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Updated: June 29, 2025
Ruskin's whole writings form a body of literature unique of its kind, pervaded with great charm of literary style, and inspired by a high moral purpose. Ruskin's excursions into non-aesthetic fields, and the strange jumble of Christian communism to which, late in life, he gave vehement expression, it must be honestly admitted, have detracted much from his early fame.
Are we to go further, and assume that these two lines of division intersect, so that a work may be akin to great art though it be not good art, while, however perfect a work of art may be, it may remain little art for some wholly non-aesthetic reason? But we digress.
Cooking is there done with a precision, economy and tastefulness in sharp contrast to the non-aesthetic manner in which the Quakers conduct most occupations. It is, moreover, a kind of cooking after the Quaker manner, at once frugal and abundant. For of all people, the Quakers have learned to manage generously and economically.
A people with genuine aesthetic perceptions creates traditional forms and expresses the simple pathos of its life, in unchanging but significant themes, repeated by generation after generation. When sincerity is lost, and a snobbish ambition is substituted bad taste comes in. The essence of it is a substitution of non-aesthetic for aesthetic values.
There was, in the first place, a philosophical and moral intention, which, however veiled in fanciful imagery and clothed in limpid verse, is yet not content to be an inspiring principle and artistic occasion of the poem, but obtrudes itself directly in the length of some of the speeches; refuses, that is, to subserve the aesthetic purpose, and endeavours to divert the poetic beauty to its own non-aesthetic ends.
The person or the combination of events expressing this idea we do not seek in our personal experience, but we do demand for our own a world in which this idea rules. Thus it must be admitted that there is, strictly speaking, at the core of every aesthetic response to a work of art containing an idea, a non-aesthetic element, an element of personal and interested judgment.
Nevertheless, although it is impossible to reach a pure aesthetic judgment, we ought to strive to approach it, and, by dint of training and clear thinking about art, we can approach it. We ought to do this, not because of any formalism or purism, but for the sake of preserving the unique value of art, which is covered up or destroyed by the intrusion of non-aesthetic standards of judgment.
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