The theory of Lipps does not differ very greatly from that of Jouffroy,
for he assumes that artistic beauty is the sympathetic. "Our ego,
transplanted, objectified, and recognized in others, is the object of
sympathy. We feel ourselves in others, and others in us." Thus the
aesthetic pleasure is entirely composed of sympathy. This extends even
to the pleasure derived from architecture, geometrical forms, etc.
Whenever we meet with the positive element of human personality, we
experience this feeling of beatitude, which is the aesthetic emotion.
But the value of the personality is an ethical value: the whole sphere
of ethic is included in it. Therefore all artistic or aesthetic pleasure
is the enjoyment of something which has ethical value, but this value is
not an element of a compound, but the object of aesthetic intuition.
Thus is aesthetic activity deprived of all autonomous existence and
reduced to a mere retainer of Ethic.
C. Groos (1895) shows some signs of recognizing aesthetic activity as a
theoretic value. Feeling and intellect, he says, are the two poles of
knowledge, and he recognizes the aesthetic fact as internal imitation.
Everything beautiful belongs to aestheticity, but not every aesthetic
fact is beautiful. The beautiful is the representation of sensible
pleasure, and the ugly of sensible displeasure. The sublime is the
representation of something powerful, in a simple form.
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