Aesthetic Experience

DR P. V. RAJAMANNAR, D. Litt., LL. D.
Chief Justice of Madras (Retired)

Pleasure from aesthetic experience differs from all other kinds of pleasure. It is an exceptional, unique kind of pleasure. This pleasure has been described by the Sanskrit writers as Lokottaraand Alaukika. Though the two epithets are intended to convey more or less the same meaning, there is a slight difference between the two. “Alaukika” may mean “not of the world.” “Lokottara” embodies the idea of something transcending the world. I would translate “Alaukika” as “disinterested” and “Lokottara” as “transcendent.” The emphasis in one is on the dissociation from purely personal interests and relations; in the other, the emphasis is on the exalted nature of the experience. Jagannatha discusses this aspect thus:

“ramaniyata ca lokottarahlada-janaka-jnana gocarata; lokottaram cahlada-gatas camatkaratvapara-paryayo’ nubhavasaksiko jativisehah; karanam ca tad-avacchinne bhavanaviseshah punah punar anusamdhanatma; putras te jatah, dhanam te dasyamiti vakyarthadhi-janysyahladasya no lakottaratvam, ato na tasmin vakye kavyatva-prasaktih. Itham ca camatkara-janaka-bhavana-vishayartha-pratipadakasabdatvam.”

“The charmingness (beauty) belongs to an idea which causes unwordly or disinterested pleasure. This quality of disinterestedness is an essential characteristic, which is a fact of internal experience and which is an attribute of pleasure, being synonymous with camatkaraor strikingness. The cause of this pleasure is a conception or a species of representation, consisting of continued contemplation of something characterised by the pleasure itself. Thus, there is no disinterestedness in the pleasure conveyed by the apprehension of the sense of a sentence like ‘a son is born to you’ or ‘I shall give you money’; in such a sentence, therefore, there is no poetry. Hence, poetry consists of words which express an idea that becomes the object of contemplation causing such pleasure.”

The pleasure of aesthetic experience is disinterested in the sense that it is unselfish. Man is by nature inclined to be selfish. Selfishness is an attribute of egoism. Selfishness inevitably leads to possessiveness. There is always an element of selfishness in physical pleasures. If one likes to enjoy a fruit, one can have that pleasure only by excluding others from having it. The uniqueness of aesthetic pleasure is that the same object of beauty–it may be a poem or a painting or a song–can give any number of persons aesthetic pleasure. It is true that one may like to possess a beautiful work of art; but that is purely material pleasure, which is selfish and acquisitive. The pleasure of possessing or owning a beautiful object is not aesthetic pleasure, whereas the pleasure arising out of contemplation or appreciation of it is aesthetic pleasure. Western philosophers have also stressed this feature–particularly, Kant. A learned writer, analysing Kant’s views on Aesthetics, says “The beautiful is always the object of disinterested satisfaction separate from all desire.” The great philosopher says “The beautiful is what pleases without interest; the beautiful is what pleases without a concept. Edward Caird develops this idea thus:

“A beautiful object affects us pleasurably from without; yet, our relation to it is a free relation–a relation in which there is no heteronomy of the will. This is what Kant expresses by saying that the beautiful pleases us without interest, or is the object of disinterested satisfaction. In other words, the will does not come into play at all in this case; we have a contemplative pleasure in an object, which is not the result of our self-determination by the moral principle, nor yet the satisfaction of a desire.”

This disinterestedness leads to a sense of detachment - detachment from the texture of everyday life. An object of art is seen and enjoyed independently of a relationship with one’s ordinary life. Here, I may refer to one concept which has been put forward by Edward Bullough and by Longman – the concept of “psychical distance” as useful key to the understanding of the aesthetic attitude. According to Bullough, psychical distance is realised by putting the phenomenon so to speak “out of gear with our practical, actual self; by allowing it to stand out – the context of our personal needs and ends.” Longman points out the peculiarity of the aesthetic attitude as independent and essentially different from the ethical and scientific attitudes. Dr Pravasjivan Chaudhury deals with this concept in his Studies in Comparative Aesthetics in the light of the views of Indian aestheticians. He points out how; according to Indian writers, the theory of psychical distance is based on the concept of de-individuation of the aesthetic object. Psychical distance is realised through the recognition that what is depicted does not belong to actual life. The enjoyment is disnterested in the sense that there is no attachment.

Integrally related to the feature of disinterestedness is the other feature of transcendence. This is the Lokottaratva. Aesthetic experience is on a higher octave than ordinary physical experience. Everyday life is full of strain and stress and selfish desire. All these characteristics are surmounted in the aesthetic experience and we rise to a higher plane. Hence, the expression Paranirvriti, i.e., a higher satisfaction or pleasure. This arises out of transcending the selfish attitude of the mind – “the egocentric predicament.” Because of this transcendence, there is freedom from all the limitations of common physical pleasure –freedom from narrow-mindedness, attachment, possessiveness, jealousy, envy and other prejudices which beset our ordinary life. Prof. Dasgupta sums up this position when he says that the joy of aesthetic experience is not a mere transcient feeling, but a transcendent state which is not limited by consideration of time and space or self-interest of any description. There is “an elimination of any measure of time and space...and, by implication, of the limited knowing-subject, who is conditioned by these, but who during the aesthetic experience, raises himself momentarily above time, space and causality, and, therefore above the stream of his practical life, the Samsara. Aesthetic experience marks a definite break with Samsara, which is dominated and conditioned by the law of cause and effect. It opens like a flower born of magic, without relationship, in time or space, with the practical life which precedes it and which, after it renews itself and returns to its normal course.” (Dr Gnoli) In aesthetic experience, there is pleasure only, pure and untainted by any touch of pain. It is therefore on a higher level than other physical experience which occur in normal everyday life. So, it is described as Lokottara.