On Beauty and Ambivalence: The Complexity of Aesthetic Experience

Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Nuckols, Lauren Elizabeth
- Graduate Program:
- Philosophy
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- August 24, 2017
- Committee Members:
- Vincent Colapietro, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Vincent Colapietro, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
John Philip Christman, Committee Member
Sarah Clark Miller, Committee Member
Anne Carver Rose, Outside Member
John Philip Christman, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
John Philip Christman, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor - Keywords:
- Semiotics
Aesthetics
Beauty
Ambivalence
Ethics
Justice
Peirce
Pragmatism
Psychoanalytic Theory - Abstract:
- This dissertation seeks to engage in an ambivalent recovery of beauty. I will focus on human experiences of the beautiful and/or aesthetically admirable in relationship to ethical (or unethical) activities and habits, arguing, ultimately, for an ambivalent and perpetually critical relationship to beauty and ideals. In other words, this dissertation takes up the question of the relationship between aesthetics and ethics, drawing on American philosopher C.S. Peirce for a complex, non-reductive account of this relationship, and arguing for an ongoing sense of critical ambivalence towards all that is experienced or idealized as beautiful. I argue, with Elaine Scarry, that on the one hand, the experience of the beautiful, awe-inspiring, or inherently admirable is bound with a sense of ethical valuation, and can therefore be ethically motivating, promoting a sense of awe, respect, wonder, or care, an augmentation of sensitivity/perceptiveness, an impulse to creativity, and actions towards increasingly just social arrangements. On the other hand, as Scarry overlooks, experienced beauty does not always operate as an impetus to justice, but can become a powerful vehicle for oppression, manipulation, self-effacement, or for the creation and maintenance of unjust, oppressive, totalitarian, genocidal, and ecocidal social arrangements and regimes. In this dissertation I examine both sides of this debate, drawing on Peirce for a technical account of the interdependence of aesthetics, ethics, logic, and habit, and, finally, mobilize Hanna Segal’s psychoanalytic theory of ambivalence in order to advocate for a sense of critical, achieved ambivalence towards beauty/ideals. In sum, I do not advocate a fixed or determinate recovery of beauty that would, once and for all, discern those aspects of the beautiful aligned with ideals of truth and justice. Rather, I argue for a perpetual, ongoing sense of ambivalence towards, and ongoing critique of, those ideals and their experienced iterations that, even upon sustained critical reflection, stand out as beautiful and ethically admirable. The sense of ambivalence motivating ongoing critique is, in other words, a long-range project extending into the indefinite future, an ethical necessity as history unfolds into a future we cannot yet imagine.