but that is not an aesthetic experience unless my feeling of pleasure is relevant, attached to the actual sound as I hear it. My feeling in its special quality is evoked by the special quality of the something of which it is the feeling, and in fact is one with it.[1]
iii. It is a common feeling. You can appeal to others to share it; and its value is not diminished by being shared. If it is ever true that “there is no use disputing about tastes,” this is certainly quite false of aesthetic pleasures. Nothing is more discussed; and nothing repays discussion better. There is nothing in which education is more necessary, or tells more. To like and dislike rightly is the goal of all culture worth the name.
Now it is implied in these three properties — Permanence, Relevance, Community — that the aesthetic attitude has an object. The feeling, we said, is a feeling of something. It is not, for instance, like
- ↑ There is a problem about this where meaning or representation come in. We shall return to it.
