The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory

Оглавление

George Santayana. The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory

The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory

Table of Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

PART I

THE NATURE OF BEAUTY

PART II

THE MATERIALS OF BEAUTY

PART III

FORM

PART IV

EXPRESSION

FOOTNOTES

INDEX

Отрывок из книги

George Santayana

Published by Good Press, 2020

.....

§ 2. We may therefore at once assert this axiom, important for all moral philosophy and fatal to certain stubborn incoherences of thought, that there is no value apart from some appreciation of it, and no good apart from some preference of it before its absence or its opposite. In appreciation, in preference, lies the root and essence of all excellence. Or, as Spinoza clearly expresses it, we desire nothing because it is good, but it is good only because we desire it.

It is true that in the absence of an instinctive reaction we can still apply these epithets by an appeal to usage. We may agree that an action is bad, or a building good, because we recognize in them a character which we have learned to designate by that adjective; but unless there is in us some trace of passionate reprobation or of sensible delight, there is no moral or aesthetic judgment. It is all a question of propriety of speech, and of the empty titles of things. The verbal and mechanical proposition, that passes for judgment of worth, is the great cloak of ineptitude in these matters. Insensibility is very quick in the conventional use of words. If we appealed more often to actual feeling, our judgments would be more diverse, but they would be more legitimate and instructive. Verbal judgments are often useful instruments of thought, but it is not by them that worth can ultimately be determined.

.....