2 Aesthetic Optimism Abstract This chapter presents a modified Santayanan view on the nature of aesthetic objects, according to which evil or its representation, properly understood, negates the aesthetic value of the object in which it is contained. This contrasts with Santayana’s official early view—a variant of “co-existentialism”. By interpreting themes from Santayana’s early aes- thetic theory through the lens of his later account of complex essencehood, I propose a revision to this view. The proposed revision affirms the intrin- sic positivity of art, and is what I call “aesthetic optimism”. It also rejects more generally Santayana’s early conception of aesthetic objects as units of pleasurable feeling and imagistic profiles compounded together during episodes of immediate appreciation. Keywords Beauty • Co-existentialism • Essence • Evil • Projection • Sentimentalism © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 9 F. A. Sopuck, The Aesthetics of Horror Films, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84346-5_2 10 F. A. Sopuck 2.1 The Aesthetic Bankruptcy of Evil I propose that any film that is understood by the viewer to document, signify, or involve factual violence, suffering, mortal threat, injury, or death1—i.e., evil—cannot, at that instant, be a source of aesthetic enjoy- ment for that viewer. Milo and Otis (1986) was enjoyable until I took seriously the (albeit unsubstantiated) rumours that its production was fraught with animal cruelty (see Billson 2018). To put it in Santayana’s terms, at the moment of this realization, the “…work abdicates that aes- thetic quality which was its original essence…” (AS 198) Though horror films often turn on a feigned pretence to historical fact2 or are said to be “inspired” by real events3, they cannot be understood by the viewer to be documentations of factual evil when they are aesthetic objects for him, and, a fortiori, no film that is recognized or thought to actually contain footage of real harm4 qualifies, in that instance, as an aesthetic object.5 This proposal takes root, in part, in key principles of Santayana’s early aesthetic doctrine, and in particular, from his affirma- tion that “…the pleasant is never…the object of a truly moral injunc- tion.” (SB 25) Santayana’s early doctrine involves a “…reduction of all values to immediate appreciations, to sensuous or vital activities…” (SB 29)6 According to Santayana’s early sentimentalist account7, beauty has no transcendent value, being, or existence outside of perception; in short, Santayana’s early sentimentalism is subjectivist: 1 E.g., Jack the Ripper (1976); Ed Gein (2000); Chopper (2000); Ted Bundy (2002); Gacy (2003); Hillside Strangler (2004); Karla (2006); Cannibal (2006); The Snowtown Murders (2011). 2 E.g., The Amityville Horror (1977); The Changeling (1980); The Lighthouse (2019). 3 E.g., The Exorcist (1973); Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). 4 E.g., Faces of Death (1978); Cannibal Holocaust (1980). 5 Matt Hills (2005, 129–145) calls into question the strict separation of “horror” the art genre and “true horror”, the intersection of which, one might think, is present in true crime films like those mentioned above, and elsewhere. I deny such intersections as a matter of principle. 6 Cf. RB (152): “The sense of beauty is not a feeling separable from some intuition of form; on the other hand, it is a feeling, not a verbal or intellectual judgement.” 7 Cf. EPM (294): “… [Taste] has a productive faculty, and gilding or staining all natural objects with the colours, borrowed from internal sentiment, raises in a manner a new creation.” 2 Aesthetic Optimism 11 Beauty…is a value…it cannot be conceived as an independent existence which affects our sense and which we consequently perceive. It exists in perception, and cannot exist otherwise. A beauty not perceived is a pleasure not felt, and a contradiction.” (SB 45)8 Values spring from the immediate and inexplicable reaction of vital impulse, and from the irrational part of our nature… [B]eauty is a species of value… (SB 19–20) Santayana contrasts this view with “rationalistic” accounts of beauty that conceive “excellence and beauty [to]…flow by some logical necessity from the essences of objects simultaneously in our mind…” or which “…deduce [them]…from the describable qualities of things…” (SB 199) Rather, beauty is constituted in the interests, passions, appetites, and imaginative delights of sentient beings (SB 29), and in particular, it is a function of their emotional reactions. In Santayana’s view, the feelings of moral sense and those of aesthetic judgement are functions of “appreciative perception” (SB 16), and thus, both belong to the basic category of “judgments of value” (SB 23). Emotions, in his view, are understood to be the locus of values, and emo- tions are consequents of ultimately primitive and instinctual preferences (SB 18–23). Judgements of value are distinct from purely intellectual judgements or “judgments of fact” (SB 23)9, which have only derivative value, if any (Ibid.). Moral good and evil are also values, and thus, the same perception- dependence that is characteristic of beauty is also enjoyed by them, in Santayana’s earlier view. That is, all judgements of value are based in 8 See also SB (49): “An object cannot be beautiful if it can give pleasure to nobody: a beauty to which all men were forever indifferent is a contradiction in terms.” 9 Cf. EPM (294): “… [T]he distinct boundaries and offices of reason and of taste are easily ascer- tained. The former conveys the knowledge of truth and falsehood: the latter gives us sentiment of beauty and deformity, vice and virtue.” 12 F. A. Sopuck emotional appearance10, and “[t]here is no value apart from some appre- ciation of it…” (SB 18)11 Though Santayana argues that intellectual or rational judgements, i.e., judgements of relation and judgements of fact, have no direct value or aesthetic effect, he thinks they nevertheless have an instrumental value insofar as they promote “…safe and economical action and…the plea- sures of comprehension.” (SB 20)12, and in particular, they may augment our ability to perceive the beauty of a thing: If we approach a work of art or nature scientifically, for the sake of its his- torical connexions or proper classification, we do not approach it ӕsthetically. The discovery of its date or of its author may be otherwise interesting; it only remotely affects our ӕsthetic appreciation by adding to the direct effect certain associations…To know the truth about the compo- sition and history of things is good… [in part] because of the enlarged horizon it gives us…” (SB 20; 22)13 Beauty, according to Santayana, is inherently pleasing or has a “pleas- ing effect” (SB 260); it “…is…a positive value that is intrinsic; it is a pleasure.” (SB 50) As a sentimentalist, Santayana considers beauty to be constituted by this pleasure. Putting it concisely, he remarks: “Beauty is an emotional element, a pleasure of ours, which nevertheless we regard as a quality of things…” and that “[i]t is the sense of the presence of some- thing good…” (SB 47–48; 49) However, beauty is not simply a pleasure, but a “pleasure objectified”, on the relevant view, which is to say, it is a “felt value” (SB 210) that we 10 To anticipate, Santayana’s sentimentalism of value is congruous with the neo-judgementalist theory of emotions. According to this theory, emotions do not consist of full-blown intellectual acts, but rather quasi-perceptual/pseudo-judgemental concern-based construals or emotional appearances. 11 Cf. SAF (280): “These strange and irrational pronouncements of spirit, calling events good or evil, are…grounded on nothing but on a creeping or shrinking of the flesh.” I shall bypass the exposition of the finer distinction Santayana makes between moral and aesthetic judgements, a distinction the cogency of which has come under attack (e.g., see Altman (1998), who argues that, on closer inspection of Santayana’s doctrine, aesthetic judgements collapse into moral ones). 12 See also SB (23). 13 Of course, quite often the truth, or suspicion of truth, regarding a film can negate its pleasurable- ness, as the Milo and Otis (1986) example illustrates. 2 Aesthetic Optimism 13 project onto things. This is what distinguishes aesthetic pleasures from other forms of pleasure: Every real pleasure…is not sought with ulterior motives, and what fills the mind is no calculation, but the image of an object or event, suffused with emotion. (SB 39) There is the expression of a curious but well-known psychological phenom- enon, viz., the transformation of an element of a sensation into the quality of a thing. If we say that other men should see the beauty we see, it is because we think those beauties are in the object, like its colour, proportion, or size. Our judgment appears to us merely the perception and discovery of an external existence, of the real excellence that is without….[M]odern philosophy has taught us to say…[that all]…element[s] of the perceived world…are sensations; and their grouping into objects imagined to be per- manent and external is the work of certain habits of our intelligence. (SB 44–45) Every idea which is formed in the human mind, every activity and emo- tion, has some relation, direct or indirect, to pain and pleasure. If, as is the case in all the more important instances, these fluid activities and emotions precipitate, as it were, in their evanescence certain psychical solids called ideas of things, then the concomitant pleasures are incorporated more or less in those concrete ideas and the things acquire an ӕsthetic colouring [my emphasis]. (SB 110) There are two sorts of projection being considered in these passages. One must distinguish the projection of beauty onto physical objects of perception—which are not objects of intuition, in Santayana’s view14, but are rather the objective causes of our intuitions—from the projec- tion of beauty onto mental images or the objects of intuition.15 The 14 See Sect. 2.2. 15 It is unfortunate that the term “perception” in SB is used to refer to moments of intuition (e.g., “…the perception of beauty…” (SB 10). In his later writing, he tends to consciously reserve the term for naming only that “…stretching forth of intent beyond intuition…” (SAF 282) or opera- tions of mind that “…designate…things only externally…things…which are substances”—i.e., the objects “…posited by animal faith …” (RB 112) With this lack of standardization in terminol- 14 F. A. Sopuck former, call it, perceptual projection16, is a matter of falsely believing that what in reality is an emotional quality or mere sensation is a qual- ity of physical objects.17 The latter, call it imagistic projection, is the relevant sense in which beauty is “pleasure objectified”, according to the early view, since aesthetic objects are by definition non-physical objects of intuition.18 Santayana employs the notion of “suffusion” in order to clarify the relevant sense of projection, i.e., imagistic projection, according to which qualities of aesthetic feeling are projected qualities of “certain psychical solids”. In imagistic projection, aesthetic feeling is not a pro- jected quality merely in the sense that it is (falsely) believed to reside in an object—as is the case in perceptual projection—but rather, the property phenomenally resides inside the visible (tactile, auditory, olfactory, etc.) boundaries of the object (in this case, an image). In imagistic projection, the pleasure and the object of that pleasure are co-located, such that “…what fills the mind is…the image of an object or event, suffused with emotion.” (SB 39) That is to say, when we see something as beautiful, we are viewing an image coloured or superim- posed by an emotional quality (in quasi-concrete form). As Santayana explains, “… [I]t is the essential privilege of beauty to so synthesize and bring to a focus the various impulses of the self, so to suspend them to a single image…” (SB 235).19 Santayana does not always carefully distinguish perceptual from imag- istic projection in SB; he sometimes shifts between the two distinct forms in a way that can confuse matters.20 But this is not to say that he did not recognize the distinction. Santayana later acknowledges the misleading nature of his formulation of aesthetic projection in SB; the following ogy between the early and later works noted, I shall proceed to use the term “perception” in the broad sense in which it is used in SB, namely, as synonymous with awareness or experience. 