Aesthetic Emotions

Starting from fear, sympathy, or wonder there are certain emotions which are experienced during an aesthetic activity. These emotions are called Aesthetic emotions. These emotions can also be specific to aesthetic contexts.  The disinterestedness of the aesthetic holds the basic relation between aesthetic emotions and other emotions. The practical behaviors of a human being by the aesthetic emotions as it would be motivated by other emotions. Problems like ‘paradox of fiction’ are raised by psychological research which concentrated on arousing emotions like fear.  Paradox of fiction sometimes responds to art with quite intense emotions. The problem of imaginative resistance is another problem which sees into the thing that why people feel difficulty in imagining the moral standards that are in the fictional world but can imagine far-fetched fictional truths.

The philosophy of music has urged many researchers to argue whether the instrumental music is just abstract patterns and arrangements of musical pitches or whether does it depict emotional moods and tableaux.

Absolute music which describes that music is not explicitly about anything not objective or non-representational. Absolute music is something that doesn’t have any reference to stories or images or any other extra musical idea.  This absolute has led to the war of words between Wagner and Brahms. It relates to Kant’s aesthetics disinterestedness in its core. Kent’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgment which stress on the disinterestedness of aesthetics has been the cause for the war of words. A group of early Romantics has brought an idea which is labeled as spiritual absolutism in the 19^th century. Johann Wolfgang Goethe and E.T.A Hoffmann have played a vital role in here.

There is also concept labeled music’s for music’s sake has emerged during this period which is generally called as “Formalism”. This music for music sake concept only concentrated on instrumental music and not on the words. Eduard Hanslick, the 19^th century Eduard Hanslick strong argued for the music for music sake telling that music does not need words to be enjoyed, music could be enjoyed in its sound form and there is no need for any connotation or reference to any other extra musical elements.

There are also some forms of artworks which are purely dedicated in arousing aesthetic emotions. A good example can be horror films. The sole objective of the horror film is the arouse feeling. It plays with the emotions of the viewer arousing fear or disgust. On the other hand comedies arouse happiness or amusement and tragedies attempts to arouse the sadness, sympathy and the melodramas deal with the empathy.

Questions:

• What are aesthetic emotions?
• What is Formalism?