Divine Beauty: The Aesthetics of Charles Hartshorne

Chapter 8: The Religious Dimensions of Aesthetic Experience

29 CHAPTER EIGHT The Religious Dimensions of Aesthetic Experience f NOW THAT HARTSHORNE’S GENERAL VIEW of aesthetic experience is on the table for criticism, including his view of subhuman aesthetic experience, we are in a position to consider in particular the religious dimensions of aesthetic experience so as to prepare the way for the next chapter, where cosmic or divine beauty is considered. Hartshorne characterizes aesthetic value in general as intrinsic, immediately felt value, and he characterizes economic and ethical value as much more extrinsic and eventual. Intrinsic values are only found in experiences of some sort, whether human, subhuman, or suprahuman ; they exist everywhere for a panexperientialist. It is an unfortunate feature of the contemporary world that we tend to have too little appreciation of intrinsic value, Hartshorne thinks; hence we tend to depend on extrinsic, instrumental values (see ER). This seems odd when we consider that what makes life worthwhile is the variety and depth of harmonious (intrinsically valuable) experiences we or others can have (RE, 9–2). Extrinsic or instrumental value is good only because it eventuates in intrinsic value, which, as we have seen, can be appreciated even by animals and is longed for by them when it is missing, as when they experience monotony or boredom, as Dale Jamieson argues in his careful studies of animals in zoos.1 But because the experience of intrinsic value is immediate, it tends to be momentary or at least impermanent , a problem that quite explicitly leads to religious questions. For example, in some Buddhist views this universal impermanence is seen as the key feature of reality,2 whereas some Christian views respond DombrowskiFinalPgs. 129 2/2/04 5:34:42 PM 30 Divine Beauty to the problem of impermanence of intrinsic value in terms of faith in—or in Kant’s case the postulation of—an immortal soul. In aesthetic terms, however, one wonders whether immortality of the soul or subjective immortality would be an aesthetic good. Just as a poem needs a first and last line or a symphony needs a first and last note, so also a personal career needs birth and death, as we will see in detail in the last chapter in the book on death and contributionism. In this view it is appropriate to notice that extremely old animals, including humans, tend to be bored with or tired of life. The problem of the preservation of enjoyed harmonies of experience can be responded to in several different ways, even within the context of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). For example, rather than subjective immortality there is also the possibility of “objective immortality,” Hartshorne thinks, where all of our enjoyed harmonies are given permanence not by us but by a imperishable deity who remembers them and who is the one life worthy of infinite variations through time. It would be one thing to live forever, quite another to do so like God without loss of zest (RE, 3–4). It is precisely such zest that is lost in belief in an omnipotent God who timelessly imposes order on the world, unless, of course, one sees “zest” in a single act of creation, as did Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Part of the beauty of divine and creaturely life, in Hartshorne ’s contrasting view, lies in spontaneity that is unprogrammed. As before, beauty is a mixture of (divinely persuaded) order and (divine and creaturely) variations. The traditional argument from design only imperfectly captured the point urged by Hartshorne here. This argument was asserted to be empirical, such that the nature of things was seen as so orderly and beautiful that only God could account for it. In this view, however, it would seem that a less beautiful world would call into question the existence of God. There are many reasons to be suspicious of the claim that God is omnipotent (see OO). A belief in God as omnipotent often leads to belief in creation ex nihilo, construed as the belief that God creates the world out of absolute nothingness. Such a belief is unintelligible at the very least because any effort to articulate what absolute nothingness is proves to be futile, as Plato and Bergson, among others, have argued. DombrowskiFinalPgs. 130 2/2/04 5:34:42 PM The Religious Dimensions of Aesthetic Experience 3 Perhaps it will be objected that by creation ex nihilo we should...