Artistic Detachment in Japan and the West: Psychic Distance in Comparative Aesthetics

1. Artistic Detachment in Western Aesthetics

27 Chapter 1 Artistic Detachment in Western Aesthetics The use of “disinterestedness” or “disinterested contemplation ” to describe aesthetic perception first became widespread after Immanuel Kant, who spoke of delight in beauty as that which satisfies “without interest” (ohne Interesse). But in an important series of papers Jerome Stolnitz traces the principle of disinterestedness back to what he claims is its origin in the work of the Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713). Stolnitz argues that disinterestedness is largely an innovation of seventeenth-century British empiricism and is nowhere to be found in classical or medieval aesthetics. Although the idea of disinterestedness became a staple concept for empirically oriented English writers on aesthetic “taste” during the Enlightenment—men like David Hume, Joseph Addison, Edmund Burke, Archibald Alison, and Francis Hutcheson—it is Lord Shaftesbury who is credited with having first articulated the idea. As Stolnitz asserts: “It is Shaftesbury who claims the distinction of being the first thinker to bring the phenomenon of disinterestedness to light and analyzing it” (1961b:100). Origins in Shaftesbury and British Empiricism According to Stolnitz, Shaftesbury’s principle of aesthetic disinterestedness constitutes a major shift in the history of aesthetics from emphasis on beauty as a property of the object to that of an attitude of the subject. Contrasting the classical and medieval theories of beauty as “harmony” and the modern view holding that beauty requires a special attitude that is “disinterested,” Stolnitz (1961b:111) writes: 28 — Artistic Detachment East and West The identification of beauty and harmony, which is ubiquitious in Greek and Renaissance thought, is the old way of thinking. Shaftesbury, by introducing the concept of “disinterestedness,” creates a new centre of gravity in aesthetic theory. According to Stolnitz, then, Shaftesbury’s principle of disinterestedness signifies a major shift in the history of aesthetics: “Shaftesbury’s theory [of disinterestedness] is a watershed in the history of aesthetics” (p. 111). Stolnitz adds that the tension between the “old” and “new” approaches arises in defining the field of the aesthetic. If one defines the beautiful as a harmony that abides in certain objects as its indwelling property, then the field of the aesthetic will be far narrower than if it includes all objects of disinterested perception. The notion of disinterestedness is a broader and more inclusive conception of the aesthetic, Stolnitz says, while the equation of beauty with harmony is far more exclusive and aristocratic (p. 111). Hence if “aesthetic object” means “object of disinterested perception” as held by Shaftesbury, then nothing is a priori debarred, since it now becomes an empirical question whether the aesthetic attitude is aroused and sustained by any particular object. For some this has come to mean that any object whatsoever can become aesthetic when seen from the standpoint of a disinterested attitude. Stolnitz (1961a:138) further clarifies that in the writings of Shaftesbury and other British empiricists the principle of disinterestedness originally referred to a special mode of perception that was “objectcentered ” as opposed to “subject-centered”: In its origins, the term [disinterested] has to do with the notion of the self. As the opposite of “interestedness,” it is equivalent in meaning to “non-selfishness.” When Shaftesbury used “disinterested” to denote perception of a thing “for its own sake,” the salient antithesis became that between “object-centered” and “self-centered.” In its original meaning as established by Shaftesbury, Stolnitz points out, the idea of disinterested perception was based on a concept of self. While the notion of disinterestedness has the moral connotation of being “unselfish,” or “nonselfish,” Stolnitz adds that in its wider sense it designates an experience which is essentially selfless or impersonal as opposed to self-centered and egocentric: “ ‘Impersonal’ or ‘selfless’ are now much closer to the mark than is ‘unselfish’ ” (p. 138). Hence as a doctrine of self it can be said that while interested perception is subjective , self-centered, and egocentric, disinterested perception is objective , selfless, and impersonal. Western Aesthetics — 29 Shaftesbury’s principle of disinterestedness originally emerged as a polemic against egoism in ethics and instrumentalism in religion. In particular, Shaftesbury opposed the disinterested attitude with the notion of “enlightened self-interest” defended by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). In his work Characteristics, Shaftesbury (1900:I, 317) identifies “interest” with self-interest, as when he speaks of “interested or self-love.” Here he opposes the notion of disinterestedness to Hobbesian ethics, which argues that all actions are selfishly motivated by “enlightened self-interest...