16 Cf. RB (370; 458). For a good contemporary example of perceptual projectionism, see Boghossian and Velleman (1991, 106) 17 Cf. RB (43). 18 Note that “image” for Santayana comprehends more than the intuitive data of vision, but is rather used as a catch-all term denoting the objects of intuition. For instance, Santayana speaks of the images of both sight and touch (SB 47). 19 See also SB (239): “… [B]eauty belongs properly to sensible things…” 20 E.g., see SB (44–49; 234–235). 2 Aesthetic Optimism 15 passage from his paper entitled “The Mutability of Æsthetic Categories” is an indication of his dissatisfaction with his earlier formulation in this regard: My whole little book The Sense of Beauty was written from a subjective point of view, and nothing was further from me than a wish to hypostatize either beauty or pleasure…I should not now use the phrase ‘objectified pleasure,’… [for] pleasure…does not need to be objectified in order to be fused into an image felt to be beautiful: if felt at all, pleasure is already an object of intuition; and the beautiful image is never objective in any other sense. Nevertheless I am far from disowning my old view in its import…I might [now] perhaps say that beauty was a vital harmony felt and fused into an image under the form of eternity. (1925, 284)21 However, it should also be noted that a more charitable reader might consider any perceptual projection of beauty to imply the aesthetically relevant imagistic projection; for, as Santayana says, “The qualities which we now conceive to belong to real objects are for the most part images of sight and touch.” (SB 47) But then a projection of qualities of aesthetic feeling onto physical objects, plausibly, implies first noticing them in the images of sight and touch, and thus, presupposes imagistic projection. It is important to distinguish the actual physical artifact or material composition (e.g., the physical painting) from the aesthetic object or the object of beauty, which is to say, the art proper. The true aesthetic objects, in Santayana’s view, are mere objects of intuition, and thus, not the actual physical pieces. The physical objects we typically refer to as “art” are merely the occasions of our immediate appreciations; that is, they are “monument[s]” to these aesthetic “moments of inspiration…” (SB 262). As he later explains, “Æsthetic values are essentially individual and occa- sional, and the greatness of masterpieces remains purely nominal until intuition in somebody recognizes and confirms it.” (AS 190) The representations of harm, suffering, gore, mortal threat, injury, or death—representations of evil—are antithetical to the perception of 21 The full significance of this passage will become clearer once the doctrine of essence has been introduced, but for now, the point to be gleaned from it is that Santayana later recognized the misleading nature of his earlier formulation of aesthetic projection. 16 F. A. Sopuck beauty, on his view, since representations of evil are “vitally repulsive” (SB 25). The perception of evil is antagonistic to the perception of beauty: [Beauty]…is never the perception of a positive evil, it is never a negative value. That we are endowed with the sense of beauty is a pure gain which brings no evil with it. (SB 49) This theme is retained in his later work: Art, as I use the word here, implies moral benefit: the impulsive modifica- tion of matter by man to his own confusion and injury I should not call art, but vice or folly. (RB 353) One cannot be pleased and repulsed by one and the same feature in the same instant. Because beauty is a form of pleasure, one that is objectified, and perceptions of evil induce negative feelings, no beauty can inhere in representations of evil, recognized as such: … [N]o ӕsthetic value is really founded on the experience or the sugges- tion of evil…There may…be an expressiveness of evil; but this expressive- ness will not have any ӕsthetic value. The description or suggestion of suffering may have a worth as a science or discipline, but can never in itself enhance any beauty. (SB 258) This is not to say that beauty and the representation of suffering, in Santayana’s early view, cannot exist alongside one another, but rather that representations of evil are not through their inclusion in a larger compo- sition ever made beautiful, and nor do they directly or aesthetically con- tribute to the beauty of that composition. To put it succinctly, “Nothing but the good of life enters into the texture of the beautiful.” (SB 260) I shall side-step the issue that some individuals suffer from an impair- ment that reduces their capacity for sympathetic response, and that for such individuals, the perception of suffering may not induce the charac- teristic negative affect.22 Santayana tacitly admits that it is not an a priori 22 On the abnormal neurological correlates of psychopathy, see Immordino-Yang and Damasio (2007). 2 Aesthetic Optimism 17 truth that suffering can never be the direct object of pleasure—see SB (224) on the nature of the cruel tyrant and his propensity for schaden- freude. Rather, it is an empirical truth that holds for the majority of peo- ple, or for people with ordinary cognitive constitutions, that the witnessing of suffering induces a sympathetic response. However, note that sympathy for fellow creatures has a rational basis, according to Santayana; it is not simply a function of inclination: In pain, in terror, in all such moral suffering as is akin to pain, the enemy is external…[C]orporal works of mercy engage the spirit whole-heartedly and more urgently than any ideal object of aspiration. We do not ask whether the wretch lying robbed and wounded by the wayside deserves to be helped. He needs help, and that suffices to secure unreservedly our spiri- tual sympathy. His calamity is external to him. In respect to it, there is integrity in his soul, however distracted and criminal may have been the business that led him onto this plight. We disregard these circumstances, which we feel to have been accidents in that blind life, snares into which a poor animal soul was drawn insensibly, filth that clotted and distorted it against its primary intent. Now in his extremity the broken ruffian is again a child. He asks only to breathe, to sleep, to be nourished, not to be tor- mented. And with that elementary Will in him the Will in every spirit is unanimous: all recognize the common enemy, physical misfortune, physi- cal disaster. These may reduce the scope of spirit in each soul, but they remove all antipathy between one soul and another: they inspire humility in each and charity to all. (RB 682) In this respect, the psychopath can not only be considered abnormal, but also ignorant or irrational; he fails to recognize the universality of our fundamental existential condition as spiritual or conscious beings. Fear, according to Santayana, is a feeling that is antithetical to aesthetic feeling: The appreciation of beauty and its embodiment in the arts are activities which belong to our holiday life, when we are redeemed for the moment from the shadow of evil and the slavery to fear, and are following the bent of our nature where it chooses to lead us. (SB 25) 18 F. A. Sopuck The representation of evil is a source of fear not least because it, to borrow Santayana’s phrasing, can give rise to a “…suggestion of our own dan- ger… [and as such, may] produce a touch of fear…” which, “…if it could by chance be objectified enough to become ӕsthetic…make[s] the object hateful and repulsive, like a mangled corpse.” (SB 244)23 However, certainly it appears as though viewers derive pleasure from viewing true crime dramas, for instance.—Otherwise, what explains their popularity?—And perhaps some viewers even derive pleasure from view- ing actual footage of human tragedy (the popularity of shows that docu- ment contemporary executions, drug interventions, or other forms of human misery and wretchedness is perhaps a testament to this).24 Since the documentation of actual suffering is a defining characteristic of such pieces, and viewers are fully aware that what they are viewing are docu- mentations of real events, have we not good reason to think that repre- sentations of evil can be the objects of aesthetic enjoyment, contra Santayana? There are resources in SB to respond to this sort of objection. First, one may concede that in such instances the viewer experiences genuine aes- thetic feelings yet generally deny that the representations of evil are truly the object of those feelings. This is the basic strategy Santayana adopts in the following passage: … [A] conflagration may be called an evil, because it usually involves loss and suffering; but if, without caring for a loss and suffering we do not share, we are delighted by the blaze, and still say that what pleases us is an evil, we are using this word as a conventional appellation, not as the mark of a felt value. We are not pleased by an evil; we are pleased by a vivid and exciting sensation, which is a good, but which has for objective cause an 23 More on the relation between representations of evil and the inducement of fear is provided in subsequent sections. Note that here we observe Santayana extending his notion of aesthetic projec- tion to include the projection of unpleasant emotions. I shall reserve “aesthetic objects” for denot- ing beautiful things, “aesthetic feeling” for denoting objectified pleasure, “aesthetic projection” for denoting the imagistic projection of pleasure, and so forth. But this is merely a terminological decision hinging on the popular or common usage of the term “aesthetic”. I do not deny that unpleasant qualities of feeling can be imagistically (or perceptually) projected qualities (see Sect. 2.4). 24 Such reality television programs will be considered in Chap. 5. 2 Aesthetic Optimism 19 event which may indeed be an evil to others, but about the consequences of which we are not thinking at all. (SB 223)25 As one sees, Santayana thinks that even when one aesthetically appreci- ates something that, as a matter of fact, involves an evil, like when one delights in a bright, intense flame of a deadly fire—consider the Hindenburg disaster of 1937—the evil is not actually being attended to, which is to say, it doesn’t enter-into the perceived (aesthetic) object of the feeling. Secondly, one may concede that what the viewer experiences when viewing representations of evil are pleasures, but that the representations are parodied, caricatured, or otherwise distorted in such a way that they are sanitized of negative affect. This is the strategy we observe in the fol- lowing passage: A great deal of brutal tragedy has been endured in the world because the rudeness of the representation, or of the public, or of both, did not allow a really sympathetic reaction to arise. We all smile when Punch beats Judy in the puppet show. The treatment and not the subject is what makes a trag- edy…By treating a tragic subject bombastically or satirically we can turn it into an amusement for the public; they will not feel the griefs which we have been careful to harden them against by arousing in them contrary emotions. A work, nominally a work of art, may also appeal to non- ӕsthetic feelings by its political bias, brutality, or obscenity. (SB 224–225)26 Take cartoon representations of violence, for instance, or Santayana’s own example of violent puppet shows: They seem to involve representa- tions of evil, and these representations are themselves the objects of our perception, so it cannot be that we are not attending to them, and thus, the first strategy for explaining-away our amusement is a non-starter. The notion that the negative affect such representations normally arouse is 25 Cf. RB (8): “…[T]he impetuous philosopher…may dwell so much on the instinctive and pleas- ant bonds which attach men to what they call beautiful, that he may bury the essence of the beauti- ful altogether under heavy descriptions of the occasions on which perhaps it appears.” 