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The Sense of Beauty, by George Santayana
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It is remarkably appropriate that this work on aesthetics should have been written by George Santayana, who is probably the most brilliant philosophic writer and the philosopher with the strongest sense of beauty since Plato. It is not a dry metaphysical treatise, as works on aesthetics so often are, but is itself a fascinating document: as much a revelation of the beauty of language as of the concept of beauty.
This unabridged reproduction of the 1896 edition of lectures delivered at Harvard College is a study of "why, when, and how beauty appears, what conditions an object must fulfill to be beautiful, what elements of our nature make us sensible of beauty, and what the relation is between the constitution of the object and the excitement of our susceptibility."
Santayana first analyzes the nature of beauty, finding it irrational, "pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing." He then proceeds to the materials of beauty, showing what all human functions can contribute: love, social instincts, senses, etc. Beauty of form is then analyzed, and finally the author discusses the expression of beauty. Literature, religion, values, evil, wit, humor, and the possibility of finite perfection are all examined. Presentation throughout the work is concrete and easy to follow, with examples drawn from art, history, anthropology, psychology, and similar areas.
- Sales Rank: #950872 in eBooks
- Published on: 2012-08-31
- Released on: 2012-08-31
- Format: Kindle eBook
From the Back Cover
Published in 1896, The Sense Of Beauty secured Santayana's reputation as a philosopher. Based on a well-known course on the theory and history of aesthetics that Santayana gave at Harvard College from 1892 to 1895, the book represented a major turning point in aesthetic theory. It outsold all of his books until the publication of his one novel, The Last Puritan, and even today it is one of the most widely read volumes in all of Santayana's vast philosophical work.
About the Author
George Santayana (1863-1952) was a professor of philosophy at Harvard University. Expressing a theme that remained a lifelong characteristic, he explains why he gave up “academic lumber” and went into retirement. The pursuit of pure philosophy became his revolt against intellectual dissolution and anarchy. His writings were substantial, including a five-volume work, The Life of Reason, and a four-volume work,Realms of Being.
John McCormick (1918-2010) taught American Studies at the Free University, Berlin, and later went on to become distinguished professor of comparative literature at Rutgers University. He is the author of numerous works, including Bullfighting, American and European Literary Imagination, Catastrophe and Imagination, and Fiction as Knowledge.
Most helpful customer reviews
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent
By Dr. Lee D. Carlson
The philosophy of Santayana is remembered mostly by his theory of aesthetics, which is discussed in detail in this book. His aesthetic theory is basically subjective, or "psychological", and if viewed from a contemporary standpoint, somewhat at odds with current developments in neuroscience, but closer than most schools of Western philosophy. All philosophical theories of aesthetics are interesting to investigate from the standpoint of comparing them to what is said about the human aesthetic faculty in modern research in neuroscience.
As in ethics, Santayana approaches aesthetics in three different ways, namely as the exercise of the aesthetic faculty, the history of art, and the psychological. The first two do not concern the author in the book, his attention devoted entirely to the third. His intention is to remove himself from the influence of the poets and of Plato, and find the out how ideals are formed in the mind, how objects may be compared with them, what properties are shared in beautiful things, and the process by which humans become sensitive to beauty and in turn value it. He is after a definition of beauty that explains its origin in human experience, and one that explains the human capacity to be sensible of beauty and the relation between a beautiful object and its ability to excite the human senses.
The author takes a different definition of aesthetics, being one that he calls "critical" or "appreciative perception", and which results from combining a notion of criticism with that of the notion of aesthetics as a theory of perception. Santayana wanted to develop a theory of aesthetics that relies on perceptions as a judgmental, critical notion. Perceptions that are not appreciations are thus to be excluded. An aesthetic theory then deals with the "perception of values".
The author's view of religion is well-known, and his atheism rare for his time. The religious imagination he says, has resulted in creations that rival those of the poets and novelists, so much so, he says, that humans believe the content of these creations to have objective reality. The ideas of these divinities are further enhanced by the realization of their natural power, with the belief in the reality of an ideal personality bringing about its further idealization, eventually spanning many human generations. History and tradition are cast by the imagination of these deities, in which peity resides and is nourished. The author of course does not excuse the God of Christianity from this, but he acknowledges the possibility that the human conceptions of Christ and Mary may in fact have real counterparts (the evidence of this not to be explored in this work).
