Pleasure Or Purpose: What Aesthetic Does In Our Lives? 

Figure 2: ‘I see me’ a dance work choreographed and performed by Kanchana Malshani, Choreography Lab, Goethe Institute, Colombo 2019. Photo credits Malaka Mp Photography.

By Saumya Liyanage –DECEMBER 16, 2020

Dr. Saumya Liyanage

Introduction 

Artistic practice as a creative endeavor is regarded as a second rate activity when it comes to considering science and scientific truth claims. As we all know, Plato wanted to remove artists from his utopian State. He argued that arts generate moral issues and bad sentiments so this type of human actions should be removed from the society. This tendency of marginalizing the arts and artists’ works increased in 18th century Europe. In the 17th and 18th centuries, a tendency of ‘faculty psychology’ started identifying higher and lower faculties of sense experiences and those psychologists categorized human sense experience in a hierarchical manner. Along with this, there are higher faculties that are believed to correspond with human intellect and there are lower faculties which are defined as non-cognitive and bodily. These bodily faculties produce subjective experience (Johnson 2007). 

Mark Johnson here refers to the eye of the human being as one of the higher faculties which believe to be produced human intellect. The eye gathers information which is processed in the brain, and the brain orders the body to take action. This is the ‘Nature – idea – response’ model that Western science has propagated for the last few centuries. We observe worldly phenomena, process data in the brain, and come to certain conclusions. Therefore information which is gathered through the eye and processed in the brain, dominates our knowledge and we assume that our intellect is developed through the information gathered through the eye. The eye also refers to the mind or ‘mind-eye’ as well. However, other senses such as smell, touch, taste, and hearing are referred as secondary to  ocular-centric perception. While these lower level senses provide lower rated sense experience, the higher order sense like the eye provides higher order intellectual attainment. As a result, aesthetic pleasure is also categorized as a lower level of sense experience because we believe that the arts ignite subjective mental states. This subjective experience is placed against rational thinking. Even in Asian aesthetic theory, ‘rasa’ is also defined as something related to ‘extract of essence’ or taste of food. In line with this, the consumption of food and extricating ‘rasa’ is a secondary sense experience achieved through the tongue.

Figure1: Thilini Fernando in Mr W. or Last Days of Attanayake, a play produced by the Dept. of Drama Oriental Ballet and Contemporary Dance, University of Visual and Performing arts, in 2017. Photo credit Dhananjaya Rathnayake.

Aesthetic pleasure 

Our daily life is filled with activities: lecturing, teaching, seeing patients, having meetings, driving cars, cooking, washing, and cleaning. All these activities are understood as rational activities. Therefore, we think that we need the aesthetic. The aesthetic is placed against reason and again it is a less rational, less intellectual but a much needed component of life – aesthetic entertainment. Aesthetic pleasure is considered ‘subjective’ because it addresses human sentiments, feelings, and emotions. In the rational-emotional binary opposition, reason is favored and hierarchically higher than emotion. For instance, sexual pleasure is seen as obscene and less intellectual similar to mere bodily activity. 

Arts and especially the aesthetic come into play as a means of escape from anxieties in our daily lives. The idea of Terror Management Theory (TMT) explains how we are conscious about our bodies and health, and take care of our wellbeing through various activities. The idea behind this consumption of arts is connected with the desire for human immortality. The fear of death is alleviated by seeking help from art and aesthetic pleasure. Thus aesthetic experience is used as a way of escaping daily reality and also used as a tool of wellbeing. However, my question is, are these arts and aesthetics there only for us to gain pleasure? Are there any other utilitarian needs for which we humans can use the arts? What are the other benefits that the arts can bring to human life? In what capacity could art enrich our human experience? These are some of the vital questions that I would like to discuss here.

Body, Mind and Cognition 

Western modern philosophy theorizes the division between the rational mind and the body and the human body is understood as a separate function like a mere mechanical object similar to a clock or a machine. We see the human beings and their bodily functions in this dualistic way. Accordingly, a human being has two separate entities: mind and body. Bodies decay and are vulnerable to all sorts of diseases and ailments. We unconsciously conceptualize our bodies as a collection of functionalities such as blood circulation, respiratory functions, secretions such as urine and saliva, functions of organs such as lungs, liver, heart, and intestines. These conceptualizations of human body and its functionalities lead us to think about our bodies as inanimate objects which are enlivened through blood and breath. We distinctively differ between the thinking substance (mind) and the physical body (Soma) because we believe that thinking is a higher order function which is nothing to do with the physical body. These daily conceptualizations of our thinking and bodily functions lead us to separate our rational thoughts from bodily functions. Therefore the body is marginalized in the history of philosophy. 

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