AESTHETIC JUDGMENT AND BEAUTY ESTETK YARGI VE GZELLK

Funda SAKAOLU1

ABSTRACT How do some people feel pleasure while others feel displeasure as they are viewing the same piece of art craft or they are watching the same dramatic work? It is hard to define beauty from an objective point of view because beauty is a subjective judgment and it changes from one person to another. There has been a long debate about criteria of beauty; but in a global and changing world it is hard to define beautiful in strict borders for the reason that a piece of art can have aesthetic value without being beautiful since the emergence of modern art. Beauty is linked with pleasure and appreciation of beauty depends on perception. The perception and pleasure of people have changed from one century to another or from one culture to another. Thus; beauty and aesthetic judgment are not merely about individuals own background but they are also about socio-cultural values of the societies which are the subject of the modern di sciplines such as psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology and socio-psychology. This paper examines the nature of the aesthetic judgment according to modern disciplines and modern aesthetic theories in the light of Kant's characterization of the judgment of taste. A number of various features of aesthetic judgments such as: truth, mind-independence, pleasure and laws will be discussed and extreme categories of modern art such as in-yer-face theater will be exemplified in the axis of aesthetic judgment.

Key Words: Aesthetic, Pleasure, Aesthetic Judgment, Beauty, Judgment of Taste

The Definition of Beauty What is beauty? What is it about an object which makes it beautiful? What kind of qualities characterize an experience of beauty? In modern philosophy many questions have been asked so far: is beauty subjective or objective? Are there properties in the object that count towards beauty in all cases that are sufficient or necessary for an object to be judged beautiful? What kind of pleasure is the pleasure we experience of beauty? (McMahon, 2001:227) The unhappy metaphor in which a complex epistemological problem is presented as a question about what is or is not out there is multiply ambiguous. One should consider that as a restorative first step: beauty is connected with appreciation, so then there wouldnt be anyone to do the appreciating, were all human beings died, and no claim that something was beautiful would be true. But under such circumstances, no
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Dokuz Eyll University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Performing Arts Department, MA, fundasakaoglu@gmail.com

claim of any kind would be true because there would be no claims no sentences uttered. Should that be the idea, then truth, besides beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. On the other hand, if beautys being in the eye of the beholder is supposed to mean that everything is equally beautiful or that nothing is beautiful, then the hypothesis needs the backing of a developed theory, because in an ordinary way of thinking it is wrong. Height or intelligence isnt less equally distributed than beauty. Perhaps there are people to whom nothing is beautiful: they are either deprived or very depressed. Even if it were accumulated, the inside/outside question would be premature. The taking of something to be beautiful fits into our overall scheme, if the cognitive idiom is well-suited to such takings This is a question that presumes some understanding and interpretation of the phenomena. To prove that thinking something beautiful is, so to speak, all there is, or that what we take to be aesthetic pleasure is some other kind of gratification in disguise, we have to be able to characterize the asserted illusion, to explain what it is that people mistakenly take to be the case. Those who think that beauty is undiscussable have another familiar objection: tastes differ, and of two contradictory judgments it is impossible to prove that one is right. Kant was the first philosopher to see how empty such attempts on defining beauty must be. (Mothersill, 2009:166) Kant wanted to identify beauty as a mere aesthetic term. While doing this he separates beautiful from agreeable, good and right. (Tunal, 2010:135) Stanley Cavell tries to demonstrate the difference between judgments of the beautiful and the agreeable by carring out Kants idea that we speak of beauty as if it were a property of things. (Berger, 2009:5). We dont speak that way when making a judgment of the agreeable; we simply speak for ourselves, and deduce our judgments as expressions of personal likes and dislikes, rather than as properties about objects with correlative demands for the agreement of others. But a judgment of beauty states a more complicated attitude. Like a judgment of the agreeable, a judgment of beauty is an expression of likes or dislikes, of pleasure or pain. But it also demands [fordern] or imputes [zumuten] or requires [ansinnen] like-mindedness on the part of others. In making a judgment of beauty, we do not just speak for ourselves. (Berger, 2009:5) The question once asked by Platon what is beauty? has been alive since then. Of course this question has been answered in many different ways. It is not important the varieties of these answers but the core of the question itself is. The reason of this should be inquired in metaphysics besides aesthetic. So another question about beauty is: What is metaphysical view of beauty? Metaphysics thinks that beautiful is a substance or essence except from nature and art which beauty show itself. (Tunal, 2010:142) Rumi explains the concept of beauty in Masnavi with these lines:
The Khalifa said to Laila, "Art thou really she For whom Majnun lost his head and went distracted? Thou art not fairer than many other fair ones." She replied, "Be silent; thou art not Majnun!" If thou hadst Majnun's eyes, The two worlds would be within thy view. Thou art in thy senses, but Majnun is beside himself. (Rumi:Masnavi, Book 1)

