The theory of forms or theory of Ideas is a philosophical theory, concept, or world-view, attributed to Plato, that the physical world is not as real or true as timeless, absolute, unchangeable Forms or Ideas, are the non-physical essences of all things, of which objects and matter in the physical world are merely imitations. Beauty, Justice, and The Circle are all examples of what Plato called Forms or Ideas. Many specific things can have the form of a circle, or of justice, or beauty, and for Plato, these Forms are Perfect Ideals (beauty), more real than physical objects (flower). Plato's world of the Forms is rational and unchanging; while the the physical work is changeable and irrational - a flower will be beautiful only for a short time before it gradually withers and decays.
The mind or soul belongs to the Ideal world while the body and its passions are stuck in the muck of the physical world. So the best human life is one that strives to understand and to imitate the Forms as closely as possible, and that Ideal life is the Life of the Mind, the life of the Philosopher (literally, the lover of wisdom). Humans then must exert self-control over the passions, to avoid the temptations of sensuality, greed, and ambition, in order to move on to the Ideal World in the next life.
Like Plato, Aristotle believed in unchanging rational essences, or Forms, which shape everything we know. Both believed that nothing can be understood without grasping its Form, but the two differ in their approach to the arts. Like Plato, Aristotle also held to the idea that art is imitation, but for him, Forms (Beauty) are not separated from things (flower).
Aristotle recognizes that everything is made of matter which is formed in some way or other. There cannot be form without content (or matter), and, likewise no matter without form. The essential form of anything defines what it is, and provides the driving force for that thing's existence and development. Everything strives to "grow into" its form, and the form defines what the thing can potentially become. For example, an acorn has the Form of an oak tree. That it has the form of an oak tree is, of course, not obvious from holding the acorn in your hand and looking at it; but given a natural and prescribed set of conditions, it will "grow into" an oak tree.
Unlike, Plato, Aristotle's thoughts were more flexible on the matter of passions and he embraced them as a function of human nature. Aristotle outlines a history of the development of poetry and drama, and a critical framework for evaluating tragic drama. One famous element of his aesthetics is his theory of the katharsis, or purging of the emotions, particularly through concepts of Tragedy:
A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable accessories, each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions. (Poetics 1449b.24)
In Hume's essay, “Of the Standard of Taste” (1757), he argues that there is a uniform sense of artistic judgment in human nature, similar to our uniform sense of moral judgment. Specific objects consistently trigger feelings of beauty within us, as our human nature dictates. Just as we can refine our external senses such as our palate, we can also refine our sense of artistic beauty and thus cultivate a delicacy of taste. This reading of Hume is challenged by an interpretation that identifies the standard of taste with ideal critics:
The relationship between "beautiful" and "sublime," can be boiled down to the following: being pleasing to the senses in some way (beautiful), and evoking an overwhelming loftiness or vastness, either in ideas, art, nature or experience (sublime).
Edmund Burke's conceptualization of the beautiful and sublime is split into fairly distinct categories. In his Philosophical Inquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757) , Burke categorizes "objects of experience" by the way in which they impact the senses. He associates qualities of "balance," "smoothness," "delicacy" and "color" with the beautiful, while he speaks of the sublime in terms such as "vastness" and "terror". For Burke, the terms work almost in opposition to each other; the sublime is certainly not part of the beautiful. Other thinkers debated Burke on the notions of these categories.
Source: The University of Chicago :: Theories of Media: Keywords Glossary: beautiful, sublime. | Website
Kant argued against Burke's highlighting the difference between the sublime and the beautiful in his Critique of Judgment (1790) by applying the sublime aesthetic to nature only. The natural sublime "provided a pure instance of aesthetic judgment," because there was no "artist" of nature - meaning there was no intention of the artist to interpret when judging the object. The natural sublime removed the original intent of the author or artist as a factor in judging the "aesthetic power" or value of the object.
Kant's natural sublime was determined by a subjective judgment; it was a response that treated something that "was not produced to be meaningful [to us] as if it were meaningful." Kant claimed that the sublime aesthetic exudes a "purposiveness without purpose." It is precisely this sentiment - that the sublime aesthetic has an unintended effect on its receiver - that Kant's notion can be linked to both modern and postmodern art. As for the beautiful, Kant basically perpetuated the Burkeian notion of the term, likening (and extending) it to resemble truth, goodness and taste.
Source: The University of Chicago :: Theories of Media: Keywords Glossary: beautiful, sublime. | Website
Aesthetic experience comes in two main varieties for Schopenhauer, the beautiful and the sublime, and can be had through perception of both nature and art. As with his philosophy as a whole, Schopenhauer takes his point of departure in aesthetics from Kant, praising him for deepening the subjective turn in philosophical aesthetics, however Schopenhauer does not believe that the aesthetician should start from the aesthetic judgment, but rather from immediate aesthetic experience, before the subject attempts to formulate judgments about that experience.
According to Schopenhauer, there are two jointly necessary and sufficient conditions for any properly aesthetic experience, one subjective and one objective.
The Subjective - Schopenhauer’s aesthetics the subjective side of aesthetic experience involves the will-less (involuntary) pleasure of tranquility. In order for the subject to attain such tranquil perception, the intellect must stop viewing things in the ordinary way, “stop considering the Where, When, Why and Wherefore of things but simply and exclusively consider the What” all by itself on its own. The experience of aesthetic will-ness tranquility stands in stark contrast with ordinary willing which involves suffering, insofar as it originates from need and deficiency. Satisfaction, when it is achieved affords a fleeting joy and yields fairly quickly to painful boredom, which is tantamount to a deficiency, and which starts the entire process anew.
The Objective - The objective side of aesthetic experience is necessarily correlated and occurs simultaneously with aesthetic will-lessness: and is similar to Plato's theory of forms. The will qua thing in itself objectifies itself like particular steps on a ladder and the Ideas correspond to these grades of objectification. The Idea in each particular thing is that which is enduring and essential in it can only be intuited in aesthetic experience of nature and art. If one understands the “ladder”—the ensemble of Ideas—as part of the world as representation, then each Idea—each “step” on the ladder—is a universal perceived in various particular objects.
Source: "Schoepnhauer's Aesthetics." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
