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Before the Aesthetic Turn: The Common Sense Union of Ethics and Aesthetics in Shaftesbury and Pope
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Christoph Henke
Published/Copyright:
August 10, 2011
Abstract
In recent literary studies, the ethical dimension of literature seems to have gained ground over predominantly formalist or aesthetic(ist) conceptualizations of the literary text. The argument of the present essay is that the so-called ethical turn is in fact, historically speaking, an ‘ethical re-turn’ in that it questions ideas of aesthetic autonomy that were only made possible by the ‘aesthetic turn’ in Western literature brought about by Romanticism. This aesthetic turn was chiefly responsible for the bifurcation of ethics and aesthetics which constitutes all modern pretensions to the autonomy of art. In order to put the current debate into perspective, the present essay revisits the undisputed common-sense union of ethics and aesthetics in the early eighteenth century, as conceptualised in the writings of the third earl of Shaftesbury and Alexander Pope. Under the pressure of Enlightenment innovations of thought, Shaftesbury and Pope felt the need to proclaim what was still obvious to them: the inseparable identity of a common sense for morals and taste in human perception (Shaftesbury) as well as in the judgment of “good” literature (Pope). Even though the belief in such a uniform aesthetic-cum-moral ‘common sense’ might seem dated and alien to the critical debate of our own time, aesthetic judgment in the act of reading can never completely divorce itself from ethical concerns.
Published Online: 2011-08-10
Published in Print: 2011-August
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