Title
Bolzano on beauty
Document Type
Journal article
Source Publication
British Journal of Aesthetics
Publication Date
2014
Volume
54
Issue
3
First Page
269
Last Page
284
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Abstract
This paper sets forth Bolzano’s little-known 1843 account of beauty. Bolzano accepted the thesis that beauty is what rewards contemplation with pleasure. The originality of his proposal lies in his claim that the source of this pleasure is a special kind of cognitive process, namely, the formation of an adequate concept of the object’s attributes through the successful exercise of the observer’s proficiency at obscure and confused cognition. To appreciate this proposal we must understand how Bolzano explicated a number of concepts (especially clarity, confusion, and intuition) in his Wissenschaftslehre. I argue that Bolzano was ahead of his time and anticipated some of the results of recent empirical psychological research on the relations between beauty, affect, and processing fluency. Bolzano’s remarks on ugliness and on relations between pure and mixed beauty are also of contemporary interest. The upshot is that Bolzano’s account of beauty is neither as derivative nor ‘dark’ as some of his commentators have claimed.
DOI
10.1093/aesthj/ayu037
Print ISSN
00070904
E-ISSN
14682842
Publisher Statement
Copyright © British Society of Aesthetics 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society of Aesthetics. All rights reserved. Access to external full text or publisher's version may require subscription.
Full-text Version
Publisher’s Version
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Livingston P. (2014). Bolzano on Beauty. British Journal of Aesthetics 54(3), 269-284. doi: 10.1093/aesthj/ayu037
