Esthetic Immediacy

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Journal of Philosophy, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Philosophy. ESTHETIC IMMEDIACY ESTHETICS, as D. W. Prall defines it in his ?Dsthetic Analysis,is "the science of the immediate" (p. 12). The immediate is contrasted with process, with the physical and mental events in space or time, as the quality of process. Thus esthetics "is an account of the surface, and the surface structure, of our world, as felt in immediate content, instead of an account of processes conditioning that surface externally and internally, physically, that is, or organically or psychologically" (p. 173).While this view is a starting point for an original and persuasive treatment of special esthetic problems, as every one who has read Prall's book will surely agree, it is also a significant contribution to epistemology. For if esthetic cognition deals exclusively with quality as directly presented, it must be cognition by acquaintance and not, like science, knowledge mediated by concepts. "Once we go beyond into conceptual schemes, or into non-apparent physical constitution, we have penetrated the esthetic surface; our activity has become intellectual" (p. 6).An obvious and strong objection to Prall's theory is that conceptual knowledge is relational knowledge. If Prall were right, it will be said, acquaintance with esthetic quality would be exclusive of relational knowledge. But this is incompatible with the fact that all works of art exhibit form or relational structure.To answer this objection Prall insists that esthetic form is known by acquaintance as "sensuous structural determinateness" (p. 12). "The elements that we are to take as basic should be sensuous elements, and the relations, since they must connect such elements, will be the only sort of relations capable of connecting sensuous elements, namely sensuous relations" (p. 42). By sensuous relations Prall does not mean conceptual relations which happen to be exemplified by or illustrated in a sensory presentation like three dots in a row illustrating the concept of betweenness. To keep esthetic immediacy clear of concepts Prall must argue, and this is the striking part of his theory, that the sensuous structure of art can not have a conceptual correlate. Of course, the elements of a work of art appear in a temporal succession or spatial juxtaposition. But this matrix of space-time, which is common not only to works of art but to all existing objects, is conceptually describable and, therefore, does not give the purely qualitative esthetic structure. Let one element be next to another in space or time. In contributing to esthetic form these elements may have a wide qualitative separation...

The Oxazolidines.

“…The acetone derivative of 6-3ß, 17/3-dihydroxy-17a-aminomethylandrostene is hydrolyzed by cold dilute acetic acid into its components (62). In a number of cases stable picrates have been obtained; some, however, can be prepared only in ether, and even recrystallization from alcohol causes hydrolysis and formation of the picrate of the corresponding aminoalcohol (58,65,75,113). In several instances, on the other hand, stable hydrochlorides of the condensation products have been described; viz., the hydrochlorides of the condensation products of aminotrimethylolmethane with cyclohexanone and benzaldehyde (92), of 2-amino-lindanol and various aromatic aldehydes (61), and of the bicyclic compound (91):…”

“…The value of such observations is, however, limited, since these condensation products sometimes represent mixtures in spite of their sharp boiling points, so that other factors appear to play a part in determining the associative tendency of the condensation product. The products formed from aminoalcohols of the general formula (CHa^CHCHOHCH^NHR, and aldehydes have been described as glycerol-like fluids, while the corresponding ketone derivatives are more mobile liquids (113). (For a discussion of the pertinent observations of Paquin (89), see page 317.…”

“…thus, 2-(a-hydroxyethyl)piperidine has been condensed with benzaldehyde in the presence of aqueous hydrochloric acid (65), and Knorr's original method, employing potassium carbonate, has been applied by a number of more recent investigators (e.g., 113). Sometimes it has been found advisable to add a small quantity of acetic acid to the reaction mixture which was subjected to azeotropic distillation (57,58).…”

“…3-Methvl-l-methvlamino-2-butanol (113) TV-leobutvlethanolamine (75,106) 2-Amino-3-propyl-l, 3-propanediol (108) 2-Amino-3-isopropvl-l, 3-propanediol (106) 2-Aminocvclohexanol (cts and trans) (83) 2-Amino-3-methyl-3-pentanol (18) Ci..........…”