As it is stated below; the concept of beauty changes from one to another. When we say that It is beautiful: this judgment doesnt have to be true for another person. If so every man would fall in love with the same woman, or every woman would fall in love with the same man. The debate of beauty went on after Kant. Schiller stated that:
Beauty is an aesthetic unity of thought and feeling, of contemplation and sensation, of reason and intuition, of activity and passivity, of form and matter. The attainment of this unity enables human nature to be realized and fulfilled. Beauty (or aesthetic unity) may lead to truth (or logical unity). However, when truth is perceived, feeling may follow thought, or thought may follow feeling.3 When beauty is perceived, thought is unified with feeling. (Schiller, 1967:189)

For Schelling, beauty is nothing other than the infinite displayed in the finite. The basic feature of every work of art, Schelling concludes, is therefore beauty, and without beauty there is no work of art.(Schelling, 2001: 225) As the resolution of an infinite opposition in a finite product, it is in a materially finite yet infinitely beautiful work of art that man is at last reconciled with the world which had once opposed and threatened to destroy him. (Schelling, 2001:226) According to Hegel beauty is, only a specific way expressing and representing the true and therefore stands open throughout in every respect to conceptual thinking(Hegel, 1988 :91 ) Beautiful is idea for him. One can conclude from this judgment that If we say that beauty is idea: then beauty and idea will be the unique and same thing and beautiful will be true spontaneously (Tunal, 2010:152) Theodor Vischer defines aesthetics as the science of the Beautiful. His system falls into three parts: First: Metaphysic of the Beautiful; Second: The Beautiful as onesided existence: beauty of nature and the human imagination; Third: The subjectiveobjective actuality of the Beautiful: Art. (Tunal, 2010:153) David Hume thinks that the term of beauty or generally aesthetic terms are subjective. But he also thinks that in spite of the fact that there is a difference and variety of admiration in the world, there are pieces of art admired by everybody. Works of Shakespeare and Homer which are appreciated by almost everybody show that they have qualities of taste admired by human brain when they are perceived. (Cevizci, 2007:448) It is true that twenty first century audience still enjoy with the plays of Shakespeare. He is one of the writers who captured the universal themes for the humanity so he is our contemporary. His plays have been adopted and modernized easily. He also managed to change the term of beauty with the Dark Lady of the Sonnets whom poems make it clear that she has black hair and dusky skin different from fairy characters of the seventieth century. Shakespeare also proves that beauty changes from one person to another with his exceptional characters like Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Portia in The Merchant of Venice or the Dark Lady in The Sonnets. The Definition of Aesthetic Judgment Judgment is a conjunction between two terms or concepts which approves or rejects something. (Tunal, 2010:247) Kants grounding aesthetic means grounding
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reason. Because according to Kant the subject of the aesthetic is the power of aesthetic judgment and the duty of the aesthetic is to inquire the power of aesthetic judgment and aesthetic judgments circuitously. He thinks that aesthetic judgment comes before the aesthetic pleasure which is called aesthetic incident. According to Kant at first we make aesthetic judgment, we say this is beautiful then we feel pleasure, but today the general opinion is that: at first we feel pleasure than we make aesthetic judgment. (Tunal, 2010:248) Kant divides aesthetic judgment into four groups: in respect to quantitative, in respect to qualitative, in respect to relation, in respect to modality. Aesthetic Judgment in Respect to Quality IThe judgment of taste is aesthetic.
In order to decide whether or not something is beautiful, we do not relate the representation by means of understanding to the object for cognition, but rather relate it by means of the imagination (perhaps combined with the understanding) to the subject and its feeling of pleasure or displeasure. The judgment of taste is therefore not a cognitive judgment, hence not a logical one, but is rather aesthetic, by which is understood one whose determining ground cannot be other than subjective. (Kant, 2001:89)

II-

The satisfaction that determines the judgment of taste is without any interest.