26 Note that the feelings aroused by such “political bias, brutality, or obscenity” are “non-ӕsthetic” because they are not projected qualities of the piece; rather, they are localized in the perceiving subject. 20 F. A. Sopuck cognitively blocked by a sort of pre-emptive arousal of contrary pleasur- able emotions—as the penultimate sentence in the preceding passage suggests—is also problematic. For, in that case, if the pleasure is induced from the perception of the representations of evil themselves, then this runs contrary to Santayana’s governing stipulation regarding the aesthetic bankruptcy of representations of evil. If, on the other hand, the govern- ing assumption is respected, and the representations of evil are not responsible for these pleasurable feelings, then this second strategy seems to be really no different than the first, namely, the strategy of denying that representations of evil are truly the object of perceptions giving rise to pleasurable feeling, but this strategy has already been ruled-out. Finally, if it is admitted that representations of evil enter into the object of per- ception in this case, and it is simply that the pleasurable feeling is derived from features of the object of perception other than its component repre- sentations of evil per se, then this strategy collapses into a variant of the third strategy, to which we now turn.27 Thirdly, one may admit that representations of evil can enter into a (complex) aesthetic object, yet proceed to reject that they are responsible for the pleasing-effect of that object. Accordingly, it is not the representa- tions of evil in true crime dramas or footage of actual tragedy that are aesthetically pleasing, but rather these pieces are aesthetically pleasing in spite of containing these representations; i.e., the beauty of these pieces is always located in their other features (e.g., the organization of colours in the backdrop, the cinematography, or the architectural landscape or nat- ural scenery that also happen to be depicted; the heroism of those trying to help the addict; and so forth). This strategy can be detected in the fol- lowing passages: Only by the addition of positive beauties…can evil experiences be made agreeable to contemplation. (SB 222) The effect of the pathetic and comic is…never pure; since the expression of some evil is mixed up with those elements by which the whole appeals to 27 In a moment a distinction will be considered that helps shed light on the nature of this second strategy. 2 Aesthetic Optimism 21 us…To these sources all the aesthetic value of comic and tragic is due; and the sympathetic emotion which arises from the spectacle of evil must never be allowed to overpower these pleasures of contemplation, else the entire object becomes distasteful and loses its excuse for being… [H]istory is full of failures due to bombast, caricature, and unmitigated horror. In all these the effort to be expressive has transgressed the conditions of pleasing effect. (SB 259–260) This third strategy is a form of “co-existentialism”. Santayana thinks that the beauty of tragedies, for instance, is predicative of the “…rank, beauty, and virtue in our heroes, nobility in their passions and in their fate, and [the] sort of glorification of life without which tragedy would lose… in depth of pathos — since things so precious are destroyed…” (SB 228) The actual representations of evil have no positive aesthetic charge, on this view (SB 222)—though this is not to say that they play no role in the generation of perceptions of beauty. Carroll describes the core of co-existentialism in the following: On the co-existentialist view, the feeling of pleasure with reference to dis- tressful fictions is a case of one feeling being strong enough to overcome the other…In the case of a melodrama, the co-existentialist account says that sadness and pleasure exist simultaneously, with the pleasure compensating for the sadness. (Carroll 1995, 289)28 Similarly, Santayana considers the aesthetic object of tragedy, for instance, to involve competing quantities of aesthetic feeling and negative emo- tion, and if there is on balance quantitatively more represented evil than beauty in the object, and thus more negative emotion than positive, the object is immediately reduced to a moral repugnance—an “unmitigated horror” (SB 260) and “positive evil” (SB 50).29 Santayana has reason to prefer the first or second over the third strat- egy, since, upon inspection of central features of his early aesthetic 28 For objections to co-existentialism, see Neill (1992); Shaw (2001). 29 Cf. RB (131): “No cataclysm of nature, however disruptive, can ever embody evil. Evil can be realised there only if, in virtue of a previous organic harmony, a spirit was there incarnate, in which the disruption could generate the intuition of a hated change.” 22 F. A. Sopuck doctrine taken in connection with his mature account of essence, the notion that representations of evil (properly qualified) may factor as ele- ments within beautiful wholes must be rejected. In other words, Santayana’s view that a thing may be beautiful in spite of containing representations of evil is incoherent, given his broader commitments. Before addressing the grounds for the revision I propose, however, a few critical remarks regarding Santayana’s notion of “representation of evil” (SB 223) are in order. These remarks should help clarify and make sense out of the obscure second strategy proposed for explaining the pleasure apparently derived from representations of evil. It is clear from the surrounding text of the preceding passage (SB 259–260) that by “representation of evil” he means both true depictions as well as purely fictional representations. And of course, footage or the description of real suffering presents or communicates an empirical case of evil; thus, any perception of such footage is anti-aesthetic, and dis- places beauty in the finite area of the artistic composition, on the relevant view. Under the governing assumption, co-existentialism requires an additive model of aesthetic compositionality.30 Santayana misses the mark slightly here; there seems to be no thought of actual suffering implicated by merely entertaining fictional suffering. It is one thing, I propose, to entertain the notion of fictional entities suf- fering, and quite another to entertain or fantasize that real people or creatures are suffering, or that suffering is a true empirical description, or even, for that matter, that the suffering imagined is within the realm of worldly possibility, just as an innocent child may watch Bugs Bunny or a violent puppet show without the thought of any true malice or injury. In this sort of innocuous form of imagining, the representations of evil are sanitized in the way the second strategy above proposes. In purely fic- tional universes of dark fantasy or comical violent cartoons, we are typi- cally not invited to imagine factual suffering. The same cannot be said, however, of the anti-Semitic cartoons of Der Stürmer, for instance, which are materials designed for reprobate uses of the imagination. 30 This anticipates a discussion of the distinction between aggregative and essential complexity that occurs in the next section. 2 Aesthetic Optimism 23 Thus, one must distinguish imagining fictional suffering from imagin- ing factual suffering, where the latter involves imagining that suffering is or may be a true empirical description. The imagery in each case may well be the same, but the belief in the reality or empirical possibility of the suffering in the latter case distinguishes the two.31 No thought of factual suffering need arise in the case of merely imagining fictional evil, since it need not suggest the existence or possibility of such evil. The anti-aesthetic or anti-hedonic value of fictional representations of suffering, I propose, is confined to that form of representation not merely entertained, but which invites entertaining an empirical possibility or existence of evil. Otherwise, fictional representations of evil do not displace beauty (or potential beauty) or, for that matter, pleasure; they may be treated as empty images that have no negative visceral significance.32 As Santayana insists, …[A] mind discounting all reports, and free from all tormenting anxiety about its own fortunes or existence, finds in the wilderness of essence a very sweet and marvellous solitude…where all things are crystallised into the image of themselves, and have lost their urgency and their venom. (SAF 76)33 Representations of evil and ugliness are properly distinct, on Santayana’s account; ugliness is a deprivation of the beautiful; it is a negative quality, which is to say the absence of a quality (SB 49). Evil, on the other hand, is a real quality, and not a mere lack (SB 50). Ugliness is not normally antithetical to aesthetic feeling or beauty, since it presupposes some acquaintance with or thought of the beautiful, just as a hole presupposes some positive entity surrounding it. Ugliness is inherently an aesthetic notion, and implicates the beautiful. On the other hand, evil is a real quality (not a mere lack of a characteristic, but a char- acteristic itself ), one the perception of which negativizes beauty. Evil is a 31 There is a precedent for this sort of account: See Cherry (1988) on the distinction between “sur- rogate” and “autonomous” fantasies. 32 Cf. SB 50. See Smuts (2016, 387–388) for objections to the moral significance of this distinction. 33 See also SAF 65; RB 114; SAF 53: “I like the theatre, not because I cannot perceive that the play is a fiction, but because I do perceive it; if I thought the thing a fact, I should detest it: anxiety would rob me of all my imaginative pleasure.” 24 F. A. Sopuck moral notion or object of moral judgement rather than an object of taste or aesthetic interest. The ugly is…not the cause of any real pain. In itself it is rather a source of amusement. If its suggestions are vitally repulsive, its presence becomes a real evil towards which we assume a practical and moral attitude (SB 25).34 Given the moral innocence of ugliness, the deprivation of beauty is not to be confused with the privative conception of evil found in some strands of theodicy. However, Santayana’s analysis in SB extends into meta- theological critique, as he diagnoses the attraction of the privative account in theodicy35 as a misapplication of the aesthetic principle to the moral case; that is, the privative conception of evil confuses the nature of evil with that of ugliness (SB 50).36 It has perhaps occurred to the reader that evil per se and the perception of evil are prima facie quite different things. Suffering, harm, pain, death, injury, threat: These are all states of affairs that exist independently of 34 Nevertheless, Santayana thinks that a world with a preponderance of ugliness is a form of evil, since the thought that the world lacks so much of a good characteristic (beauty) is a moral repug- nance, and “…adds to the burden of mortal life…” (SB 222); “When the ugly ceases to be amusing or merely uninteresting and becomes disgusting, it becomes indeed a positive evil…[T]hat evil is nothing but the absence of good: for even the tedium and vulgarity of an existence without beauty is not itself ugly so much as lamentable and degrading. The absence of ӕsthetic goods is a moral evil…” (SB 50) 35 E.g., see Enchiridion (XIV, p. 184). 