The author states that unless human nature undergoes radical change, the main intellectual and aesthetic value of ideas will come from the creative acts of imagination. If human perceptions are not connected with human pleasures, there would be no need to look at things, no interest in them at all, and no importance would be imputed to them. It is indeed amazing how many ideas, thought to be rational, logical, or abstract, actually fit in with the author's aesthetic worldview. Concepts and results in science and mathematics in particular, after their discovery, are sometimes thought of as having their origin in logic and reason. But it was the keen human imagination that brought them about: a grand interplay of intuition and playfullness. Ugly ideas are not permissible: only the most beautiful survive...and oddly, and most interestingly, it is these that usually seem to work the best, and transcend the context in which they were discovered.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
THE POPULAR WRITER/PHILOSOPHER LOOKS AT ART, DRAMA, AND BEAUTY
By Steven H Propp
Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás (but known as “George Santayana”; 1863–1952), was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. His most famous books are The Life of Reason---which includes Reason in Society, Reason in Religion, Reason in Art, Reason in Science, etc.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1896 book, “This little book contains the chief ideas gathered together for a course of lectures on the theory and history of aesthetics given at Harvard College from 1982 to 1895. The only originality I can claim is that which may result from the attempt to put together the scattered commonplaces of criticism into a system, under the inspiration of a naturalistic psychology. I have studied sincerity rather than novelty, and if any subject, as for instance the excellence of tragedy, is presented in a new light, the change consists only in the stricter application to a complex subject of the principles acknowledged to obtain in our simpler judgments. My effort throughout has been to recall those fundamental aesthetic feelings the orderly expression of which yields sanity of judgment and distinction of taste.”
He suggests, “There is no explanation, for instance, in calling beauty an adumbration of divine attributes. Such a relation, if it were actual, would not help us at all to understand why the symbols of divinity pleased. But in certain moments of contemplation, when much emotional experience lies behind us, and we have reached very general ideas both of nature and of life, our delight in any particular object may consist in nothing but the thought that this object is a manifestation of universal principles… this expressiveness of the sky is due to certain qualities of the sensation, which bind it to all things happy and pure, and, in a mind in which the essence of purity and happiness is embodied in an idea of God, bind it also to that idea. So it may happen that the most arbitrary and unreal theories, which must be rejected as general explanations of aesthetic life, may be reinstated as particular moments of it.” (Pg. 7)
He acknowledges, ”To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.” (Pg. 8-9)
He states, “By play we are designating, no longer what is done fruitlessly, but whatever is done spontaneously and for its own sake, whether it have or not an ulterior utility. Play, in this sense, may be our most useful occupation.” (Pg. 19)
He argues, “It is unmeaning to say that what is beautiful to one man OUGHT to be beautiful to another. If their senses are the same, their associations and dispositions similar, then the same thing will certainly be beautiful to both. If their natures are different, the form which to one will be entrancing will be to another even invisible, because his classifications and discriminations in perception will be different, and he may see a hideous detached fragment or a shapeless aggregate of things, in what to another is a perfect whole---so entirely are the unities of objects unities of function and use. It is absurd to say that what is invisible to a given being OUGHT to seem beautiful to him. Evidently this obligation of recognizing the same qualities is conditioned by the possession of the same faculties. But no two men have exactly the same faculties, nor can things have for any two exactly the same values.” (Pg. 27)
He says, “We have no reached our definition of beauty, which, in the terms of our successive analysis and narrowing of the conception, is value positive, intrinsic, and objectified. Or, in less technical language, Beauty is pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing.” (Pg. 31)
He contends, “The capacity to love gives our contemplation that glow without which it might often fail to manifest beauty; and the whole sentimental side of our aesthetic sensibility---without which it would be perceptive and mathematical rather than aesthetic---is due to our sexual organization remotely stirred. The attraction of sex could not become efficient unless the senses were first attracted. The eye must be fascinated and the ear charmed by the object which nature intends should be pursued.” (Pg. 38)
He notes, “We have, therefore, to study the various aesthetic, intellectual, and moral compensations by which the mind can be brought to contemplate with pleasure a thing which, if experienced alone, would be the cause of pain. There is, to be sure, a way of avoiding this inquiry. We might assert that since all moderate excitement is pleasant, there is nothing strange in the fact that the representation of evil should please; for the experience is evil by virtue of the pain that it gives; but it gives pain only when felt with great intensity. Observed from afar, it is a pleasing impression; it is vivid enough to interest, but not acute enough to wound. This simple explanation is possible in all those cases where aesthetic effect is gained by the inhibition of sympathy.” (Pg. 137)
He asserts, “no aesthetic value is really founded on the experience or the suggestion of evil. This conclusion will doubtless seem the more interesting if we think of its possible extension to the field of ethics and of the implied vindication of the ideals of moral perfection as something essentially definable and attainable… Expressiveness may be found in any one thing that suggests another, or draws from association with that other any of its emotional colouring. There may, therefore, of course, be an expressiveness of evil; but this expressiveness will not have any aesthetic value. The description or suggestion of suffering may have a worth as science or discipline, but can never in itself enhance any beauty.” (Pg. 158)
He concludes the book with the statement, “Beauty therefore seems to be the clearest manifestation of perfection, and the best evidence of its possibility. If perfection is, as it should be, the ultimate justification of being, we may understand the ground of the moral dignity of beauty. Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.” (Pg. 164)
This book will be of great interest to anyone studying the philosophy of aesthetics.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
THE POPULAR WRITER/PHILOSOPHER LOOKS AT ART, DRAMA, AND BEAUTY
By Steven H Propp
Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás (but known as "George Santayana"; 1863-1952), was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. His most famous books are The Life of Reason---which includes Reason in Society, Reason in Religion, Reason in Art, Reason in Science, etc.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1896 book, "This little book contains the chief ideas gathered together for a course of lectures on the theory and history of aesthetics given at Harvard College from 1982 to 1895. The only originality I can claim is that which may result from the attempt to put together the scattered commonplaces of criticism into a system, under the inspiration of a naturalistic psychology. I have studied sincerity rather than novelty, and if any subject, as for instance the excellence of tragedy, is presented in a new light, the change consists only in the stricter application to a complex subject of the principles acknowledged to obtain in our simpler judgments. My effort throughout has been to recall those fundamental aesthetic feelings the orderly expression of which yields sanity of judgment and distinction of taste."