The satisfaction that we combine with the representation of the existence of an object is called interest. Hence such a satisfaction always has at the same time a relation to the faculty of desire, either as its determining ground or else as necessarily interconnected with its determining ground. But if the question is whether something is beautiful, one does not want to know whether there is anything that is or that could be at stake, for us or for someone else, in the existence of the thing, but rather how we judge it in mere contemplation (intuition or reflection). (Kant, 2001:90)

III-

The satisfaction in the agreeable is combined with interest.

Everything that pleases, just because it pleases, is agreeable (and, according to its different degrees or relations to other agreeable sensations, graceful, lovely, enchanting, enjoyable, etc.). But if this is conceded, then impressions of the senses, which determine inclination, or principles of reason, which determine the will, or merely reflected forms of intuition, which determine the power of judgment, ar all entirely the same as far as the effect on the feeling of pleasure is concerned. (Kant, 2001:91)

IV-

The satisfaction in the good is combined with interest.

That is good which pleases by means of reason alone, through the mere concept. We call something good for something (the useful) that pleases only as a means; however, another thing is called good in itself that pleases for itself. Both always involve the concept of an end, hence the relation of reason to (at least possible) willing, and consequently a satisfaction in the existence of an object or of an action, i.e., some sort of interest. (Kant, 2001:92-93)

V-

Comparison of the three specifically different kinds of satisfaction.

The agreeable and the good both have a relation to the faculty of desire, and to this extent bring satisfaction with them, the former a pathologically conditioned satisfaction (through stimuli, stimulos), the latter a pure practical satisfaction, which is determined not merely through the representation of the object but at the same time through the represented connection of the subject with the existence of the object. (Kant, 2001:94-95)

Aesthetic Judgment in Respect to Quantity IThe beautiful is that which, without concepts, is represented as the object of a universal satisfaction.
This definition of the beautiful can be deduced from the previous explanation of it as an object of satisfaction without any interest. For one cannot judge that about which he is aware that the satisfaction in it is without any interest in his own case in any way except that it must contain a ground of satisfaction for everyone. (Kant, 2001:96)

II-

Comparison of the beautiful with the agreeable and the good through the above characteristic.

With regard to the agreeable, everyone is content that his judgment, which he grounds on a private feeling, and in which he says of an object that it pleases him, be restricted merely to his own person. (Kant, 2001:97)

III-

The universality of the satisfaction is represented in a judgment of taste only as subjective.

This particular determination of the universality of an aesthetic judgment that can be found in a judgment of taste is something remarkable, not indeed for the logician, but certainly for the transcendental philosopher, the discovery of the origin of which calls for no little effort on his part, but which also reveals a property of our faculty of cognition that without this analysis would have remained unknown. (Kant, 2001:99)

IV-

Investigation of the question: whether in the judgment of taste the feeling of pleasure precedes the judging of the object or the latter precedes the former.

The solution of this problem is the key to the critique of taste, and hence worthy of full attention. If the pleasure in the given object came first, and only its universal communicability were to be attributed in the judgment of taste to the representation of the object, then such a procedure would be self contradictory. For such a pleasure would be none other than mere agreeableness in sensation, and hence by its very nature could have only private validity, since it would immediately depend on the representation through which the object is given. (Kant, 2001:102)

Aesthetic Judgment in Respect to Relation IIIOn purposiveness in general. (Kant, 2001:105) The judgment of taste has nothing but the form of the purposiveness of an object (or of the way of representing it) as its ground. (Kant, 2001:106) III- The judgment of taste rests on a priori grounds. (Kant, 2001:106) IVThe pure judgment of taste is independent from charm and emotion. (Kant, 2001:107) VElucidation by means of examples: Aesthetic judgments can be divided, just like theoretical (logical) ones, into empirical and pure. (Kant, 2001:108) VIThe judgment of taste is entirely independent from the concept of perfection. (Kant, 2001:111) VII- The judgment of taste through which an object is declared to be beautiful under the condition a determinate concept is not pure. (Kant, 2001:114) VIII- On the ideal of beauty: There can be no objective rule of taste that would determine what is beautiful through concepts. (Kant, 2001:116)