36 He also considers the notion that evil in itself positively contributes to the good—a line of thought exemplified in the aesthetic solution to the problem of evil—to be equally confused, as the following passage demonstrates: … [I]t sometimes happens, in moments less propitious, that the soul is subdued to what it works in, and loses its power of idealization and hope. By a pathetic and superstitious self- depreciation, we then punish ourselves for the imperfection of nature. Awed by the magni- tude of a reality that we can no longer conceive as free from evil, we try to assert that its evil also is a good; and we poison the very essence of the good to make its extension universal. We confuse the causal connexion of those things in nature which we call good or evil by an adventitious denomination with the logical opposition between good and evil themselves; because one generation makes room for another, we say death is necessary to life; and because the causes of sorrow and joy are so mingled in this world, we cannot conceive how, in a better world, they might be disentangled. (SB 261)—See also SB (204).—On the aesthetic solu- tion, see Whitney (1994, 21); Lovejoy (1936, 72); Confessions (VII.13.19. p. 183–184). 2 Aesthetic Optimism 25 whether I perceive them or not. Their evilness depends on sentient crea- tures with interests, and is mind-dependent in this more global sense, but such evil can exist beyond my perception of it—i.e., in other sentient creatures—and in this respect, there is a distinction between evil and its perception or representation—even if evil is a value, and as such, on the relevant view, is reduced to an object of “immediate appreciations” (SB, 29) or “felt value” (SB 223). More to the point, why should the perception of evil or its repre- sentation be antithetical to beauty? For, isn’t it possible, firstly, that a film might be interpreted as a factual account and yet not really be factual, or that it may be a factual account and fail to be interpreted as such? But then is it not conceivable that a film that contains factual depictions of evil could be an aesthetic object for the viewer function- ing under the false belief that it is not a factual account? Inversely, isn’t it possible that a viewer may fail to derive aesthetic enjoyment from a film because he believes it to be a true account of evil even though it is entirely fictional and even when the film should otherwise be an object of beauty for him? Santayana would agree that the relevant issue is whether a film is expe- rienced or understood by the viewer as containing factual depictions of evil, and not whether or not it actually contains such depictions or docu- ments “physical evils” (SB 30): There is…nothing in all nature, perhaps, which is not an evil; nothing which is not unfavourable to some interest, and does not involve some infinitesimal or ultimate suffering in the universe of life. But when we are ignorant or thoughtless, this suffering is to us as if it did not exist. The pleasures of drinking and walking are not tragic to us, because we may be poisoning some bacillus or crushing some worm. To an omniscient intel- ligence such acts may be tragic by virtue of the insight into their relations to conflicting impulses; but unless these impulses are present to the same mind, there is no consciousness of tragedy. The child that, without under- standing of the calamity, should watch a shipwreck from the shore, would have a simple emotion of pleasure as from a jumping jack; what passes for tragic interest is often nothing but this. (SB 223–224) 26 F. A. Sopuck This is an iteration of the first strategy discussed above offered for explain- ing the apparent case of deriving pleasure from evil or its representation. Unwittingly or ignorantly perceiving an object that is simultaneously “to us as if it did not exist” is perception as bare visual differentiation or non- epistemic seeing.37 That we must not merely be aware of evil but also rec- ognize it as evil in order for it to arouse the relevant negative affect indicates that Santayana understands the perception of evil in the relevant sense to be conceptually mediated.38 That the perception of evil in the relevant sense is a species of concep- tually mediated awareness coheres with the ultimate visceral inertness and causal impotence of mere imagistic presentation, according to Santayana—apart from “images” or qualities of feeling themselves, per- haps.39 “An essence is an inert theme…” (RB 20), Santayana writes. “… [A]ll essences are inert and nonexistent… [They] have no power to main- tain themselves or to generate one another, any more than one word or note in the air has the power, in the absence of a vocal instrument, to breed the next word or the next note.” (RB 276) Bare visual imagery or, as shall be articulated in the next section, the unsubstantial essences that are the only objects of our intuition, are “immaterial absolute theme[s]” (SAF 39), and are in themselves causally inefficacious. To be sure, we have emotional reactions to them sometimes originally or as a result of instinct (like revulsion or disgust upon the mere intuition of some odours, for example), but nothing about those qualities (odours) intrinsically has any causal efficacy; it is only insofar as pain or pleasure is infused into them 37 Dretske’s (1969) definition of non-epistemic seeing is as follows: “S seesn D = D is visually dif- ferentiated from its immediate environment by S….[where] S’s differentiation of D is by visual means, in terms of D’s looking some way to S…” (1969, 20) Seeingn, is “…logically independent of whatever beliefs we may possess.” (1969, 17) “… [V]isual differentiation…is a pre-intellectual, pre-discursive…capacity which a wide variety of beings possess. It is an endowment which is largely immune to the caprice of our intellectual life. Whatever judgments, interpretations, beliefs, infer- ences, anticipations, regrets, memories, or thoughts may be aroused by the visual differentiation of D, the visual differentiation of D…is quite independent of these accompaniments. It can take place with or without them…” (Dretske 1969, 29) 38 See Crowther (2006) for a discussion that stakes-out the relevant conceptualist positions in this regard. 39 However, even these in themselves, apart from their association with the body or physical psyche through sensation, are inert: “As an intuition, if such it may be called, pain is empty, yet as a sensa- tion it is intense, arresting, imperative; so that it exemplifies the very essence of evil for the spirit: to exist in vain, to care intensely in the dark, to be prodded into madness about nothing.” (RB 679) 2 Aesthetic Optimism 27 that they have any motive force or, to borrow Santayana’s terminology, take on an “emotional tinge” (SB 85). There is no beauty in representations of evil themselves, and represen- tations of evil do not aesthetically (as opposed to merely causally) con- tribute to the beauty of the whole: These are the two governing Santayanan postulates. But a more extreme position can be motivated on Santayanan grounds. The extreme position maintains these two governing postulates, but adds a third, namely, that there can be no representation of evil, rec- ognized as such, in an aesthetic object whatsoever. This more extreme position is grounded in the application of features of Santayana’s mature doctrine of essence and corollary views to the two governing postulates found in his early account of beauty. 2.2 The Doctrine of Essence Taking a step back for a moment, let us acknowledge that one should expect a great concomitance between Santayana’s earlier views found in SB and his later ontological account. As we shall see, Santayana relies quite heavily on artistic examples within the later explication of his notion of complex essencehood, for instance, but it is a peculiarity of his later work generally that the appeal to aesthetics constitutes explanatory bedrock.40 The arts have a sort of primacy in the exposition of his doc- trine of essence precisely because their subject matter—beauty—is per- fectly open to inspection. Aesthetic objects are wholly present in, to borrow Santayana’s phrase, “…revelation[s] of essences in intuition.” (RB 121) There is, therefore, a good reason why Santayana’s exposition of essence so often terminates in comparisons to art, as the appeal to the aesthetic is clarifying: … [P]oetry is, in one sense, truer than science, and more satisfactory to a seasoned and exacting mind. Poetry reveals one sort of truth completely, because reality in that quarter [i.e., art] is no more defined or tangible than poetry itself; and it clarifies human experience of other things also, earthly 40 E.g., see RB (219–220; 352). 28 F. A. Sopuck and divine, without falsifying these things more than experience falsifies them already. Science, on the contrary, the deeper it goes, gets thinner and thinner and cheats us altogether… (RB 233) A thing’s essence, according to Santayana, is its qualitative or identify- ing character, i.e., what it is: “Essences…are primordial and distinct forms of possible being…” (RB 430)41 To borrow a contemporary notion, essences are characterizing properties, or in more familiar parlance, what- nesses. Richard Sylvan (1995) gives us a concise explanation of “character- izing predicates” (mutatis mutandis, properties) below: Characterizing predicates are those which specify what an item is like, in itself. They tell how an item is in fact. They give its description. A good dossier of an item would perhaps give its characterization first, by way of its characterization features. (Sylvan 1995, qtd. in Hyde et al. para. 61)42 Santayana makes a parallel point about the nature of essences: “Essences do not need description, since they are descriptions already.” (RB 67) Santayana’s central ontological division is that of essence from exis- tence, that is, what type of thing something is (i.e., the “logical being” (RB 416) of this or that character) from the fact that something is—i.e., whether something existing exemplifies this or that character (RB 4–5). A thing’s existence, therefore, adds nothing further to the identity or intrinsic properties of a thing; existential fact does not “…bring to any essence an increment in its logical being…” which is to say, in what it intrinsically is (RB 416).43 Accordingly, it is not the case that existence is a characteriz- ing property, and therefore, radical contingency infiltrates all existential fact, since it is not inscribed in anything’s essence that it exists. In the tradition of Plato, Santayana holds that there is a realm of essence wherein atemporal, nonspatial universals reign eternal; in this realm lies prefigured every possible form of being whatsoever, and these transcendent universals have ontological priority over all existent things: 41 See also Santayana (1920, 168); RB (23). 42 Cf. Santayana (1915, 66–67, 1918, 425); RB (32; 67). 43 See also Santayana 1915, 67: “Existence adds no new character to the essence it hypostasizes, since the essence of any existing thing is its full character…” See also Sullivan Jr. (1952, 221). 2 Aesthetic Optimism 29 “Nothing…more truly is than character. Without this wedding garment no guest is admitted to the feast of existence…” (RB 24)44 Essences are ontologically prior to existents because the realm of essence, in Santayana’s view, comprises an infinite variety of qualitatively distinct essences (RB 35; 71). From the infinite variety of essence it fol- lows that any possible form, that is, any type of thing that could receive existential instantiation, is already prefigured by an eternal form some- where in the catalogue of essence: …[W]hatsoever form an existence may happen to assume, that form will be some precise essence eternally self-defined…[E]vents can never overtake or cover the infinite advance which pure Being has had on existence from all eternity. (RB 122) In accordance with this, call it, radical essentialism, any alteration of char- acter, however miniscule (e.g., the placement of the part in my hair) con- stitutes an exchange of one essence for a separate one. In Santayana’s view, there is never a qualitative variation that is not essential to some essence in the realm of being, and whenever that precise qualitative variation occurs, its special essence is perfectly realized. It therefore follows on this view that essences are incorruptible, since any corruption implies that an essence could survive some sort of degra- dation or qualitative transformation, but this is impossible, since the moment there is any qualitative change, according to Santayana, an old essence is shed and a new one instantaneously takes its place (SAF 112–114).45 Santayana distinguishes simple essences from complex essences. Simple essences are universals involving no more than a single, internally homo- geneous theme. As such, they are inimical to logical analysis, since they have no simpler constituents in which to be resolved. Simple essences consist of a uniform, undifferentiated theme—as Santayana says, a “[p]ure unity” or a “pure quality” (RB 70). They include the essence of 44 See also RB (18; 93). 