He suggests, "There is no explanation, for instance, in calling beauty an adumbration of divine attributes. Such a relation, if it were actual, would not help us at all to understand why the symbols of divinity pleased. But in certain moments of contemplation, when much emotional experience lies behind us, and we have reached very general ideas both of nature and of life, our delight in any particular object may consist in nothing but the thought that this object is a manifestation of universal principles... this expressiveness of the sky is due to certain qualities of the sensation, which bind it to all things happy and pure, and, in a mind in which the essence of purity and happiness is embodied in an idea of God, bind it also to that idea. So it may happen that the most arbitrary and unreal theories, which must be rejected as general explanations of aesthetic life, may be reinstated as particular moments of it." (Pg. 7)
He acknowledges, "To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be." (Pg. 8-9)
He states, "By play we are designating, no longer what is done fruitlessly, but whatever is done spontaneously and for its own sake, whether it have or not an ulterior utility. Play, in this sense, may be our most useful occupation." (Pg. 19)
He argues, "It is unmeaning to say that what is beautiful to one man OUGHT to be beautiful to another. If their senses are the same, their associations and dispositions similar, then the same thing will certainly be beautiful to both. If their natures are different, the form which to one will be entrancing will be to another even invisible, because his classifications and discriminations in perception will be different, and he may see a hideous detached fragment or a shapeless aggregate of things, in what to another is a perfect whole---so entirely are the unities of objects unities of function and use. It is absurd to say that what is invisible to a given being OUGHT to seem beautiful to him. Evidently this obligation of recognizing the same qualities is conditioned by the possession of the same faculties. But no two men have exactly the same faculties, nor can things have for any two exactly the same values." (Pg. 27)
He says, "We have no reached our definition of beauty, which, in the terms of our successive analysis and narrowing of the conception, is value positive, intrinsic, and objectified. Or, in less technical language, Beauty is pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing." (Pg. 31)
He contends, "The capacity to love gives our contemplation that glow without which it might often fail to manifest beauty; and the whole sentimental side of our aesthetic sensibility---without which it would be perceptive and mathematical rather than aesthetic---is due to our sexual organization remotely stirred. The attraction of sex could not become efficient unless the senses were first attracted. The eye must be fascinated and the ear charmed by the object which nature intends should be pursued." (Pg. 38)
He notes, "We have, therefore, to study the various aesthetic, intellectual, and moral compensations by which the mind can be brought to contemplate with pleasure a thing which, if experienced alone, would be the cause of pain. There is, to be sure, a way of avoiding this inquiry. We might assert that since all moderate excitement is pleasant, there is nothing strange in the fact that the representation of evil should please; for the experience is evil by virtue of the pain that it gives; but it gives pain only when felt with great intensity. Observed from afar, it is a pleasing impression; it is vivid enough to interest, but not acute enough to wound. This simple explanation is possible in all those cases where aesthetic effect is gained by the inhibition of sympathy." (Pg. 137)
He asserts, "no aesthetic value is really founded on the experience or the suggestion of evil. This conclusion will doubtless seem the more interesting if we think of its possible extension to the field of ethics and of the implied vindication of the ideals of moral perfection as something essentially definable and attainable... Expressiveness may be found in any one thing that suggests another, or draws from association with that other any of its emotional colouring. There may, therefore, of course, be an expressiveness of evil; but this expressiveness will not have any aesthetic value. The description or suggestion of suffering may have a worth as science or discipline, but can never in itself enhance any beauty." (Pg. 158)
He concludes the book with the statement, "Beauty therefore seems to be the clearest manifestation of perfection, and the best evidence of its possibility. If perfection is, as it should be, the ultimate justification of being, we may understand the ground of the moral dignity of beauty. Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good." (Pg. 164)
This book will be of great interest to anyone studying the philosophy of aesthetics.
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