Aesthetic Order: A Philosophy of Order, Beauty and Art (Routledge Studies in Twentieth Century Philosophy)

337 Pages·2000·1.01 MB·English

by  Ruth Lorand

Aesthetic Order
“an impressively far-ranging and thoughtful study”
Kendall Walton, University of Michigan
In spite of its centrality in human experience, beauty has in the last century been
ostracized from philosophical discussions and its bond with art severed. Aesthetic
Order not only revives interest in beauty and brings it back into the limelight of
aesthetic discussion, but also recrowns it as a vital and central concept that reigns
the understanding of art.
Ruth Lorand explains beauty in terms of a lawless order, one that captures the
complexities of beauty and its inherent paradoxes. Art is then the product of the
attempt to master this order and create beauty.
The book begins with a detailed discussion of the notions of order, disorder,
and their mutual dependence. It proceeds with an analysis of interpretation. The
notion of asesthetic order is presented as a complementary notion to the traditional,
discursive concept of order, which is quantitative in its approach. Aesthetic order,
as both quantitative and qualitative, interprets experience and expresses values,
cultural and individual preferences, and a sense of necessity. Lorand draws from
an impressive breadth of philosophical material from Plato to Spinoza, Kant, and
Wittgenstein, as well as contemporary aestheticians such as Goodman, Mothersill,
Ingarden, Danto, Margolis, and others. She also draws from recent research in
experimental aesthetics and Information Theory.
Aesthetic Order challenges contemporary theories of aesthetics, offering beauty
as a form of interpretation that integrates both quantitative and qualitative aspects
of experience. It will be of importance to anyone interested in aesthetic theory.
Ruth Lorand is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Haifa, Israel.
Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Philosophy
1 The Story of Analytic Philosophy
Plots and heroes
Edited by Anat Biletzki and Anat Matar
2 Donald Davidson
Truth, meaning and knowledge
Edited by Urszula Zeglén
3 Philosophy and Ordinary Language
The bent and genius of our tongue
Oswald Hanfling
4 The Subject in Question
Sartre’s critique of Husserl in The Transcendence of the Ego
Stephen Priest
Aesthetic Order

A Philosophy of Order, Beauty and Art
Ruth Lorand
London and New York
First published 2000
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
© 2000 Ruth Lorand
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-46894-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-77718-2 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-23602-9 (Print Edition)
To my friend
Giora Hon
To those who are awake, there is one ordered universe common (to all), whereas
in sleep each man turns away (from this world) to one of his own.
Heraclitus
Contents

Acknowledgements x
Permissions xii
Introduction 1
PART I
Understanding order 7
1 What is order? 9
A working definition 9
Complexity: the principal presupposition 10
Ordering principles 12
Quantitative and binary orders 16
Lawfulness 17
Order and relations 19
Objectivity versus subjectivity 20
Summary 26
2 What is disorder? 27
Two negative definitions of disorder 27
Types of disorder 32
A positive definition of disorder 42
Summary 44
PART II
Two types of order 47
3 Discursive order: the conventional concept 51
The characteristics of discursive order 51
Summary 62
vii
viii Contents
4 Beyond discursive order 63
Beauty as a discursive concept 65
Beauty as a non-discursive concept 75
Summary 81
5 Bergson: the unpredictable order 82
Space versus time, intellect versus intuition 83
Vital and geometrical order 85
Interrelations between the two kinds of order 88
The problem of disorder 90
Summary 94
6 Aesthetic order: quantitative analysis 96
Sensitivity 97
Predictability, redundancy and informative value 107
A closed set and a closed class 111
The problem of maximum aesthetic order 114
Summary 116
7 Aesthetic order: qualitative analysis (I) 117
The internal relations: mutual interpretation 117
Hermeneutics: too broad and too narrow 117
Re-examining interpretation 125
Summary 151
8 Aesthetic order: qualitative analysis (II) 153
Types of interpretation 153
Evaluating interpretation 167
Aesthetic relations as complementary interpretations 176
Summary 177
9 Relations and interactions 178
Between the two orders 178
Between order and disorder 195
Summary 205
PART III
Aesthetic queries 207
10 Understanding beauty 209
The quantitative analysis of beauty 209
The qualitative analysis of beauty 220
Contents ix
Opposites of beauty 239
Summary 249
11 Defining art 250
Problems of definitions 250
Art, beauty and interpretation 259
The puzzle, its solution and its puzzles 288
Summary 305
References 307
Index 314