Paradox of ugliness
The term ugliness paradox goes back to the philosopher Nelson Goodman .
It is about the phenomenon that objects and works of art which should be perceived as " ugly " or " ugly " according to the usual aesthetic standards can certainly exert an aesthetic appeal. This paradox can be seen in expressions such as “eerily beautiful” as well as in aesthetic judgments such as: “I like the weirdness in this music” or “I especially like the breaks and asymmetries in the design”. The ugliness paradox also describes the opposite case in which certain things that are characterized by certain “ beautiful ” features are perceived as “ kitschy ”, “smooth” or “aesthetically obtrusive”: “They are too beautiful to be (really) to be beautiful ”.
Other perspectives relate to photographs of the severely handicapped or mutilated, music devoid of rhythm and many different books and films that are supposed to disturb with the description of terrifying scenarios. First of all, the ugly is to be seen as the opposite of the beautiful; it is unsettling, unsettling, disturbing, repulsive and chaotic. Such associations are inherited, and sometimes they are also acquired. As a prime example of operant conditioning, war veterans may be mentioned here, the fireworks, which are beautiful, nevertheless frighten and startle, because they combine the shots from their war time with the bang.
The Freud phenomenon
The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud justifies the fascination of the ugly with the fact that the ugly, the uncanny tears people out of the familiar, desired world and brings them into a world that is opposite to the beautiful. Freud refers to the etymology of the word “unheimlich”, according to which this word is the opposite of the Germanic word “heim”, ie the house and home. Everything that is hidden, that which has withdrawn into its home, is "secret". In the alienated form of the ugly, everything that was repressed in childhood returns.
According to this understanding, the ugly is never beautiful itself, at most fascinating or interesting. In addition, the ugly has a cathartic effect in the sense of Aristotle . He explains this using the tragedy in which the viewer is confronted with grief, fear and pity, but is thereby purified and the liberation from these feelings is finally welcomed and the feelings of pleasure associated with it. This is based on a psychological phenomenon, according to which feelings increase in contrast or in alienation. In the music, dissonances are deliberately used, so that the harmony that finally emerges has an all the more relieving effect through an arc of tension. Ultimately, in crime novels, after the brutal, "ugly" murder, the murderer is finally caught and given his just punishment. The ugly frog ultimately becomes a prince and even the ugly duckling becomes a beautiful swan.
Ways to resolve the paradox
One possibility to resolve this paradox or to remove the inner contradiction is to narrow down the term “beauty”. Nelson Goodman said: “If the beautiful excludes the ugly, then beauty is not a measure of aesthetic value; but if the beautiful can be ugly, then beauty becomes just another and misleading word for aesthetic value. ”This would amount to saying that such things may be“ interesting ”or“ attractive ”but not“ really ”beautiful . However, this “solution” seems unsatisfactory to many, not least Goodman himself. Franz Koppe writes in his textbook Basic Concepts of Aesthetics : “The aesthetic [is] beautiful in so far as it visualizes the fulfillment of needs. That is why the "totality" of the aesthetic form is ... beautiful ... even where it successfully depicts the most frustrating need. That is the reason why provocatively ugly art still retains a remnant, a hint of brittle beauty in its form. "
Another suggestion to resolve the paradox of ugliness comes from Gábor Paál . As a result, different levels of aesthetic values can be distinguished that are interrelated. It can happen that objects are judged as beautiful from the perspective of one of these levels, but not from the perspective of another level.
swell
- ^ Nelson Goodman: Languages of Art. Frankfurt 1995, p. 235.
- ↑ Gábor Paál: What is beautiful? Aesthetics and Knowledge , Würzburg 2003, p. 102
- ↑ after Markus Tuchen, "Is beauty really subjective?", Paderborn, essay of August 26, 2006, p. 10f.
- ↑ Goodman, ibid., P. 235.
- ↑ Franz Koppe: Basic Concepts of Aesthetics. Frankfurt 1993, p. 159.
- ↑ Paál, ibid., Pp. 100-104.