45 See also RB (122). 30 F. A. Sopuck straightness (RB 38), visible brightness (RB 146), a uniform odour, and an isolated musical note (RB 70), for example. Complex essences, on the other hand, are universals that are internally diversified or have a multiplicity of elemental themes. For example, a square’s essence is that of a thing that involves an organization of ele- ments (lines, vertices, angles, etc.) that are in certain definite relation- ships. Similarly, the essence of the Loch Ness monster, a mathematical formula, a succession of events, a horizon or skyscape: Each consists of a specific distribution of subordinate or elemental themes organized in accordance with a master overarching theme (that precise type of sky- scape, that precise type of mythical creature, that type of succession of events, etc.). Essences have certain relations intrinsically, according to Santayana, namely: 1) the mutual relations of contrast or affinity they have to one another (“contrastive relations” (Sprigge 1974, 83)), and 2) the relations of elemental themes in a complex essence to one another and to the wholes in which they participate (“holistic relations” (Sprigge 1974, 83)).46 Take a geometrical example: The interior angles of a triangle are holistically related in such a way that their sum equals 180 degrees. Conversely, a triangle is contrastively related to a square insofar as it could not be a triangle if it did not have fewer sides than a square does. Existence, in Santayana’s view, requires that essences acquire accidental or “external” relations. Crucially, they must be put in spatial and tempo- ral situations relative to one another (RB 44)47: “… [E]verything that exists exists by conjunction with other things on its own plane…” (RB 276) On the nature of external relations, Santayana writes: “External relations are due to the position, not the inherent character, of the terms.” (RB 206) Such relations, like distance, relative angle, before and after, bigger and smaller, etc., are predicative of essences only when essences are enmattered (RB 273).48 46 See RB (71; 131). 47 See also SAF (32); RB (76–77; 121; 203; 418). 48 Cf. SAF (217). 2 Aesthetic Optimism 31 Essences are indissoluble units, in Santayana’s view (RB 85–91)49, and this is no less true in the case of complex essences, which despite consist- ing of multiple elemental themes, have the constitutional integrity of an atomic individual, just as simple essences do. This constitutional integrity of essences is not transferred into the (additive or material) composition- ality of the matter exemplifying them, the nature of which is one of an accidental aggregation of separate units or things cobbled together, as it were, where each constituent part is an existent essence unto itself (RB 294).50 Provided that they are without proper parts, complex essences are not compounded of simpler essences (e.g., the essence of a painting is not a compound of separate essences of brushstrokes and colours). Furthermore, the elements of complex essences have no independent identity, given that identity is proper only to the whole of an atomic individual.51 Elements can only be identified through their inclusion within the whole, and they are as such in relations of mutual containment, just “…as every stroke in a picture, if taken as part of that picture, implies the remain- der.” (RB 85) The elemental themes or constituents of a complex essence, in Santayana’s view, cannot be intuited or conceived apart from the master theme or whole in which they participate. When one considers a subor- dinate or elemental theme of a complex essence as a separate essence and loses sight of the whole in which it participates, one no longer appre- hends the element of a complex essence; rather, what was originally an element of that complex is supplanted by a separate essence that closely resembles it (RB 85; 89; 90–91). This process of substitution in thought of a complex essence for a simpler one that resembles one of its constitu- ent elements may be called a form of aberrant abstraction.52 49 See also SAF (116–117). 50 See also SAF (121–124). 51 See Forrest (1986) and Bigelow and Pargetter (1989) on “non-mereological composition” (Bigelow and Pargetter 1989, 3). See Armstrong (1978, 67–74; 1997, 32–33) for a counterpoint, according to which complex or “structural” universals are aggregations of simpler universals. 52 Nevertheless, Santayana admits of non-aberrant or veridical forms of abstraction. He would agree with Leibniz’s view that “…abstraction is not an error as long as one knows that what one is pre- tending not to notice, is there.” (New Essays 57)—see SAF (123–124; 128; 272–273) on the selec- tive attention to elements of complex essences. 32 F. A. Sopuck To be sure, it is a peculiarity of Santayana’s account that complex essences are understood to have constituent “elements” but not proper parts. However, this doctrine is somewhat demystified by Santayana’s corollary theory of partial equivalence, which affirms a quasi-equivalence between the constituent themes of complex essences (e.g., the straight lines in a rectangle) and corresponding simple(r) essences—e.g., the sim- pler essence of a straight line (RB 85).53 Sprigge calls such corresponding simpler essences and constituent elements within a complex essence “vir- tually identical”: …Santayana recognizes that, on the face of it, one can make a detail in a complex pattern an object of attention on its own, but he insists that, strictly speaking, we are then intuiting a different essence with an especially close affinity to the detail, such as makes it proper to call it the ‘same’…I introduce my own term for Santayana’s idea here and call such essences virtually identical. (1974, 74–75)54 The reality of external relations or things aggregated together is lost when such aggregations are reduced to their mere essences. Santayana insists that “… essence…contains no reference to any setting in space or time, and stand[s]…in no adventitious relations to anything. (RB 18)55, and that “… historical events…cannot be gathered up or under- stood…without being sublimated and congealed into their historical essences and forfeiting their natural flux.” (RB 269) The last quote con- cerns the nature of things in temporal succession, but the relevant point holds more generally and also covers things in spatial adjacency: “… [T]he conjunction of existences in nature must always remain successive, external, and unsynthesised…” (RB 203) Santayana thinks that existents are not possible objects of intuition; we cannot intuitively penetrate beyond the realm of mere nonexistent essences; we never intuit essences incarnated or natural objects; these are rather objects of our “animal faith” (recall RB 112), or to put it in more standard (Humean) terms, natural belief. In order, per impossibile, to 53 See also RB (89). 54 Cf. RB (57; 419). 55 See also RB (48; 429). 2 Aesthetic Optimism 33 intuit or be immediately acquainted with such objects, external relations would have to be possible objects of intuition—since “[t]hat a thing by its internal being should have reference to something external…is so far from being an anomaly or an exception that it is the indispensable condi- tion of existing at all… (RB 282). This, however, is fundamentally impossible: Nothing given is either physical or mental, in the sense of being intrinsi- cally a thing or a thought; it is just a quality of being. (SAF 92)56 Synthesis in intuition destroys the existential status of the terms which it unites, since it excludes any alternation or derivation between them. It unites at best the essences of some natural things into an ideal picture. On the other hand the conjunction of existences in nature must always remain successive, external, and unsynthesised. Nature shows no absolute limits and no privileged partitions; whereas the richest intuition, the most divine omniscience, is imprisoned in the essence which it beholds. (RB 203) Timothy Sprigge (1974) encapsulates the relevant view in the following remark: “It is intrinsically impossible that an external relation should be intuited, since all that I intuit at a moment belongs to one over-arching complex essence.” (84) Santayana holds that intuitions are dyadic states consisting on the one hand of spiritual moments (or incarnated spirit) and on the other hand intuited objects, that is, nonexistent essences: There are…two disparate essences exemplified in every instance of spirit; one is the essence of spirit, exemplified formally and embodied in the event or fact that at such a moment such an animal has such a feeling; the other is the essence then revealed to that animal, and realised objectively or imagi- natively in his intuition [an ‘objective actuality’ or ‘ideal presence’]. (RB 130) Intuitive operations are operations of a material psyche, and as such are existential facts indexed to the flux of natural events, but considered in 56 See also SAF (34; 161); RB (429). 34 F. A. Sopuck themselves they are immaterial (RB 233–234).57 Santayana thinks that spirit is a sort of immaterial vapour that matter off-gasses. Nevertheless, moments of spirit are existent essences (RB 129). In contrast, the objects of intuition are non-existent (SAF 92).58 Thus, the existential import and par- ticularization of intuition are located in the spiritual moment of intuition and not in that moment’s presentational content.59 Finally, since spiritual moments, according to Santayana, are “a special instance” of existence, they, like all existents, cannot themselves be objects of intuition (RB 129). 2.3 Aesthetic Optimism: The Deduction As mentioned, Santayana relies on artistic examples in order to clarify the relevant notion of complex essencehood. Such examples illustrate the compossibility of the complex with the primitive. He takes it for granted that this sort of compossibility or cohabitation will be readily granted in the case of works of art: The most agitated Paradiso ever painted by Tintoretto, the most insane Walpurgisnachtstraum, is as elementary and fundamental an essence as the number one or the straight line. (RB 142) … [A]ll essences, however complex, are individuals, and they are individu- als, however simple. Their parts are parts only of that whole, as the right half of a picture is the right and is a half only when the whole is given with it; otherwise it makes a whole picture by itself, and its centre is in the middle of it, not at the left-hand edge. (RB 90–91) The nature of essence appears in nothing better than in the beautiful, when this is a positive presence to the spirit and not a vague title conventionally bestowed. In a form felt to be beautiful an obvious complexity composes an obvious unity: a marked intensity and individuality are seen to belong 57 See also SAF (231); RB (29; 134; 205; 219; 233–234; 600). Santayana approaches property dual- ism here (see RB 331). 58 See also SAF (34; 270); Santayana (1918, 424). 59 See Lovejoy (1930, 109–110) for a critique of this picture. 