Aesthetic preferences and practices vary widely between individuals and between cultures. How should aesthetics proceed if we take this fact of aesthetic diversity, rather than the presumption of aesthetic universality, as our starting point? How should we theorize the cultural origins and cultural basis of aesthetic diversity? How should we think about the value and normativity of aesthetic diversity? In an effort to model what the turn toward diversity might look like in aesthetic inquiry, each author defends a different account (...) of aesthetic diversity, and they engage in a collective dialogue about these issues. (shrink)

There is no denying the difficulty of expressing in words the meanings behind complex emotions. If they cannot be conveyed because they are personal and private, then how are they conveyed when they are neither entirely private nor personal, as in the case of generalized emotions, or the rasa experience? In Ānandavardhana’s Dhvanyāloka, we find a theory of suggestion (dhvani) which can be expanded beyond poetics to account for the evocative nature of emotion outside of all other modes of expression. (...) The result of dhvani in art experiences is the manifestation of aestheticized emotions (rasadhvani). When language serves art, it neither negates nor dispenses with linguistic apprehension. Rather, it delivers more than language can: the ineffable essence of the subject who experiences love, compassion, grief, the comic, and more, including quietude. I argue the question of the sentient subject is conveyed all the better in aesthetic suggestion, precisely because whether or not an artistic construction makes use of linguistic devices, the arts, whether they be theater, dance, or poetry, defies the confines of language. The ineffable subject is made tangible, in ordinary as well as extraordinary ways. (shrink)

This analysis holds that just as wisdom is good for its own sake, the effervescent perfuming of aesthetic pleasure in rasa, camatkāra, need not be useful for a goal or purpose. However, there is an intellectual virtue in the act of aestheticizing the affective response of wonder. The “here and now” of the aestheticized emotion of wonder, adbhutarasa, is a moment of focus and attention regained as a logically atemporal, even timeless moment. As the carvaṇā process unfolds, adbhutarasa invites an (...) epistemic agent to give time through focused attention, a contemplative tarrying, or an unhurried attentional prolongation. Looking across Platonic, Cartesian, and Kantian traditions to answer the question of epistemic value in rasa experiences, I argue that an agent is moved, and moves into an evaluative mode through the lenses of the sublime and taste. Renewed vigor to see, feel, and contemplate how things are, thickens epistemic emotions. The agentive freedom of the rasika to affectively resonate with ideas re-cognitively makes adbhuta a vehicle of inquiry like none other. (shrink)

This paper presents a study of Rāmacandra–Guṇacandra’s theory of aesthetics in light of the Kashmiri rasa ideology and demonstrates that the Jain authors offer a new and original conceptualization of aesthetic experience, in which the spectator remains cognitively active in the course of watching the drama. In their model, the relationship between rasa and pleasure is mediated by a cognitive error, and the feeling of pleasure does not coincide with the savoring of rasa but emerges after the savoring of rasa (...) ceases. This paper argues that Rāmacandra and Guṇacandra demystify the Kashmiri theory of aesthetics by identifying affinities between the lived world and the fictive world of drama and by rendering the regular means of knowledge, such as inference and memory, as instrumental for the experience of rasa. It further suggests that this new conceptualization, in which pleasure is contingent upon the dissolution of illusion, may have facilitated the development of playwrighting among Jain monks from the twelfth century on. (shrink)

An artwork in one culture and form, say European classical music, cannot be evaluated in the context of another, say Hindustani music. While a person educated in the traditions of European music can rationally evaluate and discuss her response to a string quartet by Beethoven, her response to music in a foreign culture is merely subjective. She might "like" the latter, but her response is merely subjective. In this paper, I discuss the role of artforms: why response can be "objectively" (...) discussed within artforms, but is nonetheless subjective across them. My discussion falls into two parts. First, I offer a psychological account of aesthetic response to art: cultural learning stabilizes this response across individuals who are educated in an artform. Second, I offer a cultural-evolutionary account of the diversity of artforms, adapting Darwin's Principle of the Divergence of Character to explain the multiplicity of art forms. (shrink)

