Page 38 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

Aesthetics 21

popular circles, i.e., as referring to the “disinterested beauty” of a work of
art. However, before it received this specific (Kantian) meaning, aesthetics
encompassed much more, as will be shown here. At present, there is a
tendency among scholars with different disciplinary backgrounds (cultural
and visual studies, anthropology, cultural criminology, media studies, art
history, and comparative religion), who share an interest in the nexus of
religion and media, to revisit this broader conception of aesthetics. After
a succinct presentation of the ancient genealogy of the term and the shifts
in meaning it has undergone over time, we consider the question of how
aesthetics is conceived and used in a sensitizing manner to develop deeper
insights into the ways in which religious media—understood in a broad
sense, encompassing icons, images, texts, films, radio, cassettes, and the
like—affect religious practitioners and convey a sense of divine presence.

From aisthesis to aesthetica

In De Anima, Aristotle deals with the question of how the “psyche,”
conceptualized by him as a nonmaterial entity with specific powers or a kind
of life energy with certain potentialities, uses the material body of human
beings and other animals to realize these potentialities or powers through
and in their bodies. The psyche is the source of (1) our potentiality to feed
ourselves, (2) our potentiality to perceive the world through our (five) senses
(aisthetikon), (3) the powers to make representations of (phantastikon), (4)
the power to think over (nous), and (5) the power to develop desires in
(orektikon) this world—all on the basis of our sensations. Of all the senses,
Aristotle considers touch to be the most fundamental because it forms the
condition of our survival through reproduction (sex) and defense (violence).
Though he did not see the other senses as variations of touch, as do some
scholars today (see Chidester 2005; Verrips 2006), he understood our
perception of the world through our five senses as an undivided whole. This
is what he meant by aisthesis (directly related to aisthetikon): our corporeal
capability on the basis of a power given in our psyche to perceive objects in
the world via our five different sensorial modes, thus in a kind of analytical
way, and at the same time as a specific constellation of sensations as a whole
(e.g., an apple with a texture, a taste, a smell, a sound, and a visible shape
and color). An apple makes an im-pression or has an im-pact (on us) as a
whole and in different sensorial ways at exactly the same time.
Aisthesis then refers to our total sensorial experience of the world and to
our sensuous knowledge of it. 2
In the course of history, this type of knowledge has gradually been pushed
to the background in the Western world. Emphasis has come to rest more
and more on sensations received by the eye, representations based on the