2 Aesthetic Optimism 35 to a reality utterly immaterial and incapable of existing otherwise than speciously. (RB 153–154) The most material thing, in so far as it is felt to be beautiful, is instantly immaterialised, raised above external personal relations, concentrated and deepened in its proper being, in a word, sublimated into an essence… (RB 8)60 Drawing the connections between these later discussions of complex essencehood with the earlier aesthetic doctrine: If representations of evil are, ex hypothesis, contained in an aesthetic object, then they must be elemental themes of a complex essence, since all aesthetic objects are mere essences, given that they are all mere articles of intuition, and rep- resentations of evil cannot exhaust the elemental themes of an aesthetic object (provided the co-existentialist account). Therefore, the relevant essence must be complex. But then, given the nature of complex essencehood, these representa- tions of evil, in Leibniz’s terminology, are “immediate requisite[s]” of the whole of which they are elements; in other words, they are “…ingredient[s] of something… [which,] when we posit [them]…we…also…by this very fact… [and] without…inference…have posited the [thing]…as well.” (After 1714, 667)61 The inverse is equally true: This, ex hypothesis, beauti- ful whole and any element of it that is the locus of its beauty are i mmediate requisites of its elemental themes of evil. The themes of evil included in the complex essence can thus only be understood as ineliminable or nec- essary constituents of the beautiful whole. That is to say, this theme of evil is an immediate condition of the possibility of this beautiful whole and its contrasting elements, and this beautiful whole and its contrasting elements are immediate conditions of the possibility of this theme of evil. Therefore, were representations of evil to factor as elements within a complex whole that is itself beautiful, in this case we must say that repre- sentations of evil make possible, in a direct way, the beautiful.62 This 60 Cf. SB 29. 61 See also Leibniz (1685, 271). 62 Santayana makes a parallel point regarding matter as an immediate requisite of existing things, good or bad: “Matter seems an evil to the sour moralist because it is often untoward, and an occa- sion of imperfection or conflict in things. But if he took a wider view matter would seem a good to 36 F. A. Sopuck relation of interdependence between beauty and representations of evil would have to be noncausal; it would be a holistic relation. However, for representations of evil to make possible a beautiful whole in this noncausal or holistic sense is tantamount to them making a posi- tive contribution to the beauty of the aesthetic object (i.e., by being an immediate requisite or constitutive condition of its identity), and this is contrary to Santayana’s official second postulate, namely, that there is no thing that is beautiful in virtue of its containing representations of evil. Moreover, the beautiful features and representations of evil cannot be consid- ered discrete parts of the object; they are mutually contained or holistically related. But then it follows that the source of the aesthetic effect of the object implicates the entirety of the object (essence), including, ex hypothesis, its rep- resentations of evil. This follows from the constitutional integrity of complex essences as atomic individuals. As such, the aesthetic effect of the object ulti- mately cannot be confined to a segment of the complex essence, but must, in the final analysis, be attributed to it as a whole, including to its constituent representations of evil. This violates Santayana’s official first postulate, namely, that no beauty inheres in representations of evil. Therefore, co-existentialism is incoherent within the broader Santayanan framework. The co-existentialist doctrine is only coherent within this framework on an aggregative or additive model of aesthetic composition, but such a model conflicts with aesthetic objects being mere objects of intuition and complex essences. 2.4 The Unintelligibility of the Aggregative View The imagistic or, for lack of a better term, objective datum and pleasur- able quality of feeling63 must be in some way fused, united, or blended together, according to Santayana’s doctrine of beauty; the objective him, because it is the principle of existence: it is all things in their potentiality, and therefore the condition of all their excellence or possible perfection.” (RB 183) 63 In this phrasing I am respecting Santayana’s bifurcation of intuitive operations of feeling and the intuitive objects of those operations. Recall (see Sect. 2.2) that moments of intuition qua existents are not possible objects of intuition. Therefore, since aesthetic objects are by definition objects of 2 Aesthetic Optimism 37 quality must be coloured with qualities of vital feeling. In SB, Santayana unequivocally construes this unification of qualities of vital feeling with images as a compounding or aggregation of two metaphysically discrete qualities. The fact that the objective datum must be suffused with the quality of aesthetic pleasure is a testament to their original distinctness, after all. Moreover, in discussing imagistic projection more generally (e.g., with respect to gustatory pleasures, where flavours phenomenologi- cally co-locate with, to borrow H.H. Price’s terminology, the “…tactual sense-datum…‘belonging to’…” (1932, 231) the inside of one’s mouth), Santayana refers to the “cohesion…between the pleasure and the other associated elements of sense”, where “the other associated elements of sense” is a stand-in for intuitive imagery (SB 48). “Cohesion” is inher- ently a matter of aggregation. This aggregative account of the objectifica- tion of pleasure persists in his later writing: Beauty—as the pure æsthetes have discovered—is not intrinsic to any form: it comes to bathe that form, and to shine forth from it, only by virtue of a secret attraction, agitation, wonder, and joy which that stimulus hap- pens to cause—not always but on occasion—in our animal hearts. (AS 192) I propose that the aggregative view of the objectification of pleasure is inconsistent with Santayana’s mature doctrine of essence and corollary views, and that he fails to fully recognize this. A truly coherent Santayanan account of imagistic projection, one that does justice to the metaphysical import of his mature doctrine of essence, must uphold the view that the pleasurable qualities of aesthetic feelings essentially inhere in the beauti- ful images, and that as such aesthetic objects are always complex essences consisting (minimally) of qualities of pleasurable feeling and objective or imagistic content. Bound-up with Santayana’s imagistic projection thesis is the view that naive thinkers are guilty of some sort of attribution error when it comes to aesthetic properties. The nature of this error he frames in terms that are consistent with an aggregative view of aesthetic objects. The relevant intuition, pleasurable feelings qua intuitive operations are not that which are being “objectified”, but rather, it is the qualities of pleasure or the intuitive objects of pleasurable feeling—qualities of pleasure—that are the relevant felt values or projected qualities (see Santayana 1925, 284). 38 F. A. Sopuck error, according to Santayana, is a matter of mistaking beauty to intrinsi- cally reside in intuitive images (SB 47–49). This account of the error seems to persist in his later writing: Value accrues to any part of the realm of essence by virtue of the interest which somebody takes in it, as being the part relevant to his own life. If the organ of this life comes to perfect operation, it will reach intuition of that relevant part of essence. This intuition will be vital in the highest degree. It will be absorbed in its object…[N]o essences will appear to it which are not suffused with a general tint of interest and beauty…The life of the psyche, which rises to this intuition, determines all the characters of the essence evoked, and among them its moral quality…[A] presumption arises that any essence is beautiful and life-enhancing. This platonic adoration of essence is undeserved. The realm of essence is dead, and the intuition of far the greater part of it would be deadly to any living creature… [N]atural operations lend these values to the visions in which they rest. (SAF 129–131)64 Santayana does not seem to arrive at a fully coherent position here. For, as we have seen, beautiful essences are really essential complexes consist- ing of qualities of aesthetic feeling and objective or imagistic data. Provided that the relevant objectification of pleasure is one in which an image and emotion are phenomenologically co-located, to consider the aesthetic tinge as accidental to the beautiful image is in effect to admit the possibility of intuiting a being of aggregation. That beautiful things are beings of aggregation consisting of metaphysically discrete subjective and objective parts is impossible given the mature doctrine of essence and corollary views, since aesthetic objects are only ever objects of intuition, and no beings of aggregation are possible objects of intuition, according to this doctrine. But then the aesthetic value (or objectified quality of pleasure) of beautiful essences must be intrinsic. The realm of essence cannot be “dead” of aesthetic value; essences are not merely “…suffused with a general tint of …beauty”, but must, it seems, have it essentially; and it is rather misleading to say that the “…natural operations lend…val- ues to the visions in which they rest…”, or that value “accrues” to essences, See also RB 7–8. 64 2 Aesthetic Optimism 39 when in fact the aesthetic qualities of beautiful essences are inalienable to them. Santayana’s apparent statements to the contrary are in lockstep with his early cohesion account of aesthetic projection. Recall that in the early formulation of beauty in SB, Santayana some- times fails to clearly separate imagistic from perceptual projection, or, at least, runs the two together in a way that can lead to confusion. Perhaps a hangover of this failure characterizes his later writing, and may serve to explain why he seems not to fully recognize that the aggregative model of aesthetic objects is inconsistent with his doctrine of essence. For, if the relevant projection is one of merely false belief rather than phenomeno- logical co-location, then the awareness of objectified pleasure would not necessarily involve the intuition of an aggregative unity or being of aggre- gation. However, as we have seen, perceptual projection is not the rele- vant sort of projection. One challenge for any rational reconstruction of Santayana’s doctrine of beauty is that the relevant attribution error bound-up with the imagis- tic projection thesis must be reformulated in terms that do not already presuppose an aggregative view of aesthetic objects. To this end I offer the following proposal: The relevant error is not, as Santayana appears to have thought, that we mistakenly consider the aesthetic qualities (or objectified qualities of pleasure) to intrinsically reside in the intuitive images that are beautiful, but rather, we mistakenly think that these intu- itive images have the aesthetic qualities independently of the pleasurable qualities of feeling residing in them. The error, in other words, is really a form of aberrant abstraction (see Sect. 2.2) wherein images with qualities of pleasure are thought to survive being removed from those qualities; but the effect of such abstraction—given the absolute constitutional integrity and incorruptibility of complex essences—would be an exchange of those hedonically charged images or complex essences for separate ones without such charge, and consequently, without beauty. My proposed reconstruction of Santayana’s doctrine of beauty involves a radical departure from his aggregative view of aesthetic objects. But it also diverges from the early doctrine of beauty in another way: If the aesthetic quality of feeling in the image is a constituent element and con- tinuous feature of it, and the two are therefore not metaphysically dis- crete, then why should the beauty of the image depend on anyone’s act of 40 F. A. Sopuck immediate appreciation? Such a view is at odds with the earlier doctrine of pleasure generally, according to which, recall, “…a pleasure not felt… [is] a contradiction.” (SB 45) Indeed, the