I particularly liked this compilation of lectures. Eco is great if you're interested in "postmodernism" without the (sometimes deserved) reputation for gleefully desecrating the classics. Different historical perspectives are examined and synthesized into arguments that are consistently interesting and thought-provoking.
For example, in the context of the sublimity of nature, Eco tries to define beauty as:
> when we are in the presence of something we are not a part of and do not wish to become a part of at any cost. In that distance lies the slender thread that separates the experience of beauty from other forms of passion.
Tbh I didn’t much get that quote, so here it is in context[1], which felt helpful at first, but – while I didn’t read the entire Lecture – it still feels somewhat bullshitty to me. Now of to read TFA.
>[…] a distinction has been made between what is beautiful and what is good. If what is considered to be good (a food, a fine house, the recognition and admiration of my fellows) is not mine, I feel as though impoverished. Instead, with regard to beauty, it seems that joy in beautiful things is definitely separate from possession of them. I find the Sistine Chapel beautiful even though I am not its owner, and in the window of a patisserie I find beauty in a cream-filled wedding cake even though my dietician forbids me to eat it.
>Experience of beauty always has an element of disinterest. I can consider a human being to be beautiful, even though I know I can never have a relationship with him or her. But if I desire a human being (who might be ugly) and I cannot have a relationship with them, I feel bad. […]
>Perhaps the greatest statement of aesthetic disinterest was made precisely in the period during which the experience of the sublime seemed like a celebration of our involvement in the unleashing of horror or the majesty of great natural events. Even terror can be enjoyable, but only when it does not get too close to us. For the sublime, too, beauty is reserved for those things that [are pleasing, but only seen and not suffered]. The painter who was certainly the greatest exponent of the experience of the sublime was Caspar David Friedrich, and when representing it, he almost always put human beings in the picture, confronting them with the natural spectacle as they enjoyed the experience.
>The human figure is seen from the back and, by a sort of theatrical mise en scène, if the sublime is the stage, then the man is on the proscenium, inside the show – to us in the audience – but representing someone who is outside the show, so that we are obliged to detach ourselves from the spectacle by looking at it through him, putting ourselves in his place, seeing what he sees, and – as he does – feeling like a negligible element in the great spectacle of nature, but one able to flee in the natural power that could loom large over and destroy us.
>I believe that over the centuries the experience of beauty has always been similar to the way we feel – as if seen from the back – when we are in the presence of something we are not a part of and do not wish to become a part of at any cost. In that distance lies the slender thread that separates the experience of beauty from other forms of passion.
For example, in the context of the sublimity of nature, Eco tries to define beauty as:
> when we are in the presence of something we are not a part of and do not wish to become a part of at any cost. In that distance lies the slender thread that separates the experience of beauty from other forms of passion.