An inquiry into what "beauty" is, and how and why it can affect us. Armstrong is a philosophy professor with an interest in aesthetics. I found this book very readable, and was highlighting a lot of it as I was going. I think there is a fair amount in here that might be useful reference material.

Here's some of what I highlighted:

• Good section on Hogarth, who wanted to explain beauty partly so that people won't be made to feel by "connoisseurs" that they're missing something if they don't appreciate "good art". But "if we can see that one thing is more beautiful than another, how does confusion ever arise? How could we ever be duped?" [p8]
• "Beauty is not a kind of conjuring trick that loses its magic the moment we understand how it is done" [p9]; "In understanding our own attraction to the objects we think beautiful we may perhaps deepen and refine our attachment to them." [p4]
• The holistic character of beauty "helps explain why we often feel the effect of beauty even though we cannot explain what it is that we like so much.. Because everything counts together it is extremely hard to disentangle the interrelations and juxtapositions that the object sustains." [p37]. If we focus on a particular element of something beautiful "we make a logical error in thinking we could transfer that precise element into another setting and recapture the satisfaction it gave before." [p39]
• Emphasising how different parts of a work of art combine and enhance one another, he quotes CS Lewis from The Four Loves "'in each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can brind out...Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald's reaction to a specifically Charles joke.'" [p45]
• In looking into why beauty can move us to tears, he refers to Plotinus' metaphysics, "The pain of beauty occurs because it puts us in touch with an aspect of ourselves that we value highly...But we also see that very much of the time, we neglect and disown this part of ourselves...in order to get on with the business of living." [p74]
• Talks about Schiller's term "aesthetic necessity". "When we listen to a perfect melody it sounds as if the sequence of notes is necessary...The whole sequence sounds as if it had to be that way and could not have been any other way; although, of course, we know intellectually that the melody was invented by some particular person and obviously could have been different....The next note 'has to' follow; but this does not make us feel constrained; it does not leave us feeling that our freedom has been reduced. On the contrary, we are thrilled by this apparently inevitable sequence." [p82]
• Talks about Pierre Bordieu's study (which is also referenced in What Good are the Arts?) which appeared to show that the type of art that people like correlates with their social class. But he's a bit more critical of the study than Carey: "The central failing of Bordieu's analysis is that he insinuates an explanation - background and education cause aesthetic preference - where no such explanation is justified." [p100]
• Good section on Hume's ideas on the "standard of taste", trying to explain why "aesthetic snobbery" might not be as bad as it sounds: "There are surely some people who will admire the Gibbs building just because it is vaguely classical in spirit and they have a prior conviction that classical buildings are always beautiful. Such a person may say that the church is beautiful but they do not do so on the basis of their visual encounter with it, not because they have found beauty in it by carefully contemplating its appearance, but simply on the basis of a mechanical prejudice. [p127]"
• "Works of art can function as substitutes for names. WE might say that it is a Bonington evening rather than a Cuyp evening...These objects come to be exemplary of distinctive moods for which we have no proper name - at least none that serves to individuate and pick out just what it is that is distinctive of each" [p133]
• "aesthetic education .. is partly constituted by an increased sense of the individuality of the object...but an equally important aspect is the refinement of our own enthusiasm" [p133]
• Considers the possibility that there may be different style of art, from Wolfflin - "the fact that Picasso is a major figure..doesn't entail that the kinds of form he deals with..are gong to appeal to you. One may be constitutionally unable to find these works beautiful. But this can be, for some people, a hard admission to make when there is so much pressure to align oneself with received opinion.....'There are as many styles of beauty,' writes Stendhal, 'as there are visions of happiness'". [p146]
• "One of the strangest forms of cruelty is the tyranny of the present. It is unkind to force attention exclusively on those objects that have been recently created, and to demand enthusiasm exclusively for the modes of beauty which have been recently discovered." [p150]

Very impressed. I've bought another of Armstrong's books, Conditions of Love to read when I have the time.

Completed : 28-Mar-2007