reconstructed account goes even further than theories that affirm the reality of unconscious pleasures (and pains), which is to say, pleasures and pains of which one is unaware65, since according to this account, not only are qualities of pleasure and pain independent of con- scious awareness, they are independent of subjective episodes of feeling altogether. This—i.e., disembodied particles of nonexistent qualities of pleasure suspended in eternity—may strike the reader as preposterous, but it is something that must be considered a possibility if one is to take Santayana’s doctrine of essence and corollary views seriously. For, whether in living intuition or in the realm of essence, qualities of pleasure are nonexistent or bare universals; there is no intrinsic or extrinsic difference between their spiritual actualizations and their reality in the realm of essence. This may be observed in the following passage (which was already given in part in the preceding section, but which I return to here now armed with the requisite theoretical background for understanding its full significance): … [W]hen I speak of the terms actually present in intuition as of so many eternal essences, I expressly deny that any such essence is to be regarded as existing. The terms of thought are universals… [A] term does not become subjective merely because an intuition of it occurs. Nothing is subjective in experience except experience itself, the passing act of intuition or feeling; the terms distinguished during that experience, such as specific qualities of colour or pleasure, are neither objective nor subjective, but neutral; at most they might be called, so long as attended to, subjective objects, such objects as subjective idealism would admit…[I]f felt at all, pleasure is already an object of intuition; and the beautiful image is never objective in any other sense. (Santayana 1925, 284) The relevant import of this passage is clear: Objectified pleasure insofar as it is recorded in the realm of essence is no different than it is in living intuition, and that objectified pleasure, or any quality of pleasure, has the Cf. Bramble (2013, 205–206). 65 2 Aesthetic Optimism 41 same nature and degree of reality whether or not it is actually (consciously or unconsciously) felt. However, the extraneousness of moments of immediate appreciation to the beauty of essences is already (albeit inconsistently) indicated in Santayana’s later writing; there beauty is at times considered a literal fea- ture of the beautiful image or essence, or as a quality that is strictly insep- arable from it.66 Perhaps the most unambiguous illustration of this occurs in the following passage: The only Venus which is inalienably beautiful is the divine essence revealed to the lover as he gazes, perhaps never to be revealed to another man, nor revealed to himself again. In this manifest goddess…her beauty is indeed intrinsic and eternal; and it is as impossible that its particular quality should be elsewhere, as that she should be without it. (RB 153) One worry is that the proposed reconstruction of Santayana’s doctrine of beauty involves a complete departure from sentimentalism. Since sen- timentalism, plausibly, is a central feature of any recognizably Santayanan view, it may be asked, “Is there anything recognizably Santayanan about this reconstructed account?” In a sense, the proposal does involve a departure from sentimentalism, since no longer does the beauty of an image depend on its being imme- diately appreciated; indeed, as we have seen, Santayana thinks that the beauty of Venus de Milo is “intrinsic and eternal” and completely inalien- able from it. However, the tension between the proposed reconstruction and Santayana’s sentimentalism is assuaged by the fact that, according to the reconstructed account, even though the beauty of essences is not strictly dependent on immediate appreciations, it is nevertheless dependent on qualities of feeling, since such qualities, on this proposal, are literally inte- grated in beautiful essences as a subset of their constituent elements. Albeit, qualities of feeling are “sentimental essences” which, “…by their very nature, [are] incapable of passive [material] embodiment…” (RB 66 Here I find myself brought into considerable contact with a comparison of Santayana’s early and late conception of beauty supplied by Sprigge (1974, 89–91). 42 F. A. Sopuck 131)67, and instead are only ever, to borrow Santayana’s phrasing, brought “…into living intuition.” (RB 114) However, as has already been indi- cated, they are nevertheless eternal, absolute, and non-existent themes which, as essences, have reality whether or not anyone actually experi- ences them: … [E]very caprice or marvel of form, natural or unnatural, is waiting in the limbo of essence for the hand or the eye that shall bring it to light. This field also contains all possible intensities, all the varieties of depth, of plea- sure or horror, of which any one can be directly sensible… Essence, whether aesthetic or logical, has no need of being true of matter: it has a sufficient truth or reality in itself… (AS 188) Thus, the fact that the reconstructed account affirms the dependence of beauty on parcels of qualitative feeling is perhaps enough to consider it as within the orbit of sentimentalism. Aesthetic objects, according to the reconstructed account, are mere essences that consist of indissoluble essential complexes of qualities of feeling and objective/imagistic profiles. Whether such a view violates sentimentalism is dubious, given that the dependence of beauty on qualities of feeling is preserved by this account, albeit, qualities of feeling are fully incorporated as subordinate essential elements in the beautiful images. Santayana’s sentimentalism, recall, rejects the intellectuality of value. Sentimental values reside ultimately in basic or instinctual preferences. But this feature of his sentimentalism is also preserved in the later doc- trine: That some images received in the mind trigger the appearance of complex essences that consist of images virtually or partially identical to those triggering images except now with elements of aesthetic qualities of feeling built-into them while others do not is ultimately a function of instinctual appreciation.68 As Santayana insists, “If the thing is beautiful, this is…because the essence which it manifests is one to which my nature 67 Cf. RB 153–154. 68 Cf. AS 195: “Were the artist a free and absolute æsthete, equally solicited by the plethora of all possible forms, whither should his poor wits turn? I am afraid he would be condemned to eternal impotence, and would die like Buridan’s ass without being able to choose among those equidistant allurements. But nature luckily breaks the spell, accident has loaded the dice; and if a man may abstract in his conceptions from the natural objects about him, he cannot abstract from the human 2 Aesthetic Optimism 43 is attuned…” (RB 7) In light of these considerations, we might, plausibly, consider the proposed reconstruction a quasi-sentimentalism—senti- mentalism minus the subjectivism. It lands somewhere in between senti- mentalist and rationalist views, the latter of which conceive “…beauty [to]…flow by some logical necessity from the essences of objects simulta- neously in our mind…” (SB 199) The rationalist dimension, thus con- strued, of the proposal consists in the fact that some beautiful essences have an aesthetic quality or pleasing effect when brought into living, human intuition as a matter of logical necessity, since they intrinsically possess an “objectified” pleasurable quality, given our psychological con- stitutions. It should be noted, however, that the pleasurableness of this or that sensuous or affective quality is a fact about the human constitution, and that this constitution is itself a contingent fact, in Santayana’s view.— Indeed, he thinks all natural facts are metaphysically contingent (SAF 284).69—As we have seen, essences in themselves are inert. This is why a “pain” that is merely intuited, i.e., without that spiritual moment being a part of a physical sensory process in a living organism, is, as Santayana says, “empty”, by which he means empty of visceral significance.70 And it must be admitted as a possibility that for another organism equipped with a psychological constitution different from that of human beings, the sensuous or affective qualities which are pleasurable qualities for us may be qualities of pain (or, as it were, qualities of indifference) for it.71 Despite this element of contingency, what I am proposing is not that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, since I depart from subjectivism, but rather that beauty is relative to an eye of a beholder (cf. RB 7). Again, the position being advanced is a sort of synthesis of rationalist and sentimen- talist themes. Finally, note that such relativity does not really disrupt the transcen- dent reality of beautiful essences, as it is forever true, according to the nature within himself…And as nature supplies his initial notions, so she also steadies his hand and lends depth to his final allegiances.” 69 Recall Sect. 2.2. 70 Recall RB (679). 71 Cf. SB (126–127) on the difficulty, but not impossibility, of projecting painful impressions, and on the prospect of stripping “…ourselves of our human nature…”; cf. SB (47) on all emotions and sensory impressions as “…essentially capable of objectification.” 44 F. A. Sopuck relevant proposal, that this or that essence is beautiful; it just so happens that in order to intuit its beauty, one must be a creature of such and such a psychological constitution. This is not a trivial truth—it is not equiva- lent to the tautology that in order for a beautiful essence to be intuited it must be intuited—since it is possible, given the preceding, that a beautiful essence, complete with the characteristic sensuous or affective quality in which its beauty resides, may be intuited without its beauty being intu- ited. After all, it is possible, for instance, that this intuition occurs in an organism with a psychological constitution that renders such affective content unpleasant for it—similarly, consider a child’s distaste for a food or a drink that requires a maturity and refinement of the palate in order to be enjoyed. But who shall affirm that a thing cannot be objectively or transcendently (i.e., outside of spiritual moments) beautiful unless every- one who intuits it is capable of seeing its beauty? 