Aesthetics is the philosophy of the beautiful; the name given to the branch of philosophy or of science which is concerned with that class of emotions, or with those attributes, real or apparent, of objects generally comprehended under the term beauty, and other related expressions. The term aesthetics first received this application from Baumgarten (1714-1762), a German philosopher, who was the first modern writer to treat systematically on the subject, though the beautiful had received attention at the hands of philosophers from early times. Socrates, according to Xenophon, regarded the beautiful as coincident with the good, and both as resolvable into the useful. Plato, in accordance with his idealistic theory, held the existence of an absolute beauty, which is the ground of beauty in all things. He also asserted the intimate union of the good, the beautiful, and the true.
Aristotle treated of the subject in much more detail than Plato, but chiefly from the scientific or critical point of view. In his treatises on Poetry and Rhetoric he lays down a theory of art, and establishes principles of beauty. His philosophical views were in many respects opposed to those of Plato. He does not admit an absolute conception of the beautiful; but he distinguishes beauty from the good, the useful, the fit, and the necessary. He resolves beauty into certain elements, as order, symmetry, definiteness. A distinction of beauty, according to him, is the absence of lust or desire in the pleasure it excites. Beauty has no utilitarian or ethical object; the aim of art is merely to give immediate pleasure; its essence is imitation. Plotinus agrees with Plato, and disagrees with Aristotle, in holding that beauty may subsist in single and simple objects, and consequently in restoring the absolute conception of beauty. He differs from Plato and Aristotle in raising art above nature.
Baumgarten's treatment of aesthetics is essentially Platonic. He made the division of philosophy into logic, ethics, and aesthetics; the first dealing with knowledge, the second with action (will and desire), the third with beauty. He limits aesthetics to the conceptions derived from the senses, and makes them consist in confused or obscured conceptions, in contradistinction to logical knowledge, which consists in clear conceptions. Kant defines beauty in reference to his four categories, quantity, quality, relation, and modality. In accordance with the subjective character of his system he denies an absolute conception of beauty, but his detailed treatment of the subject is inconsistent with the denial. Thus he attributes a beauty to single colours and tones, not on any plea of complexity, but on the ground of purity. He holds also that the highest meaning of beauty is to symbolize moral good, and arbitrarily attaches moral characters to the seven primary colours. The value of art is mediate, and the beauty of art is inferior to that of nature.
The treatment of beauty in the systems of Schelling and Hegel could with difficulty be made comprehensible without a detailed reference to the principles of these remarkable speculations. English writers on beauty are numerous, but they rarely ascend to the heights of German speculation. Shaftesbury adopted the notion that beauty is perceived by a special internal sense; in which he was followed by Hutcheson, who held that beauty existed only in the perceiving mind, and not in the object. Numerous English writers, among whom the principal are Alison and Jeffrey, have supported the theory that the source of beauty is to be found in association - a theory analogous to that which places morality in sympathy. The ability of its supporters gave this view a temporary popularity, but its baselessness has been effectively exposed by successive critics. Dugald Stewart attempted to show that there is no common quality in the beautiful beyond that of producing a certain refined pleasure; and Bain agrees with this criticism, but endeavours to restrict the beautiful within a group of emotions chiefly excited by association or combination of simpler elementary feelings. HerbertSpencer has a theory of beauty which is subservient to the theory of evolution. He makes beauty consist in the play of the higher powers of perception and emotion, denned as an activity not directly subservient to any processes conducive to life, but being gratifications sought for themselves alone. He classifies aesthetic pleasures according to the complexity of the emotions excited, or the number of powers duly exercised; and he attributes the depth and apparent vagueness of musical emotions to associations with vocal tones built up during vast ages. Among numerous writers who have made valuable contributions to the scientific discussion of aesthetics may be mentioned Winckelmann, Lessing, Bichter, the Schlegels, Gervinus, Helmholtz, and Kuskin. Research Aesthetics
Deontology is the science of duty. The term is used by certain philosophic schools (Bentham, Spencer, etc) to denote their doctrine of ethics. Research Deontology
As a philosophical doctrine, egoism is the view that the elements of all knowledge and the reality of the things known are dependent on the personal existence of the knower.
