Introduction to Aesthetics

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy treating the level of syncretic spirituality represented by art. This means that aesthetics should not be mistaken for art or science, and aesthetic categories and principles are neither regulations for artists, nor scientific laws. Rather, aesthetics shows where these rules come from, and how they organize the aesthetic side of any human activity.

This does not imply that there cannot be any science about the arts, or an artistic rendition of their development. Thus, one could study the different forms of art, the specific techniques, the means of expression, or the history of aesthetic schools --- under definite social conditions all such studies may become separate branches of science, with very distant connection to aesthetics proper.

The realm of the aesthetic

Though most people associate aesthetics with arts, it can never be that narrow, since it is a philosophical discipline and therefore concerns the universal. Well, the arts manifest the aesthetic side of activity in a most clear way, bringing it to the top of the hierarchy. Still, as a kind of activity, the arts would always retain many other aspects, and aesthetics would never be the only (and even the major) cause of artistic creativity. On the other side, the traces of the aesthetic may be found in people's economical and social activity, in their everyday experiences, and the very possibility of the aesthetic ascends to the interplay of matter and reflexion characteristic of the world as a whole. And eventually the artistic activity, along with all the others, contributes in the integrity of the world, the unity of all its manifestations at all the levels.

The formation of the arts as a special activity relatively independent of the other forms of material production and creativity should be attributed to a definite level of economical and social development, marked with a high degree of social division of labor. In other historical circumstances, when division of labor will be replaced with a more efficient organization, there won't be that ubiquitous specialization, and the aesthetic will be dissolved in diverse forms of more universal activities.

The criteria of the aesthetic

Over the centuries, there has been much argument on what can be called art, and what cannot. Many people proclaimed all kinds of principles, but they were never comprehensive enough, to be universally applicable. This lead to aesthetic relativism, denial of the very possibility of distinguishing art from non-art; some people believe that art is entirely a matter of opinion, and no objective criteria of art can be established at all.

Aesthetic views strongly depend on the economical and social position of the person and are subject to historical development. Nevertheless, there is a common core in all the diversity of possible attitudes, which makes them all aesthetic; however this "something" cannot be comprehended within aesthetics --- and even on the basis of human reflexion in general; it must be discovered in praxis, creative re-production of the world, including both its material and ideal aspects.

In aesthetics, the aesthetic side of praxis becomes reflected in the aesthetic categories: beauty, mimesis, the sublime, the tragical, etc. However, neither of them is enough to distinguish art from non-art, and it is only the unity of all aesthetic categories that adequately reflects the specificity of syncretic creativity as a necessary level of the hierarchy of spirituality in general.