Aesthetic Trinity Theory and the Sublime

The recently developed Aesthetic Trinity Theory (ATT) is concerned with the categorization, description, and empirical analysis of aesthetic experiences of different quality and intensity — especially peak experiences. Its approach is derived from psychological aesthetics and the emerging field of experimental philosophy. A tripartite hierarchy is proposed: Aesthetic awe, as the peak experience; the state of being-moved, as a less pronounced one; and physiological thrills (or chills), the most common. Aesthetic awe is posited as the prototypical reaction to the sublime, with attributes of the latter independently specified. An effort is made to resolve the subjectobject problem of long standing by the sublime stimuli being treated as amenable to operationalization for empirical purposes, while recognizing that observers’ engagement with the sublime is a constructive process of perception and interpretation. ATT deals with the grandeur, controllable dangerousness, rarity and beauty of the sublime stimuli-in-context in terms of objectively specifiable psychophysical, ecological, and statistical stimulus properties; the resulting data are often difficult to predict by thought experiments. In addition, ATT is concerned with motivational factors in the age-long search for the sublime in nature and architecture: the drive to experience it, sometimes against high odds. Peak aesthetic experiences, which have a prominent emotional substrate, are a product of the brain-mind apparatus that has been shaped by the same evolutionary pressures in all humans; this explains the common elements across time and cultures in the intuitive grasp of the sublime and the expression of aesthetic awe — a universality of human aesthetic wisdom. ∗Email: [email protected]