Ethics (from the Greek ethikos, 'dealing with nature'), in philosophy, can roughly be characterised as dividing into three parts: normative ethics; practical ethics; and meta-ethics. Normative ethics is the study of general normative principles or virtues. There are various doctrines concerning general normative principles. Altruists hold that when deciding how to act one ought to take the interests of others into account, as well as one's own. Hedonists hold that one ought to pursue only pleasure or happiness for oneself and others. The Golden Rule states that one should act towards others-as one wants them to act towards oneself. Consequentialists believe that one ought to do whatever will have the best consequences. (Utilitarianism, the doctrine that one ought to do whatever will maximise well-being or happiness is one version of consequentialism). Deontologists hold that the rightness or wrongness of actions is a matter of how they accord with moral rules, not of their consequences.
One must obey the rule that one ought to tell the truth, even if the consequences of breaking the rule would be better. Others hold that rightness or wrongness cannot be captured by a set of moral rules at all, and that it is not simply the consequences of an action which determine its moral status. Rather, one ought to be a virtuous person, one who has certain emotional reactions to various situations, reactions which lead one to behave in ways which are virtuous, honest, generous or kind. Practical ethics is the study of specific, practical ethical problems such as abortion, euthanasia, war and out treatment of animals. Clearly, the study of practical ethical issues is not independent of the study of general normative principles. General normative principles have implications for specific practical ethical problems, so acceptance of a general normative principle may lead one to change one's opinions about a specific practical issue, and one's firm conviction concerning a specific practical issue may lead one to see the failing of a general normative principle.
Meta-ethics is not concerned with which moral principles which we should follow, or how they relate to specific practical problems, but investigates abstract conceptual and metaphysical issues which arise for any moral principle. One meta-ethical claim is that any moral judgement concerning a particular is universal to all similar particulars. Emotivism claims that moral judgements are simply expressions of emotions. Descriptivism claims that moral terms are purely descriptive. Prescriptivism claims that moral terms have two independent components of meaning: descriptive and evaluative. Ethical relativism is the doctrine that moral judgements are true or false only relative to a particular context. Some hold that murder is wrong because God has commanded us not to commit murder. Ethical Intuitionism is the doctrine that there is a special faculty of moral intuition which gives us access to moral facts, to facts about how we ought to behave. The naturalistic fallacy is the supposed fallacy of inferring an 'ought' from an 'is': the issue
being whether ethics is objective or subjective. Research Ethics
The French Encyclopedie was an Encyclopaedia and the most important work of the 18th century after the works of Voltaire and Rousseau. It originated in a French translation of Ephraim Chamber's Cyclopaedia. Diderot was appointed to edit it, and enlisted the ablest men of the time as contributors. D'Alembert (who wrote the famous Discours preliminaire) edited the mathematics; Rousseau wrote the musical articles; Daubenton, those connected with natural history; the Abbe Yvon, those on logic, metaphysics, and ethics; Toussaint, those on jurisprudence ; Buffon contributed the article Nature; and Montesquieu, Voltaire, Euler, Marmontel, D'Holbach, Turgot, Grimm, and Condorcet took some share in the great work. Diderot himself was a prolific contributor on a wide variety of topics. The prospectus appeared in November, 1750, and the first volume in 1751, the whole being completed, despite fierce opposition, in 1765. Research French Encyclopedie
An idea, as used by Plato, is the metaphysical equivalent for the concept or definition, on whose importance in philosophy his master Socrates laid so much stress in ethics. In contrast with the sensible and particular thing or phenomenon, which is apprehended by ordinary perception, the idea is thus supersensible, and belongs to a higher order of reality, an intelligible world, apprehended by thought. In modern philosophy the term was used, at first by the Cartesians, and thence onwards until the time of Kant, in the psychological sense from which the popular use is derived, and which has remained, with some modification, the prevalent sense of the term in English philosophy.