Aesthetic Judgment in Respect to Modality IWhat the modality of a judgment of taste is: Of every representation I can say that it is at least possible that it (as a cognition) be combined with a pleasure. (Kant, 2001:121) The subjective necessity that we ascribe to the judgment of taste is conditioned. (Kant, 2001:121) The condition of the necessity that is alleged by a judgment of taste is the idea of a common sense. (Kant, 2001:122) Whether one has good reason to presuppose a common sense. (Kant, 2001:122) The necessity of the universal assent that is thought in a judgment of taste is a subjective necessity, which is represented as objective under the presupposition of a common sense. (Kant, 2001:123)

IIIIIIVV-

Conclusion Kants Critique of Judgment is generally considered to be a turning point in the history of aesthetics and the philosophy of art. It integrates and reconstructs the analyses of aesthetic bases and the aesthetic attitude that arised in Leibniz's and Locke's schools, as they have been formulated by philosophers like Alexander Baumgarten and Johann Georg Sulzer on the one hand and like Hume and Burke on the other. But it also lifted up the aesthetic theory to a new level by integrating it into the framework of a new epistemology that Kant had worked out in the Critique of Pure Reason based on the view that what we call "reason" consists in a complex interaction of various epistemic operations. (Henrich,1992: 29) In the light of Kants characterization of the judgment of taste the first thing to inquire is that whether beauty subjective or not. Objectivity designates a state that is totally independent of the perceiver; it refers to the primary qualities, the real properties of the object. Objectivity denotes a state that is totally independent of the perceiver; it refers to the primary qualities, the real properties of the object. The use of the terms objective/subjective in such extreme fashion is rather confusing. How can we know anything at all about things that are entirely independent of our apprehension? Similarly, we can ask about the way we are able to relate to things that are completely dependent on our own means of knowing. Kant has decreased primary qualities to secondary qualities and made experience dependent on reason. The phenomena are neither objective nor subjective in the original sense; rather, they assert the status of secondary qualities. These are not the things in themselves because they depend on reason; they are not subjective either since the contribution of reason (the categories) and intuition (time and space) must be by themselves correlated to something external to them, or else there is no knowledge. Kant emphasizes this difference between his view and Berkeleys idealism. ( Lorand, 2000:21) Sophisticated subjectivism combines many of the possessions that have been widely seen as central to aesthetic appreciation. It allows a conspicuous role to reasoning and the comparison of cases in the justification of aesthetic judgments, at least in the finer arts; yet it gives to attentive feelings of pleasure or displeasure the ultimate determining ground of the judgment. And since any acknowledged general rules are only possible, it can explain why it is never self-contradictory to admit that
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certain features fall under an accepted rule, while also denying that they are beautiful. Furthermore, it can account for why we place such a value on aesthetic appreciation: the discriminating feelings, on which judgments in the finer arts depend, are of an intrinsically satisfying nature. Also they have a strong tendency to civilize a persons attitude toward moral and intellectual matters. Because of the fact that both these consequences are highly desirable, it is not surprising that aesthetic discrimination should be considered an admirable quality and its objects worthy of appreciation. (Ward, 2009:118) This position, which was originally developed by Kant, shares with simple objectivism the view that the judgment of taste lays claim to the necessary agreement of everyone without exception, but it shares with sophisticated subjectivism the view that its actuating ground must always be the feeling of attentive pleasure or displeasure. In Kants case, the justification is closely linked with his metaphysics. Two people can only perceive the same object insofar as they have the same faculties of understanding and imagination, operating identically in both of them. (Ward, 2009:119) According to such a theory of beauty, a judgment of beauty does not purely articulate a personal preference because it has a demand for agreement built into it. The agreement may be either that all humans agree (perceptual beauty) or that all members of a shared culture/experience group agree (intellectual beauty). There are no principles of beauty, unless psychological principles of perception could count as such, but there is a rational basis for real judgments of beauty. The disinterested nature of the experience of beauty is expressed by the fact that the pleasure is based on a solution to the problem of perception; a solution provided by sub-personal levels of perceptual and cognitive processing. In addition, such a theory of beauty arranges grounds for separating beauty from the agreeable and the good. It