Two-hundred years ago, the subject of aesthetics was associated almost exclusively with beauty. In 1794, the German philosopher, Friedrich Schiller, put it perfectly: In the presence of beauty, reason and sense are in harmony, and it is only on account of this harmony that the beautiful has attraction for us. It was thought that the arts would teach us to notice this harmony, and to reveal it to others. As well, the arts could reveal where the harmony between reason and sense was lacking, which Schiller called the sublime. The beautiful and the sublime, revealed through art, provoke our sense of goodness. We can consciously ritual with works of art, and gain hints of deep moral truths. The aesthetic in art is not moral truth, Schiller noted, but it can help us get there.
What Schiller called sense and reason are none other than the landscapes of the senses and the landscapes of reason. The aesthetic consciousness is aware of the harmony (or the lack of it) between them. This balance is what we call “reality.” The reality of the past century, for instance, has not been beautiful, but sublime; reason has overwhelmed sense and the harmony has gone all out of tune. The art of the 20th century reflects this; it was sublime, not beautiful. It revealed the alienation, the angst, the anger, the depravity and the despair which followed directly from the material triumphs of reason.
Surely we all have an intuitive feeling that we must move toward the beautiful in order to offset the sublime tragedy of trauma addiction that rules the human economy.
Being dopamine addicted to the sublime, of course, amounts to a crisis. But in a crisis the successful creature looks for new qualia, notices new landmarks, and begins traveling down new pathways. That is how the landscape changes. That is how we develop new neuroscapes inside our brains, and it is how we transform the dissonance all around us into harmony. Conscious ritualing, with an aesthetic sense, can turn the sublime into the beautiful.