SAVORING DISGUST: The Foul and the Fair in Aesthetics

by Carolyn Korsmeyer

Disgust is among the strongest of aversions, characterized by involuntary physical recoil and even nausea. Yet paradoxically, disgusting objects can sometimes exert a grisly allure, and this emotion can constitute a positive, appreciative aesthetic response when exploited by works of art -- a phenomenon labelled here "aesthetic disgust." While the reactive, visceral quality of disgust contributes to its misleading reputation as a relatively "primitive" response mechanism, it is this feature that also gives it a particular aesthetic power when manifest in art.
Most treatments of disgust mistakenly interpret it as only an extreme response, thereby neglecting the many subtle ways that it operates aesthetically. This study calls attention to the diversity and depth of its uses, analyzing the emotion in detail and considering the enormous variety of aesthetic forms it can assume in works of art and --unexpectedly-- even in foods.

In the process of articulating a positive role for disgust, this book examines the nature of aesthetic apprehension and argues for the distinctive mode of cognition that disgust affords -- an intimate apprehension of physical mortality. Despite some commonalities attached to the meaning of disgust, this emotion assumes many aesthetic it can be funny, profound, witty, ironic, unsettling, sorrowful, or gross. To demonstrate this diversity, several chapters review examples of disgust as it is aroused by art. The book ends by investigating to what extent disgust can be discovered in art that is also considered beautiful.

Genres: Philosophy, Art, Nonfiction

207 pages, Paperback

First published February 9, 2011

About the author

Carolyn Korsmeyer is the author of five books of philosophy and three novels, Charlotte's Story (TouchPoint 2021) and Little Follies: A Mystery at the Millennium (Black Rose Writing, 2023)and Riddle of Spirit and Bone (Regal House, 2025).

Reviews

[Ryan Soucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disgust is a fascinating emotion. It is visceral and immediate. One cannot reason one's way out of feeling it and its sudden emergence is automatic. It is in disgusts very nature to repel, to draw one away from its object; much like fear. However, Fear, unlike disgust, is repelling but it is not necessarily repulsive. We can fear and not be moved to look away, we can often cognitively bypass fear and even enjoy fear in cheap thrills or the experience of the sublime. Fear can be incorporated in aesthetic enjoyment. But for centuries, disgust has been regarded as incapable of being an aspect of aesthetic appreciation. Savoring Disgust: The Foul and the Fair in Aesthetics by Carolyn Korsmeyer challenges this, and to great effect. I began this book skeptical of the project, but I have emerged convinced. Not only do I now believe that disgust can be an aspect (or even the object of) a positive aesthetic apprehension, but the ideas contained within this deceptively simple little book have far reaching consequences for aesthetics in general.

In dealing with the aesthetics of disgust, Korsmeyer wants to focus not on aesthetic appretiation or plausure as often is central to the topic, but rather on aesthetic apprehension or aesthetic encounter. The role of aesthetic here is not constrained to the role of satisfying a pleasant response in the affected, but rather an immediacy of understanding of the object perceived in its meaning and significance.

Korsmeyer begins with an elucidation of intentionality, emotion, mood, and affective states in general. In short, intentionality is the object towards which we have some affective state. Emotion is individuated with reference to the characteristic properties of the exemplary intentional object. So typically one fears something in virtue of the properties of dangerousness of the object the fear is directed towards. And when there is an affective state with no (or when there is a vague, widely dispersed) intentional object, those states are generally categorized as moods. Depression is a typical example, but I think there are many corollary moods to emotions. For example, fear is an emotion, but dread, foreboding, and doom are moods since they do not have a specific intentional object. Affective states are feelings and though they are subjective in their feeling, there still are physical and social correlates to most of them. They also have a seemingly positive-negative valence of their elements. Emotions typically are either positive (attractive, pleasurable, joyful, etc.) or negative (unattractive, painful, upsetting, etc.). The paradoxical aspect of disgust, however, is its overwhelmingly negative aspects and its simultaneous ability to attract interest, or even be pleasurable.

An ongoing debate surrounding affective states is whether they are primarily cognitive, or primarily affective. The argument about this has taken two forms summarized simply as: "...whether the propositional attitude is a prerequisite for the emotion to come into being, or whether the emotion occurs first, and the belief is formulated later if at all." (23) When examining the character of disgust, Korsmeyer (in my opinion, correctly) chooses the middle ground between cognitivist approaches and the affect program.

I am convinced that some entanglement and co-opt explanation of disgust is correct, and if this is the case, disgust must fall between these two extreme approaches. For and excellent exposition of this characterization of disgust check out Yuck The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust by Daniel Kelly, my review of which can be found here.

Though disgust is an aversive emotion, it clearly has an attractive quality. However, there are three main charges against supposing that disgust can have any role in a positive aesthetic experience.

