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"You can't prove beauty"

“The aesthetes have monopolised aesthetics for far too long. It’s time the philosophers have their turn,” says Associate Professor Dorthe Jørgensen.

By Mikkel Hvid

You experience it one evening at the beach, just at the moment the sun is going down, casting its last warm rays on the sand dunes and the stiff lyme grass – that’s exactly the moment you feel it.

Or one morning in church, there it is again; it creeps up on you mixed with the tones of the organ, the beautiful words of the hymn and the grandeur of the moment.

Or maybe it pops up on a perfectly ordinary Thursday when you’re sitting in the kitchen, enjoying a glass of red with your boyfriend. Time suddenly becomes fluid, the room takes on a special depth, and you ex­perience the moment more intensely and clearly than ever before – that is it, there it is again. Beauty. The aesthetic experience of something more.

Dormant philosophy

Many people experience that kind of aesthetic awareness, but if they approach Danish philosophers and historians of ideas to learn more about the nature and meaning of the experience, they do so in vain. Danish phil­osophy has not dealt with philosophical aesthetics in a systematic way, and that is a huge problem, according to Associate Professor Dorthe Jørgensen, the Institute of Philosophy and History of Ideas.

Aesthetics came to Denmark as early as the end of the 18th century. It arrived from Germany, where it had been founded by the philosopher Baumgarten. Inspired by that trad­ition, the University of Copenhagen ­created a professorship in aesthetics in 1788.

“The Baumgarten tradition and German philosophy nevertheless never really caught on,” says Associate Professor Jørgensen.

“During all the years the professorship existed, it was occupied by authors and other aesthetes. At first, they adopted a subjective approach to questions of aesthetics. They later became more academic, but they never developed a philosophical approach to aesthetics. In 1918, the professorship was abolished and replaced by a professorship in comparative literary history. And as the philosophers did not protest, philosophical aesthetics disappeared, and it became up to individuals to preserve its future.”

Art is only a small component

In other parts of the world, art theory and art philosophy also pushed philosophical aesthetics into the background. Many actually confuse philosophical aesthetics with an analysis of the idiom of an artwork in terms of art theory or with considerations of what actually defines a work of art in terms of art philosophy.

“But,” says Associate Professor Jørgensen, “there is something missing. On the one hand, the beauty of art and beauty as such are not the same thing. On the other hand, philosophical aesthetics are about aesthetic experience.

The aesthetic experience is a special form of true cognition that many people encounter without it having anything to do with art. If you reduce aesthetics to a question of analysing the idiom of an artwork, you cut yourself off from exploring an experience that many people share with each other, and that has a special meaning for them.”

Be open to beauty

45-year-old Associate Professor Jørgensen would like to see a renewed focus on philosophical aesthetics. This time, the task would be tackled in earnest and an actual philosophical approach to aesthetics developed – and philosophical aesthetics are completely different from art history.

“Art history is about the artwork as an object that is academically analysed. Others should be able to repeat the analysis; otherwise the results are not valid. However, it does not make sense to deal with aesthetic experience in this way. You cannot repeat my special aesthetic experience; that which I experience as beautiful. My ex­perience is ­nevertheless valid. It says something im­port­ant. The task is therefore to define the common denominator in the individual ­aesthetic experience, and you do that through phil­osophical reflection. In that way, I can share my experience with you, and you will be able not just to recognise it in yourself, but also to better understand your own experiences,” says Associate Professor Jørgensen.

Missing component

Denmark is not the only country in which philosophical aesthetics have been replaced by art history. The same thing happened in the English-speaking world, and only Italy and Germany have a tradition for philosoph­ical aesthetics.

The tradition is particularly strong in Germany, and in the 20th century, it includes philosophers like Benjamin, Heidegger and Adorno. As early as Plato, thoughts about beauty constituted a key part of philosophy. Plato perceived truth, goodness and beauty as three aspects of the same thing, and thoughts of beauty were entertained throughout the Middle Ages.

But with Kant, the equilibrium was lost. He mentions somewhere that beauty in fact is the symbol of virtue – i.e. goodness – and in that way, morals get the upper hand.

In Germany, philosophical aesthetics nevertheless survived despite this twist. In Denmark, however, things developed differently. One of the reasons for this was that Danish philosophy was for many years more influenced by the analytical philosophy of the English-speaking world, which sees itself as a science, than by the German philosophy, which is more open to metaphysics.

“That’s a shame,” says Associate Professor Jørgensen, “because aesthetics are basically metaphysics, the metaphysics of experience. It is a lack of understanding or acceptance of this that causes aesthetics to be reduced to art history. Instead, philosophical aesthetics should be the philosophical basis for work with aesthetic subjects. Just like the metaphysics of experience, it can function as a new and more modern form of theory of cognition.”

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