I had some serious difficulty with Collingwood's treatise about aesthetics.
We all have minds, and our minds do fantastic things for us with the logic we use. But we also have feelings ,,, emotions ... and that is not served by logic. And we also have "sensing" - just a pure sense of "knowing" that comes directly, without logic or emotion. In fact, logic can inhibit our ability to just feel or sense, as we try to rationalize something of beauty. In many ways, our "western" culture has evolved heightened awareness of "head stuff" and logic, and seems to have lost an equal ability to address feelings and sensing.
Collingwood was "living in his head" and, when trying to pontificate about aspects of aesthetics that involve emotion or sensing, had his head in a place suggested by my title.
Even more ...
Since the ninettenth century, when "art" become more prominent, with art galleries and concert halls for public performances that took art to the populus, a group of people I saw as dilettantes, defined as ...
"A person who claims an area of interest, such as the arts,
without real commitment or knowledge."
evolved. They like to be seen as the "taste experts" who tell others what's good, or what's beautiful. They can even make a living at it ... as critics in the newspapers or on TV. Frankly, it feels too elitest for simple me. I'd sooner let people just experience art and beauty ... without having to "do so intelligently." Can we not just be carried away by Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" without having to "do so intelligently" and without gaining "key insights" from the critics and other "aesthetic masters"?
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