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THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
value to the extent that it experiences itself as a means to something more. Such an experience is "moral.” This paper is limited to a consideration of problems involved in the aesthetic" and the "moral" so conceived.
II
If the "aesthetic" consists in what is experienced as complete in itself, are there any limits to the kinds of aesthetic experience! Except for those which are essentially and clearly moral, No. Even experiences which are moral may, as we shall see later, be aesthetic also. We shall not take time to review the history of ideals of those who restrict the aesthetic to only one kind of object, or at most to a few kinds of objects. But we may illustrate the range of variety by citing some examples. Sensations may be experienced aesthetically, and debate will continue as to whether only the visual, or also the auditory, or also the olfactory and gustatory, or also all of the some sixteen kinds of sensation, may be so experienced. (The term “aesthetic" itself originally denoted sensory experience.) Lines, shapes, forms, patterns, arrangements may be aesthetic, whether sensed or imagined. Ideas, ideals, essences may be aesthetically contemplated, as advocated by Plato, Aristotle, and Santayana. Feelings, emotions, impulses, sentiments may be enjoyed as aesthetic, as pointed out by romanticists. And nirvanic peace, whether enjoyed as fullness, or void, or indifference, has been claimed to be the pinnacle of aesthetic experience by Hindu. thinkers.
Debates continue also as to whether aesthetic experiences are primarily simple or complex, concrete or abstract, of particulars or universals, sensuous or imaginative, intellectual or emotional, contemplative or impulsive, pacifying or inspiring. Occidental aestheticians are so completely preoccupied with problems regarding aesthetic objects that they commonly overlook a major controversy as to whether the object or the subject is the ultimate constituent in aesthetic experience. Advaitins, for example, consider objects illusory, including aesthetic objects, and distractive from the profounder enjoyment of Atman, the universal soul, whose real nature can be grasped only in aesthetic enjoyment. The writer wishes to note, and advocate, that the term "aesthetic" can and should be used, on occasion, in each of these senses. What makes each of these kinds, and others to be mentioned later, "aesthetic" is not that they are simple or complex, concrete or abstract, sensuous or imaginative, etc., but that they are experienced as complete in themselves. The various specific criteria of aestheticness, such as harmony, novelty, arrestingness, psychical distance, significant form,