is also able to express the link apparently made between beauty and the idea of truth. (McMahon, 2009:237) The degree, to which a beautiful object actuates an intellectual reaction, is the degree to which its beauty will be dynamic and relative, rather than constant and universal. This is not a theory of art. This theory of beauty makes no assumptions about art. Some art is pleasurable on the sensuous level without evoking a response to beauty. (McMahon, 2009:236) In-yer-face theatre which grabs the audience by the scruff of the neck and shakes it until it gets the message is a distinctive example of this. In-yer-face theatre shocks audiences by the extremism of its language and images; unsettles them by its emotional frankness and disturbs them by its acute questioning of moral norms. Most in-yer-face plays are not interested in showing events in a detached way and allowing audiences to speculate about them; instead, they are experiential - they want audiences to feel the extreme emotions that are being shown on stage. This kind of theater is different from the conventional theatre form which the audience is used to since Aristotle. Even if the theatre changed since then, there is a certain image of theatre in audiences mind. So a large group of people doesnt call in-yer-face theatre as beautiful. So one can conclude that: the perception of beauty depends on the norms of the mind. Cultural background is also an important norm in the concept of beauty. The difference between east and west culture is a good example of this. They use different
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ornaments, furniture, object for the same purpose. But it is interesting that both of them neither abandon their own culture nor abandon to emulate each other. Psychological factors are also important for the definition of beauty. The traumatic or pathetic events experience by an individual can affect the whole life and thereby the taste of beauty of him. Consider someone who is locked in a cellar in his childhood; it will be a torment for him waiting for a surprise in a dark room. It can be said that ones dream can be anothers nightmare. Starting with Freud, psychoanalysts have acknowledged the importance of a sense of beauty and have tried to integrate the concept into analytic thinking.(Hagman, 2005:87) In Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Freud argued that the valuing of beauty is one of the primary characteristics of a civilized society. (Hagman, 2005:88) He also stated that We soon become aware that the useless thing which we require of civilization is beauty; we expect a cultured people to revere beauty where it is found in nature and to create it in their handiwork so far as they able. But this is far from exhausting what we require of civilization. (Freud, 1994: 24) For Sachs, beauty has a metaphysical function. The life and death instincts are not just drives, but internal manifestations of fundamental forces of nature. The most central problem of human existence, the conflict between life and death, is resolved in the sense of beauty. (Hagman, 2005:90) Rickman argued that the sense of beauty involves the search for a new world built on the ruins of the old. In beauty, we find the expression of the good object that once thought destroyed, is now whole and alive again. We call something beautiful because that is what we feel about life when we expect death. (Hagman, 2005:91) Finally, Lee (1950) claimed that there are two kinds of emotions represented in the beautiful object. One is the aesthetic emotion of the artist that lies hidden in the emotional elements of the design and that contains moments of spiritual harmony and perfection. The other emotions are the non-aesthetic ones (such as aggression, fear, desire, and so on), explained through the objects imagery. In other words, Lee believed that the sense of beauty lies not in what the object appears to represent, but in what is hidden, embodied within the formal structure or design of the object. In this way, something can be experienced as beautiful and thus corrective and transcendent, although its content may be scary, violent, or lustful. In fact, this is the most important characteristic of beauty, in Lees model; self-experience can be restored if the anxiety producing fantasies are given concrete expression through integrated and perfected forms. (Hagman, 2005:92-93) As it is understood from the definitions of beauty: The perception of beauty has changed for ages: Vasaris description of gigantic magnificent pieces of Renaissance Art is defeated by invitation of Walter Gropius who w anted to create a new guild of craftsmen without the class distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist with Bauhaus or Dada movement which underlines that a work of art should not be beauty in itself, for beauty is dead.

All in all beauty is quality of our lives as it is defined in a delighting way with these words of Santayana:
The sense of beauty is the harmony between our nature and our experience. When our senses and imagination find what they crave, when the world so shapes itself or so moulds the mind that the correspondence between them is perfect, then perception is pleasure, and existence needs no apology. (Santayana, 1896: 269)

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