2.5 The Doctrine of Expression When a percipient understands that a film or art piece contains factual descriptions of evil or real footage of evil, it cannot possibly be an aes- thetic object for that percipient. This is the thesis of aesthetic optimism. One will perhaps quickly notice that this proposal, without further clari- fication, seems to militate against central aspects of the tradition of Christian art, e.g., those that are occupied with depictions of Jesus on the cross—which, let us suppose, was a true event. The aesthetic significance of these paintings, one might think, is a derivative of the thing they depict. This would be to conceive of such paintings as representative art, which is not beautiful merely because it achieves some perfection in its correspondence to the object it depicts.72 For, a perfect imitation or veri- similitude can only go so far when the subject is not beautiful. On the other hand, it could hardly be asserted that Christ’s suffering in itself (i.e., divorced from the sequence or procession of events surround- ing it or its broader theological significance) was beautiful. Perhaps it may 72 Though, as Santayana remarks, imitation is one source of aesthetic pleasure in the “representative arts.” (SB 21) 2 Aesthetic Optimism 45 be argued that the suffering is made beautiful (i.e., is derivatively beauti- ful) insofar as it is understood as a component or element within a more comprehensive theological event (e.g., the noble martyrdom of the redeemer of humanity) that is on the whole beautiful. Given the doctrine of aesthetic optimism, however, if the painting of Christ on the cross is beautiful, its beauty does not reside in the perception of what it naturally or non-symbolically depicts (i.e., factual suffering), and moreover, no amount of contextualization can make suffering (recognized as such) appear beautiful. I think it should be maintained that these paintings do not celebrate the idea of Christ’s suffering per se, but rather that the symbol of Christ on the cross directs the mind to some other object of thought that is aes- thetically loaded. That is to say, the depictions of Jesus on the cross are intended to be symbolic and not representative. On this supposition, the image of Christ’s suffering functions as a causal intermediary or sign, the intuition of which, under the appropriate interpretive framework of asso- ciations (established through convention)73, initiates the aesthetically loaded thought—e.g., a restoration of divine kinship with God. Santayana calls such symbolic art “expression”: In all expression we may…distinguish two terms: the first is the object actually presented, the word, the image, the expressive thing; the second is the object suggested, the further thought, emotion, or image evoked, the thing expressed. These lie together in the mind, and their union constitutes expression. (SB 195)74 Whereas in form or material there is one object with its emotional effect, in expression there are two, and the emotional effect belongs to the charac- ter of the second or suggested one. (SB 193) As the first passage indicates, in expression, the expressive object func- tions in the first instance as a mere sign which initiates acquaintance with the object of thought responsible for the aesthetic feeling (the expressed thing), but afterward the expressive object acquires some beauty. In other 73 Cf. SAF (168). 74 See also SB (168); Cf. SAF (168–169). 46 F. A. Sopuck words, the expressive thing becomes “united” or synthesized with the expressed thing to form the “expression”. The expression is itself the aes- thetic object in such cases. It is an object that is a unification of feeling and image where the expressive thing undergoes an “…aesthetic modifi- cation which that expressiveness may cause in it.” (SB 197) That is, while the beauty of the materials of sensuous presentation are “…direct trans- mutations of pleasures and pains…” in which nothing is expressed extrin- sically (SB 84), and while forms of organization (e.g., like geometrical arrangements) have an original aesthetic tinge (SB 85)75, the beauty of expression is a function of acquired perception and the extrinsic represen- tational capacity of a sign.76 Given the reconstructed account of beauty presented in the preceding sections, we must amend Santayana’s early doctrine of expression, which suffers from the same general defect of considering aesthetic objects as beings of aggregation, i.e., as composites consisting of metaphysically dis- crete parts of qualities of pleasure and imagistic data.77 According to the revised account, all aesthetic objects are indissoluble, atomic, yet complex wholes consisting (minimally) of elements of qualities of feeling and imagistic data. None are beings of aggregation. The coherent account of expression, I propose, given my overall read- ing of the texts, is (roughly) the following: Expression involves the cogni- tive movement from a sign (expressive image) to its significate (the aesthetically loaded thought, image, or emotion expressed). Once the significate has been introduced, an exchange of essences occurs, and a separate, totalizing complex essence (expression) is presented, one that contains elements virtually identical to the sign and significate previously intuited (i.e., the expressive image and the quality of feeling proper to the thing expressed).78 In the beauty of form or material, on the other hand, 75 See SB (163–164): “We have accordingly in works of art two independent sources of effect. The first is the useful form, which generates the type, and ultimately the beauty of form, when the type has been idealized by emphasizing its intrinsically pleasing traits. The second is the beauty of orna- ment, which comes from the excitement of the senses, or of the imagination, by colour, or by profusion or delicacy of detail.” 76 Cf. Inquiry (6. XXI., p. 177) on “artificial signs”. 77 See SB (197–198)—discussed in Sect. 4.2. 78 In the process of expression, the initial or pre-synthetic association that is postulated to exist between essences virtually identical to the elements of the resultant aesthetic whole is one of sign 2 Aesthetic Optimism 47 the initial image triggers the aesthetic object in virtue of innate sugges- tion or original (instinctual) association, and the aesthetic object consists of an image virtually identical to this initial triggering image, but now intrinsically saturated with aesthetic pleasure. To borrow Santayana’s phrasing, “…this value [is]…inherent in the process by which the object itself is perceived…” (SB 235) In the case of expression, on the other hand, the initial image triggers the aesthetic feeling through acquired suggestion or convention-based association, and the aesthetic object is not introduced or triggered directly from the initializing image, but rather proceeds through a more circuitous route. I will return to the doc- trine of expression (in connection with Judeo-Christian art but also in connection with the sport model of horror) in Chap. 4. References Altman, Matthew C. 1998. Santayana’s Troubled Distinction: Aesthetics and Ethics in The Sense of Beauty. Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society 16: 25–34. Armstrong, D.M. 1978. A Theory of Universals: Volume 2: Universals and Scientific Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1997. A World of States of Affairs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Augustine, 1892. The Enchiridion. In The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. A New Translation. Vol. IX: On Christian Doctrine; The Enchiridion; On Catechising; and On Faith and the Creed. ed. Marcus Dods, 173–260. Translated by J.F. Shaw and S.D. Salmond. Edinburgh: T. & T.Clark, George Street. ———.1953. The Fathers of the Church: A new Translation, Volume 21: Saint Augustine: Confessions. Translated by Vernon J. Bourke. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. and thing signified, and as such, one of external relation. This distinguishes the nature of synthesis in expression from that of the synthesis of form. The pre-synthetic association of separate essences that is postulated within the discovery of form is one of internal relation. That is to say, the process of synthesis that introduces the complex aesthetic object in the case of form is one that, in the first instance, already anticipates the internal relation of elements virtually identical to the separate essences intuited at the beginning of the process (on formal synthesis, see SB 97). 48 F. A. Sopuck Bigelow, John, and Robert Pargetter. 1989. A Theory of Structural Universals. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 67 (1): 1–11. Billson, Anne. 2018. Chicken Decapitation and Battered Cats: Hollywood’s History of Animal Cruelty. The Guardian (London). Accessed May 25, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/may/24/chicken-decapitation- battered-cats-hollywood-animal-cruelty. Boghossian, Paul A., and J. David Velleman. 1991. Physicalist Theories of Color. Philosophical Review 100: 67–106. Bramble, Ben. 2013. The Distinctive Feeling Theory of Pleasure. Philosophical Studies 162: 201–217. Carroll, Noël. 1995. Why Horror? In Arguing about Art: Contemporary Philosophical Debates, ed. Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley, 275–294. London: Routledge. Cherry, Christopher. 1988. When is Fantasising Morally Bad? Philosophical Investigations 11 (2): 112–132. Crowther, T.M. 2006. Two Conceptions of Conceptualism and Nonconceptualism. Erkenntnis 65 (2): 245–276. Dretske, Fred. 1969. Seeing and Knowing. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Forrest, Peter. 1986. Ways Worlds Could Be. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 64 (1): 15–24. Hills, Matt. 2005. The Pleasures of Horror. London: Continuum. Hume, David. 1751/1777. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. In Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, 168–323. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hyde, Dominic, Filippo Casati, and Zach Weber. 2019. Richard Sylvan [Routley]. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Winter 2019, edited by Edward N. Zalta. Accessed May 19, 2021. https://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/win2019/entries/sylvan-routley/. Immordino-Yang, Mary Helen, and Antonio Damasio. 2007. We Feel, Therefore We Learn: The Relevance of Affective and Social Neuroscience to Education. Mind, Brain, and Education 1 (1): 3–10. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 1685/2001. On Part, Whole, Transformation, and Change [Selections]. In The Labyrinth of the Continuum: Writings on the Continuum Problem, 1672–1686, Translated by Richard T.W. Arthur. 271–274. London: Yale University Press. ———. After 1714/1989. The Metaphysical Foundations of Mathematics. In Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Philosophical Papers and Letters [Selections], 2nd 2 Aesthetic Optimism 49 Edn. Synthese Historical Library, vol. 2. Translated and edited by Leroy E. Loemker, 666–674. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 1765/1996. New Essays on the Human Understanding. Translated and edited by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lovejoy, Arthur O. 1930. The Revolt Against Dualism: An Inquiry Concerning the Existence of Ideas. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Company. ———. 1936. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. London: Harvard University Press. Neill, Alex. 1992. On a Paradox of the Heart. Philosophical Studies: An interna- tional Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 65 (1/2): 53–65. Price, H.H. 1932/1972. Perception. London: Methuen & Co. Reid, Thomas. 1764/1997. An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. Edited by Derek R. Brookes. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. Santayana, George. 1896/1905. The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Æsthetic Theory. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. ———. 1915. Some Meanings of the Word Is. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods 12 (3): 66–68. ———. 1918. Literal and Symbolic Knowledge. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods 15 (16): 421–444. ———. 1920. Three Proofs of Realism. In Essays in Critical Realism: A Co-Operative Study of the Problem of Knowledge, 163–186. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited. ———. 1925. The Mutability of Aesthetic Categories. The Philosophical Review 34 (3): 281–291. ———. 1927/1936. An Æsthetic Soviet. In Obiter Scripta: Lectures, Essays and Reviews. eds. Justus Buchler and Benjamin Schwartz, 187–198. London: Constable and Company, LTD. ———. 1923/1955. Scepticism and Animal Faith: Introduction to a System of Philosophy. New York: Dover Publications Inc. ———. [1937]1972. Realms of Being. One-volume edition, with a new intro- duction by the author. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, Inc. Shaw, Daniel. 2001. Power, Horror and Ambivalence. Film and Philosophy Special Edition on Horror: 1–12. 50 F. A. Sopuck Smuts, Aaron. 2016. The Ethics of Imagination and Fantasy. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, ed. Amy Kind, 380–391. London: Routledge. Sprigge, Timothy. 1974/1995. Santayana: An Examination of His Philosophy. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Sullivan, Celestine, Jr. 1952. Essence and Existence in George Santayana. The Journal of Philosophy 49 (7): 220–226. Sylvan, Richard. 1995. Item Theory Made Easy. Unpublished typescript, Sylvan Papers, folder #1234, Fryer Library, University of Queensland. Whitney, Barry L. 1994. An Aesthetic Solution to the Problem of Evil. Philosophy of Religion 35: 21–37.
US