-matter perimeters of "meaning". We do a > vague but serviceable job of communicating when we say the likes of, "My > college experience was a happy one," or, "My first encounters with poetry were > a > life-changing experience." Of course we'd have to say more to convey more > specifically what we have in mind when we say that. > > I've found in recent forum exchanges that from time to time I've wanted a > term that specifically indicates the the ecstatic feeling that arises > microseconds after the raw encounter with an "artwork". I claim I can > distinguish between the reading of the poetry, and the feeling the reading > occasions, > and between the initial vision of certain paintings and the ecstatic > feeling that follows. > > I'm aware some listers may say 'ecstasy' is too strong a term. (The "IS" > there would be misplaced. The lister is entitled to claim the notion he > conjures when he hears the word makes it, for one reason or another, inapt FOR > HIM > to use as a label, but he's wrong to believe that his conjuration "is the > absolutely correct" one.) Still, a lister may honestly maintain "ecstasy" for > him involves a feeling as intense as, say, an orgasm, and he's never felt > anything that intense when contemplating an "artwork". > > On a related forum-matter, I myself would never attribute what I'd call > "pain" to any part of any aesthetic ecstasy I've had -- but others may have a > different history. For a different but perhaps comparable event, I've never > felt pain to be part of desirable sex, but I concede the sincerity of many > masochists.
