I have spent my academic career arguing that the arts and aesthetic thinking signify an important way of understanding our lives and experiences. I maintain that together they are a method or “way of knowing” the world that must be engaged and appreciated on par with the positivism of our overwhelmingly techno-scientific society. I do not believe this is an unrealistic position to hold. As human beings we have an extraordinary ability to think scientifically, to disassemble the world mathematically, to come out of ourselves and solve problems objectively. But we also have the concomitant subjective faculties of contemplation, appreciation, and reflection. This is because not everything is a problem to be fixed or a question to be answered. As art and the aesthetic life affirm, sometimes it is enough to experience things and introspect; to feel the presence of ourselves in an environment; to delve inward with a tangible sense of graciousness or fear or exuberance or beatitude or whatever emotive nerve touches upon one’s inner life most meaningfully. Such a distinction hearkens back to Romanticism and its challenge to the Enlightenment’s overwhelming dedication to rational explanations of things. It pays homage to notions of sublimity that place the human mind and soul as subordinate to Nature as universe; the very Nature that Enlightenment figures thought could be exhaustively explained via the rules and models of Reason.

Aesthetic thinking is a way of knowing whereby one intentionally orients their psychic sensibilities toward seeking ideas and experiences that nourish and grow their inner emotional being. It is about embracing the purposeful and energetic desire to see, hear, and understand the world through our ability to recognize meaningful associations among things, people, and phenomena. In so doing, the aesthetically-oriented thinker takes seriously in their lives the subjective, visceral, intuitive, or reflective reactions they instantiate.

An aesthetic engagement of the world in this regard is not austerely rational, but instead metaphorical, symbolic, personal, poetic. It is concerned with sentiment and various levels of emotion. It is intensely intimate, while at the same time something that can be shared amongst many—a way of knowing ourselves in relation to the world and vice versa. Stated must succinctly, aesthetic thought is meaningful thought.

I characterize this process as “thinking,” rather than aesthetic “judgment,” because on my interpretation our aesthetic faculties provide us with an ongoing and active means of self knowledge. We come to know ourselves personally and poignantly in relation to an environment or object, like an artwork, through aesthetic experience. “Aesthetics” is the philosophical study of art, beauty, and taste. But the reason for bringing serious thought to these subjects is because artworks act like mirrors for a person’s soul. They are created so that as viewers their messages reflect back into our psyches to tell us something about ourselves: what we like or dislike, or even what we feel is good or not good morally.

I derived my method of aesthetic thinking from decades in both the commercial artworld and teaching the art history in academia. In business, I acquired a tangible sense of what people tend to find in visual art that compels them to actually spend money to obtain it. I learned that art’s intrinsic preciousness and sociological value—much like a piece of jewelry, high fashion, or a new car—can have an irresistible attraction. People want to be connected to high value and beautiful things. For in doing so, their specific personhood becomes meaningfully associated with society at large and the values it espouses.

In the classroom, I came to understand that images leave an indelible impression on a listener that helps connect a verbal lesson into one’s heart and mind. Humans are both visual and rational creatures, and images and sculptures can work in concert with spoken ideas to profound effect. Seeing is believing. It takes a lot for someone to disavow the apparent truth of something visually before them. An artwork provides both an image and a story, both a proposition and its visual evidence or justification. That is a powerful combination. I teach students to find the meaning in each artwork and experience I provide inside the lecture hall. More importantly, this trains them to find aesthetic meaning in the wider world in the same way.

However, such a lesson is not limited to students of art. We all need to incorporate an aesthetic worldview into our techno-scientific existence, which will make the earth a better place as it provides us with a fulfilling way to live.