The Principles of Aesthetics

The Principles of Aesthetics

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Title: The Principles Of Aesthetics
Author: Dewitt H. Parker
Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6366] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on December 2, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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THE PRINCIPLES OF AESTHETICS
BY
DEWITT H. PARKER
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

PREFACE
This book has grown out of lectures to students at the University of Michigan and embodies my effort to express to them the nature and meaning of art. In writing it, I have sought to maintain scientific accuracy, yet at the same time to preserve freedom of style and something of the inspiration of the subject. While intended primarily for students, the book will appeal generally, I hope, to people who are interested in the intelligent appreciation of art.
My obligations are extensive,--most directly to those whom I have cited in foot-notes to the text, but also to others whose influence is too indirect or pervasive to make citation profitable, or too obvious to make it necessary. For the broader philosophy of art, my debt is heaviest, I believe, to the artists and philosophers during the period from Herder to Hegel, who gave to the study its greatest development, and, among contemporaries, to Croce and Lipps. In addition, I have drawn freely upon the more special investigations of recent times, but with the caution desirable in view of the very tentative character of some of the results. To Mrs. Robert M. Wenley I wish to express my thanks for her very careful and helpful reading of the page proof.
The appended bibliography is, of course, not intended to be in any sense adequate, but is offered merely as a guide to further reading; a complete bibliography would itself demand almost a volume.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
. Introduction: Purpose and Method
CHAPTER II
. The Definition of Art
CHAPTER III
. The Intrinsic Value of Art
CHAPTER IV
. The Analysis of the Aesthetic Experience: The Elements of the Experience
CHAPTER V
. The Analysis of the Aesthetic Experience: The Structure of the Experience
CHAPTER VI
. The Problem of Evil in Aesthetics, and Its Solution through the Tragic, Pathetic, and Comic
CHAPTER VII
. The Standard of Taste
CHAPTER VIII
. The Aesthetics of Music
CHAPTER IX
. The Aesthetics of Poetry
CHAPTER X
. Prose Literature
CHAPTER XI
. The Dominion of Art over Nature: Painting
CHAPTER XII
. The Dominion of Art over Nature: Sculpture
CHAPTER XIII
. Beauty in the Industrial Arts: Architecture
CHAPTER XIV
. The Function of Art: Art and Morality
CHAPTER XV
. The Function of Art: Art and Religion
BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE PRINCIPLES OF AESTHETICS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION: PURPOSE AND METHOD
Although some feeling for beauty is perhaps universal among men, the same cannot be said of the understanding of beauty. The average man, who may exercise considerable taste in personal adornment, in the decoration of the home, or in the choice of poetry and painting, is at a loss when called upon to tell what art is or to explain why he calls one thing "beautiful" and another "ugly." Even the artist and the connoisseur, skilled to produce or accurate in judgment, are often wanting in clear and consistent ideas about their own works or appreciations. Here, as elsewhere, we meet the contrast between feeling and doing, on the one hand, and knowing, on the other. Just as practical men are frequently unable to describe or justify their most successful methods or undertakings, just as many people who astonish us with their fineness and freedom in the art of living are strangely wanting in clear thoughts about themselves and the life which they lead so admirably, so in the world of beauty, the men who do and appreciate are not always the ones who understand.
Very often, moreover, the artist and the art lover justify their inability to understand beauty on the ground that beauty is too subtle a thing for thought. How, they say, can one hope to distill