Ontology, or the Theory of BeingCoffey, P. (Peter)
Philosophy
Ontology, or the Theory of Being
Coffey, P. (Peter)
Ontology
The error of confounding esthetic enjoyment with mere organic sense
pleasure is characteristic of all sensist and materialist philosophies. A
feeling of sensible gratification always, no doubt, accompanies our
apprehension and enjoyment of the beautiful; for just as man is not a
merely sentient being so neither is he a pure intelligence. Beauty reaches
him through the senses; in order that an object be beautiful for him, in
order that the contemplation of it may please him, it must be in harmony
with his whole _human_ nature, which is both sentient and intelligent; it
must, therefore, be agreeable to the senses and imagination as well as to
the intellect. “There is no painting,” writes M. Brunetière,(199) “but
should be above all a joy to the eye! no music but should be a delight for
the ear!” Otherwise we shall not apprehend in it the order, perfection,
harmony, adaptation to human nature, whereby we pronounce an object
beautiful and rejoice in the contemplation of it. And it is this
intellectual activity that is properly esthetic. “What makes us consider a
colour beautiful,” writes Bossuet,(200) is the secret judgment we
pronounce upon its adaptation to the eye which it pleases. Beautiful
sounds, songs, cadences, have a similar adaptation to the ear. To
apprehend this adaptation promptly and accurately is what is described as
having a good ear, though properly speaking this judgment should be
attributed to the intellect.
According to some the esthetic sentiment, the appreciation and enjoyment
of the beautiful, is an exclusively subjective experience, an emotional
state which has all its sources within the conscious subject, and which
has no real, extramental correlative in things. According to others beauty
is already in the extramental reality independently of any subjective
conditions, and has no mental factors in its constitution as an object of
experience. Both of these extreme views are erroneous. Esthetic pleasure,
like all pleasure, is the natural concomitant of the full, orderly, normal
exercise of the subject’s conscious activities. These activities are
called forth by, and exercised upon, some _object_. For esthetic pleasure
there must be in the object something the contemplation of which will
elicit such harmonious exercise of the faculties. Esthetic pleasure,
therefore, cannot be purely subjective: there must be an objective factor
in its realization. But on the other hand this objective factor cannot
provoke esthetic enjoyment independently of the dispositions of the
subject. It must be in harmony with those dispositions—cognitive,
appetitive, affective, emotional, temperamental—in order to evoke such a
mental view of the object that the contemplation of the latter will cause
esthetic pleasure. And it is precisely because these dispositions, which
are so variable from one individual to another, tinge and colour the
mental view, while this in turn determines the quality of the esthetic
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