ABSTRACT
In the larger scheme of modern affairs, the eighteenth-century Scots honored the strength of sentiment: moral ideas were intricately bound to feelings that precipitated impressions and ideas and thereby directed one’s conduct. Though theorists may have disagreed on the relative roles of the sensible and the intellectual, they generally concurred that feelings provided either satisfaction or dissatisfaction when contemplating artful beauty or human behavior. In terms of aesthetics, we experience something beautiful or sublime and therefore feel approval. We feel first, just prior to forming judgments. In ethics, moral judgment may generate the sentiments, that is, the heart comes after the head. Evaluating and appreciating the fine arts, therefore, may begin with the moral effects that they produce. The Scots investigated the vast topic of sentiment, according to function. In this case, there are three functions: the arousal of the passions, representing beauty by imitation, and expression as the presentation of feeling.
