The Concept of Disinterestedness in Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetics

Rind, Miles

doi:10.1353/hph.2002.0017

Cited by 19 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…The activity of a cheerful mind/imagination is more modest than that of an "aesthetic attitude": it transforms the world not by creating the aesthetic but by discovering the various properties designed to elicit pleasure and enjoying them more intensively or with finer discernment. 288 Furthermore, the strong religious allusions in the quotation above also shows that transforming the world aesthetically was inextricably linked to its spiritual transformation. "Cheerfulness -Szécsényi writesas a habitual state of mind is not contemplative, it is rather an agile, active, productive attitude to the world outside and inside, it can permanently re-shape or 're-create' the world as our world and can render natural scenes sanctified reality in which the 'transient Gleams of Joy' of the spatial and bodily is being improved into the perpetual state of celestial bliss of the temporal (eternal) and spiritual".…”

Section: A Cheerful Order Of Thingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The teleology of the aesthetic in the british enlightenment

Csuka¹

2019

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When I began studying aesthetics I never would have thought that I would eventually write my dissertation on the final cause arguments in eighteenth-century British aesthetic theories. I simply never could have imagined that eighteenth-century aesthetics could be so beautifully perplexing, intriguing, and relevant until a seminar on Burke's aesthetics and a course on the eighteenth-century philosophies of taste, both held at the Department of Aesthetics at ELTE by Sándor Radnóti. I am immensely thankful for professor Radnóti for enticing me to study this period and supervising this project from my earliest, half-baked ideas to the last moments. The final form of the dissertation also owes a tremendous debt to the supervision of Endre Szécsényi who first drew my attention to the teleological explanatory structures in eighteenth-century British aesthetics during an inspiring graduate seminar. I am also thankful for the support of my former professors at the Department of Aesthetics at ELTE, especially for Béla Bacsó for our many encouraging discussions and for his relentless determination to help any young scholar who turns to him for instruction. My gratitude also goes to Zoltán Papp and Zsolt Komáromy for reading and commenting on certain parts of this work, to Piroska Balogh and Gergely Fórizs for convincing me to look into the anthropological aesthetics of eighteenth-century Central Europe, and to Tamás Seregi for making me think about what aesthetics is and what it could be.I could have never pursued this research without my parents' selfless support, tireless patience, and unbroken confidence in me throughout these years. This dissertation, in several ways, is the result of their work as well. My special thanks also go to my sister and to my extended family, to István and Dániel Gorove in particular, for recovering one file that I thought to have been lost for good.But most importantly, this dissertation could have never been finished without the help and encouragement of my amazing wife, Eszter, whose love kept me going even when I thought I had no more strength left in me. And finally, I would like to apologise to my son, Ábner, for sacrificing many of our precious playtimes for getting on with this work, and to thank him for the prodigious motivation his love and cheerfulness gave me all along.But what remains of "the Enlightenment" if, in the absence of an overarching intellectual or cultural framework, we must make do with a broad definition, which can accommodate the contradictory ideas (and various religious beliefs) that emerged and clashed from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, while we can study only its particular manifestations? Opposing both a borderless Enlightenment and dissolving the Enlightenment into various enlightenments altogether, authors like Jonathan Israel or John Robertson have recently tried to restore the unity of the Enlightenment. 17 Their unity is, however, a unity amidst variety. Israel famously differentiated between a Radical and a Moderate Enlightenment, ...

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Section: A Cheerful Order Of Thingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The teleology of the aesthetic in the british enlightenment

Csuka¹

2019

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“…See also Stolniz (1963) and (1978). Other papers discussing the genealogy of the concept are: White (1973); Rind, (2002), and Guyer, (1993). For the further development of the concept of disinterestedness see: Vandenabeele (2001).…”

Section: The Path From Aristotle's Philia To Kant's Disinterestednessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kant’s Aesthetic Reading of Aristotle’s "Philia": Disinterestedness and the Mood of the Late Enlightenment

Pi¹

2013

Rev. Filos. (Madr.)

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This article roots Kant's concept of disinterestedness, as he uses it in the Critique of Judgment, in Aristotle's notion of philia by establishing a path from ethics to aesthetics and back. In this way, the third Critique turns out to be one of the main sources for a new ideal of humanity: the ideal suitable for late Enlightenment. This article argues that Kant reaches this fruitful use of disinterestedness by giving to Aristotle's concept of philia an aesthetic turn.

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“…Compare Shaftesbury 2000, 321-2. On 'disinterestedness' in 18 th -century British aesthetics, see also Stolnitz 1961a;Rind 2002;Berleant 1986. On Kant's relationship to this British context, see White 1973;Townsend 1987;and Guyer 1993.…”

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confidence: 99%

Sensory Force, Sublime Impact, and Beautiful Form

Lichtenstein

2019

The British Journal of Aesthetics

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Can a basic sensory property like a bare colour or tone be beautiful? Some, like Kant, say no. But Heidegger suggests, plausibly, that colours ‘glow’ and tones ‘sing’ in artworks. These claims can be productively synthesized: ‘glowing’ colours (etc.) are not beautiful; but they are sensory forces—not mere ‘matter’, contra Kant—with real aesthetic impact. To the extent that it inheres in sensible properties, beauty is plausibly restricted to structures of sensory force. Kant correspondingly misrepresents the relation of beautiful wholes to their parts. Beautiful form is not extrinsic to sensory force. Sensible beauty is just the holistic impact of agonistically-interacting sensory forces. When sensory forces interact hierarchically, their collective impact is closer to the sublime, in quality if not degree. The simplest sensory experience of sublimity is just the impact of radically intensified sensory forces, similar in kind if not degree to the individual ‘singing’ tones in a beautiful melody.

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The Concept of Disinterestedness in Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetics

Cited by 19 publications

References 20 publications

The teleology of the aesthetic in the british enlightenment

The teleology of the aesthetic in the british enlightenment

Kant’s Aesthetic Reading of Aristotle’s "Philia": Disinterestedness and the Mood of the Late Enlightenment

Sensory Force, Sublime Impact, and Beautiful Form

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