Aesthetics - the issue of the possible existence of a standard or logic of taste.
Winthrop
Alex Winthrop
Philosophy
Stephen Rawls
6 January 2006
Aesthetics
Burke follows in the empirical tradition of Locke. He believes that all human knowledge comes out of impressions or sense experiences. We then take these simple bits of knowledge and combine them to form more intricate ideas. Our imagination is limited to use of the knowledge we extract from our impressions and are, therefore, incapable of creating anything completely new. He says that our imagination either portrays pleasing images again in the order we experienced them or reorders and combines these images of our experiences. Burke offers that humans receive pleasure from resemblances. Accurate imitations stimulate our minds. Burke’s goal and main concern is the issue of the possible existence of a standard or logic of taste.
Burke is searching for certain principles that affect our imaginations in such a common and certain way that they could be a basis for “the means of reasoning satisfactorily about them”. Burke states that these principles do exist. He says that even though it seems as though there is such a variety of taste, there is a standard that lies beneath the superficial range of differences. All humans perceive “external objects” in the same way. We become familiar with these external items by way of our natural powers: the senses, imagination and judgment. The most natural understandings that we receive are quite standard, what appears light to one is light to any other and what is sweet to one is again sweet to another. Burke shows that humans have a common agreement on these issues of preference by giving examples of expressions taken from taste experiences such as “A sour temper, bitter expressions… sweet disposition, a sweet person”1. Burke realizes that there are many people who act in ways that would seem contradictory to these assertions, such as the preference of the taste of tobacco over that of sugar.