In the 1930s, the Bengali philosopher K. C. Bhattacharyya proposed a new theory of rasa, or aesthetic emotion, according to which aesthetic emotions are feelings that have other feelings as their intentional objects. This paper articulates how Bhattacharyya’s theory offers a novel solution to the puzzle of how it is both possible and rational to enjoy the kind of negative emotions that are inspired by tragic and sorrowful tales. The new solution is distinct from the conversion and compensation views that (...) dominate the existing literature, and it derives its significance from how it ties aesthetic experience to self-awareness. (shrink)

Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas frequently assimilate and recast ancient and established ideas and practices to suit and justify their own theology and goals. The final aim of this strategy is to promote their version of mature emotional bhakti, as devotional participation. Their depictions of mature divine interactions are often mapped by way of rasa theory, originating as ancient poetic and dramatic aesthetic theory. Although only explicitly used to map aspects of mature religious experience, this paper explores an often-neglected side of the tradition’s (...) pedagogy, namely its tacit appeal to rasa theory to explain practices meant primarily for ordinary practitioners. An example of this strategy appears in the sixteenth century Gauḍīya treatise, Ṣaṭ-sandarbha. The author, Jīva Gosvāmī, offers a reformulated account of a typical set of Pāñcarātra meditation rituals. However, although the rituals are necessarily performed in the imagination, he paradoxically warns that the generated mental images should not be considered imaginative. By correlating his explanations of these ritual visualisations with elements of his yet to be depicted rasa theory, a consistent and non-problematic role of ritual imagination can be revealed. Since Jīva offers nothing explicit to arrive at this conclusion, this paper infers how a prominent Gauḍīya seems to be reformulating even ordinary ritual by way of rasa theory. This analysis acts as an individual example of a broader strategy in Gauḍīya texts. (shrink)

This article examines Sanskrit and Pali conceptions of contempt, and explores how they work in a number of ancient Indian genres, with a sustained focus on the Rāmāyaṇa. The article argues that while Indian texts often analyze emotion words and concepts systematically and with intricate granularity, contempt was not seen as an interior state to be theorized or managed therapeutically or morally. Rather, words for contempt are used to describe behaviors, etiquette, and social relationships, and are principally concerned with stipulating (...) social status. (shrink)

Through an examination of Bhāgavata Purāṇa X.43.17 and its interpretation by early commentators like Vopadeva, Hemādri, Śrīdhara, Sanātana, Rūpa, and Jīva, I argue that they created forms of hierarchical inclusivism by the application of rasa in the interpretation of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. In doing so, I examine bhakti as a rasa, showing how rasa theory provided a vocabulary to include the characters of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and their diverse experiences of the God Kṛṣṇa within hierarchical systems of bhakti. By hierarchical (...) inclusivism, I mean a theory, e.g., in the case of rasa, “the superiority of passionate love over fear,” and that this theory provided criteria to order items, e.g., in the case of rasa again, “the character of the cowherd women is superior to the character of the king.” In this case, hierarchical inclusivism is a theory for organizing and evaluating the mystical and aesthetic experiences of the ten characters mentioned in Bhāgavata Purāṇa X.43.17. I look at how commentators also used rasa for the basis for doctrines about God’s being and nature. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article aims to bring some understanding to the phenomenon called compassion. The use of particular linguistic expressions to denote the phenomenon of compassion in the East and West can confuse us, as those terms are embedded in unique cultural settings. This article undertakes a historical, etymological, and philosophical exploration of the terms, compassion and karuna. The article will include a short literature review of these concepts and an investigation of the differences and similarities between them. The concluding speculation is (...) that the Western perspective on compassion is founded on an individualistic, self-centred vision, and the karuna of the East is founded on a communitarian, non-self based vision. (shrink)