Naturalism was a literary and artistic movement of the late 19th century that was characterised by the use of realistic techniques to express the philosophical belief that everything can be explained by natural or material causes. Its literary manifesto was Le Roman experimentale, by Zola, published in 1880. In philosophy, naturalism is a movement affirming that nature is the whole of reality and can be understood only through scientific investigation. Denying the existence of the supernatural and de-emphasising metaphysics, or the study of the ultimate nature of reality, naturalism affirms that cause-and-effect relationships, as in physics and chemistry, are sufficient to account for all phenomena. Teleological conceptions, which suggest design and metaphysical necessity in nature, while not necessarily invalid, are excluded from consideration. The ethical implication, since the naturalist denies any transcendent or supernatural end for humankind, is that values must be found within the social context. It is impossible to
determine what is best in an ultimate context, because the ultimate is beyond discovery. Values, therefore, are relative, and ethics is based on custom, inclination, or some form of utilitarianism, the doctrine that what is useful is good.
Naturalism is rooted in British empiricism, the doctrine that all knowledge is derived from experience, and in European positivism, the doctrine that denies any validity to metaphysical speculation. It came to full flower in the late 19th and 20th-century works of the American philosophers George Santayana, John Dewey, and their followers. Research Naturalism
Obedience is the carrying out instructions or commands; submitting to authority.
Obedience became an important topic in social psychology in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of extensive research by American psychologist Stanley Milgram which showed that a high proportion of ordinary individuals would obey instructions that involved inflicting severe pain on, and even the murder of others. Milgram had sought to show that German guards working at concentration camps during the Second World War were responsible for their actions, and that they couldn't use the argument that they were simply following orders. However, his research showed the opposite in a dramatic way. Obeying orders when disobedience results in punishment is understandable (even if not always morally justifiable), but Milgram claimed that many people would willingly obey orders, even if not threatened with punishment.
The subjects in his experiments were required to act as ' teachers' for a 'learner' who, unknown to them, was a confederate of the experimenter. Using a simulated shock generator, they were told to administer electric shocks, of increasing strengths, every time the 'learner' made a mistake. In some experiments as many as 60% of the subjects, when the experimenter told them to continue, administered shocks that they believed would seriously harm or kill the 'learner'. Although distressed by their actions, the subjects felt the experimenter was responsible. Milgram's work has not been accepted uncritically, most of the criticisms being levelled at the ethics of the experiment which led people to believe they had in fact killed an innocent man, although after the experiment they were reassured, but it has generated much discussion and stimulated further research. Research Obedience
Stoicism is an ancient Greek philosophy that developed from Cynicism. Stoicism was founded at Athens by Zeno of Citium in Cyprus around 300 BC and is essentially a practical philosophy, the source of its ethics being the ideal of the wise man after the pattern of Socrates, who perceives that the true good of man lies not in outward objects, but in the state of the soul itself. A follower of
Stoicism is known as a Stoic. Research Stoicism
Sir Alexander Bartholomew Grant was an English academic. He was born in 1826 and died in 1884. Educated at Harrow and at Oxford, where he became public examiner. In 1858 he was appointed inspector of schools in the Madras presidency; became professor of history and political economy in Elphinstone College, Madras, in 1860, and its principal in 1862; vice-chancellor of Bombay University in 1863; director of public instruction in Bombay Presidency, 1865; and vice-chancellor and principal of Edinburgh University in 1868. He is best known by his annotated edition of Aristotle's Ethics (first published 1857), and his Story of the University of Edinburgh (1884), published in connection with the University Tercentenary. Research Alexander Grant
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
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