Glamour as an aesthetic property of persons

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Volumn 63, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 237-247

  Gould, Carol S ^a  

^a FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34249433339     PISSN: 00218529     EISSN: 15406245     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.0021-8529.2005.00204.x     Document Type: Review

References (46)

1. In a recent article, Mary Devereaux explores what it means to ascribe moral qualities to artworks, as persons and collections of them are clearly the bearers of moral properties. See "Moral Judgments and Works of Art: The Case of Narrative Literature," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (2004): 3-11. Conversely, I am focusing here on how we apply aesthetic properties to persons
2. George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, rev. ed., edited with an introduction by Terence Cave (London: Penguin Books, 1995), p. 7
3. Elaine Scarry, in her On Beauty and Being Just (Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 6, points out that beauty is something at which we want to look
4. The Oxford English Dictionary cites a use of 'grammar' that refers to "the grammar of the heavens" (presumably astronomy). Moreover, for the transition from 'grammar' and 'glamour,' see The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, s. v. 'grammar, n,' entry 3
5. For more detail see Word Histories and Mysteries: From Abracadabra to Zeus, from the editors of American Heritage Dictionaries (Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004), p. 110
6. See Oxford English Dictionary, s. v. 'charisma,' entry b
7. Similarly, for Curt Ducasse, "beauty, mystery, interest, grandeur, glamor [sic], or other qualities that fascinate can be borrowed by a person from things possessing them." Curt J. Ducasse, Art, the Critics, and You (New York: Oskar Piest, 1944), p. 166
8. John Lahr, "The Player Queen," New Yorker, January 21 2002
9. John Lahr, "The Player Queen," p. 66
10. Arthur Miller, "The Power and the Glamour," Allure April (2002) 120-124. Miller expresses some insights about glamour, but he conflates glamour with other notions such as sexual allure, political deftness, rhetorical power, and charisma. His concern is to show how incomprehensible it is that certain people ascend to political heights
11. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, ed. Ingram Bywater (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894)
12. and Nicomachean Ethics, rev. ed., trans. J. A. K. Thomson (London/New York: Penguin Books, 2004)
13. I am indebted to an anonymous interlocutor for helping me articulate this point
14. Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (Oxford University Press, 1973)
15. Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence, p. 6
16. A defense of supervenience goes beyond the bounds of this article. I am using the notion here for the purpose of clarifying glamour
17. Plato, in characterizing truth as beautiful, would accept this view. More recently, Eddy Zemach has defended this notion of aesthetic properties. See his "What is an Aesthetic Property?" in Aesthetic Concepts: Essays After Sibley, ed. Emily Brady and Jerrold Levinson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), pp. 47-60
18. Real Beauty (Penn State University Press, 1996)
19. and "Aesthetic Properties, Aesthetic Laws, and Aesthetic Principles," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46 (1987): 67-73
20. For responses to Zemach, see Nick Zangwill, The Metaphysics of Beauty (Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 203-204
21. and Alan Goldman, "Realism about Aesthetic Properties," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51 (1993): 31-37
22. Against Goldman, see Carol S. Gould, "The Reality of Aesthetic Properties," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52 (1994): 349-351
23. and Jerrold Levinson, "Being Realistic about Aesthetic Properties," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52 (1994): 351-354
24. Zemach seems to deny this in saying that "a psychological predicate is aesthetic... only in its metaphorical sense." See "What is an Aesthetic Property?" p. 56
25. Ted Cohen's initial response, "Aesthetic/Non-Aesthetic and the Concept of Taste: A Critique of Sibley's Position," Theoria 39 (1973): 113-152, is one of the now classic criticisms
26. For his revised, more sympathetic reaction, see his "Sibley and the Wonder of Aesthetic Language," in Aesthetic Concepts, pp. 23-34
27. Aestheticians disagree as to the nature of this relation
28. Prominent among these are the questions of whether these properties are mind dependent and, if so, in what sense, whether some special faculty of taste is required to discern them, what the relation is between aesthetic properties and the nonaesthetic properties on which they depend, and whether an aesthetic property can be aesthetically positive or negative independently of a universe of discourse. In regard to negative and positive aesthetic claims, philosophers disagree as to whether aesthetic terms are necessarily evaluative (as Alan Goldman argues in his Aesthetic Value [Boulder: Westview, 1995]) and, if so, whether it implies nonrealism about aesthetic properties
