"Iris Murdoch thinks there is significant overlap in how we admire artworks and those we love. In fact, Murdoch suggests that that the kind of attention we give to artworks models the attention required for our loving relationships. Murdoch famously couches love as a kind of vision: "the patient eye of love." To love someone well requires seeing them clearly: stripping away the fantasies, projections, and self-serving narratives we habitually project onto others."
"Aesthetic appreciation, for Murdoch, exemplifies this unselfing. When we look at a painting, like Cézanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire, with real focus, our desires and practical interests fall away. Murdoch thinks details of artworks, like a patch of color or a small house at the foot of the hill, draw us in and hold our attention. We experience a quieting of our usual internal chatter and feel ourselves drawn outward toward something independent of us."
Philosophers of art often doubt that engaging with artworks improves moral character, since many avid art-lovers are no kinder or fairer than others. Significant overlap exists between how people admire artworks and how they love others: love functions as a kind of vision that requires seeing another clearly and stripping away fantasies, projections, and self-serving narratives. Unselfing—silencing the ego's noisy demands—allows reality outside the self to come into view. Aesthetic appreciation exemplifies unselfing because focused attention on artworks quiets desires and practical concerns, draws attention outward, and recognizes the object as independent and not merely instrumental.
Read at Apaonline
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