Being Tied to What, and Why? On the Objective Side of (Bertram’s Notion of) Aesthetic Experience

Abstract

Among recent attempts to define aesthetic experience, the one advanced by Georg Bertram in his paper entitled Aesthetic Experience as an Aspect of Intepretive Practices seems to me very promising. I am sympathetic to it; I think it captures something essential about our aesthetic ‘commerce’ with the world, especially the art-world. In the present paper, firstly (1) I clarify the conception of aesthetic experience defended by Bertram, by pointing out its main statements and arguments. Then (2), I show how the insights it offers are consonant with other philosophers’ thought about the same topic, as well as corroborated by our first-hand experience of artworks. Finally (3), I get to the bottom of the formal/objective side of AE, whose importance, albeit recognized by Bertram, is someway obscured by other thinkers insofar as they focus on the subjective/phenomenological side, which can allow a vast range of AEs, broader – that’s what I’m going to argue – than what a relational account of AE, if rigorously interpreted, allows.