29. Jerrold Levinson, "Aesthetic Properties, Evaluative Force, and Differences of Sensibility," in Aesthetic Concepts, p. 68. Levinson argues, among other things, that most aesthetic impressions are "hedonically neutral," for the pleasure or offense they give depends on context. Whether one finds grace positive or negative in a musical work depends on our expectations and other beliefs about the work. A recent, rather famous example centers on Lucien Freud' s recent portrait of Queen Elizabeth. All agreed that it was intense and forceful, yet as many viewers found these qualities negative as found them positive. Moreover, even if this were not so, we can distinguish the hedonic constituent of the experience from the distinctive aesthetic one. For example, if I enjoy the edginess of a movement of a string quartet and the loveliness of timbre in the next movement, the pleasures of the experiences are phenomenologically distinct from the perception of edginess, on the one hand, and loveliness, on the other
30. Arguably, Plato agrees with this point as regards aesthetic attributions to sensible particulars. For Plato, the Beautiful is itself beautiful unequivocally and eternally, and to grasp the beauty of the Form of Beauty would be exquisitely pleasurable. But, Plato claims, some perceptions of beauty in the sensible realm might be distasteful or simply not pleasurable. For instance, a philosopher would take no pleasure in hearing lovely words of an immoral dramatic character
31. Kathleen Higgins, "Beauty and its Kitsch Competitors," in Beauty Matters, ed. Peg Brand (University of Indiana Press, 2000), p. 105
32. Kathleen Higgins, "Beauty and its Kitsch Competitors," pp. 87-111
33. Higgins, "Beauty and its Kitsch Competitors," p. 101
34. Higgins's discussion focuses on female desirability, but it applies to the male, as well
35. In general, as Etcoff emphasizes, beauty confers advantage on both men and women. This, however, has been reported to have had negative effects on women traditionally viewed as beautiful. Such women report not being taken seriously for their intellect and emotional depth. Their accomplishments may be dismissed as de trop. According to Etcoff, beautiful women and men face higher expectations from others and suffer worse punishments for misdeeds. Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest (New York: Random House, 2000), pp. 48-50
36. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, trans. Michael Henry Heim (New York: Harper Collins, 1987), pp. 248, 251
37. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book IV, 1123b10-1125a20
38. Wittgenstein's frustration with the elegance of Cantor's diagonal proof is well known among mathematicians. I am grateful to Harold Lehrer, MD, for discussing the mathematics and influence of Cantor's diagonal proof with me
39. See Cora Diamond, ed., Wittgenstein's Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics Cambridge, 1939 (University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 103
40. and Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, 2d ed., ed. G. H. von Wright, R. Rhees, G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basii Blackwell, 1967), pp. 56-58
41. For a helpful discussion of this point, see Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (New York: Macmillan, 1990) pp. 306-308, 328-331, 415-122
42. This arose from a question asked by an anonymous interlocutor when an earlier version of this paper was read
43. Higgins herself acknowledges this point in her discussion of beauty. She emphasizes the importance of "trying not to try" and the minimal role of "conscious effort." See "Beauty and its Kitsch Competitors," pp. 104-105
44. Arthur Danto, "Symbolic Expressions and the Self," in Self as Image in Asian Theory and Practice, ed. Roger T. Ames, Thomas P. Kasulis, and Wimal Dissanayake (SUNY Press, 1998), pp. 13-26
45. Danto, "Symbolic Expressions and the Self," p. 16
46. I am grateful to David Levine, Cesar Benarroche, Susan Feagin, Alan Soble, Richard T. Hull, Tobyn DeMarco, Mark Johnson, Gary Meltzer, Susan Mitchell, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Berel Lang, Robert Fudge, Josiah Gould, and Naomi Zack for helpful comments and questions on this essay and the larger project on which it is based. For other questions, I thank several people who were members of audiences at Eckerd College, the University of Oregon, and the 2003 meeting of the Rocky Mountain Division of the American Society of Aesthetics. Special thanks for invaluable suggestions go to an anonymous referee for The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism