Descartes on the Perception of Aesthetic Properties

One topic in Descartes’ work that has remained relatively underexplored is his views on aesthetics. This is unsurprising, given that he seemingly dedicates little sustained discussion to what we would consider ‘aesthetics’ today, aside from his early Compendium Musicae. However, as I hope to show, Descartes dedicates a considerable amount of discussion of ‘aesthetic’ topics across his career. Consideration of his remarks in this capacity not only brings out an underappreciated aspect of Descartes’ work, but also helps to shed light on broader questions in Cartesian scholarship, and in early modern scholarship more generally.

In the paper, I discuss how Descartes addresses aesthetic pleasure in his writings on sensory perception and the passions. In considering his views on sensory perception, I focus on auditory perception of musical properties and highlight how Descartes recognizes a hierarchy of levels of aesthetic perception in this domain. It is in this context that Descartes delivers his basic aesthetic principle according to which humans prefer sensory experiences that challenge the perceiver but do not excessively tax their capacities. Following this, I turn to the way these sensory levels interact with the passions and show how sensory aesthetic agreeability or consonance sparks joy in the subject (and how its contrary, dissonance, sparks sadness). Finally, I address how these passionate responses to sensory aesthetic experiences relate to what Descartes calls ‘intellectual emotions.’ It at this level that Descartes discusses our most fully fleshed aesthetic experiences with art objects and offers a solution to the paradox of negatively moving art.

Dr. Domenica Romagni is an Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at Colorado State University. She specializes in Early Modern philosophy, philosophy of music and aesthetics, and history and philosophy of science, with additional interests in philosophy of mind. Her research focuses on aesthetic perception in the 17th century philosophy, explanatory virtues and scientific theory-building in the Early Modern period, and musical perception. Before joining the philosophy department at Colorado State University, she earned her PhD at Princeton University under the supervision of Daniel Garber, her BA with a concentration in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University, and her BM in cello performance from the Peabody Conservatory.