1. The objects of disgust are generally foul, polluting, lowly, and base and as such do not warrant extended aesthetic attention in themselves.
2. Disgust prompts an automatic modular reaction which is difficult for an artist to manipulate in a way that would warrant anything but such a reaction. In reality as in the imagination, disgust remains the same.
3. Even if an artist successfully renders a realistic disgusting object in an aesthetically pleasant way, it ceases to disgust and becomes some other quality, e.g. tragic, grotesque, or comic.

The second point is difficult to refute, and in fact may be entirely accurate. The first depends on the third. If it can be shown that disgust can in fact be successfully artistically rendered so as to retain its affective properties while occasioning a positive aesthetic experience, the charge that disgust is too lowly, foul, or base to warrant a positive reaction may also be refuted.

Korsmeyer then goes into a fascinating examination of disgusts role in 18th Century aesthetics. Though it is often suggested that 18th century aestheticians dismissed disgust altogether, this is not totally true. Disgust plays a hidden role. It is not merely the opposite of beauty, but beauties antithesis. It is the limit to which beauty can reach before becoming unbearable just as consumption of too much sweets is nauseating.

When dealing with the paradox of fiction, disgusts transparency makes it an exception to the puzzle. Though there is a problem, say, for fear: how does one feel fear at something they know to not exist? how can genuine emotion not require the belief in the existence of its intentional object? Typically three solutions are proposed: (i) emotions do not need existing intentional objects, (ii) nonexistent objects in fact exist, or (iii) one does not experience a genuine emotion when its intentional object is fictitious.

With disgust, there is no need to take a position. For the emotion is aroused just as easily in reality as it is in the imagination. "So dependent is disgust on its sensory elicitors that it is easily triggered, bypassing the paradox of fiction and confounding no contrary beliefs. This fact, [Korsmeyer] believe[s], gives its palpable qualia a special aesthetic force." (56) Yet, since disgust is so transparent, this makes the aversion paradox even more pressing. How can an emotion which prompts genuine aversion also prompt pleasant aesthetic experience?

To illustrate how common it is for a disgusting object to also be pleasurable, Korsmeyer discusses disgusting objects which are also considered delicious. An easy example of sensory paradigms of disgust being transformed into something delicious and savorable is cheese. Many of the finest cheeses smell similar to vomit, urine, and bile. Others too have visible mold, which would typically prompt disgust if present on other food. Yet many not only enjoy, but also highly value and revel in the flavors and smells of these cheese. Alongside cheese there are common practices of eating and preparing meat at the moment of decay.

One example not mentioned in the book is the "dancing squid" dish prepared in some restaurants in Japan. A squid is prepared atop a plate of calamari with a side of soy sauce. When one pours the soy sauce over the squid, it prompts an electrical response in the nervous system of the dead squid causing it to move its tentacles as if it were still alive ( Click here for a video reference.) Clearly to us westerners, this seems barbaric and disgusting. It is difficult imagining how anyone could consume the food prepared on such a dish after witnessing the squid "dance".

However, it seems in just about every culture, there is a practice like this (even in North America, we prepare turkey for thanksgiving with the bird retaining most of its original form). Cultures have some difficulty recognizing them within their own since they are acculturated to those practices. Another notable example is the traditional pig roast, where the pig is prepared and roasted without deforming the pigs original form. Each of these practices, it seems, take some level of acculturation to overcome the initial disgust reaction. Yet it is still done, and not out of necessity. So why do such dishes exist?

With eating something disgusting, the disgust may inform the meaning of the dish. This meaning may be the appeal to such cultural practices. Nevertheless, the affective state is altogether transformed. The object of disgust, then, ceases to be disgusting. If this were all there was to apprehending disgust aesthetically, the enlightenment view of the emotion would be vindicated. Korsmeyer argues that this isn't the case.

In providing a list of examples within various mediums of disgusting artistic representations, Korsmeyer points to the fact that each disgust reaction differs from the others. Some may be coupled with sympathy, others horror. Some may come in varying degrees of intensity and each comes with its own tenor. This is a good indication that the emotion, and perhaps all emotions, are not so easily abstracted or divorced from their intentional objects and contexts. To understand the aesthetic pleasure which disgust can elicit, we need an account of enjoyment which is as particularist (tied to the intentional object) as the affect of disgust.

Gilbert Ryle argues effectively that pleasure and pain are actually not contraries at all. For first, the difficulties which arise when contemplating pleasures only arise in so far as one is generalizing pleasure (that is, divorcing it from its intentional object) or comparing generalizations of pleasure made by different categories (such as aesthetic versus intellectual pleasure. Second, pain, unlike pleasure, is a sensation with a specific location. To be contraries, pleasure should have the same form.

Korsmeyer follows Anthony Kenney in calling pleasure an absorption in an activity. I don't agree that pleasure and enjoyment are synonymous with absorption. For pleasure can still be sensuous, it may even be something we would, at times, prefer to not have (e.g. cases where pleasures are a source of pain, such as a pedophile who would prefer not to derive pleasure in such perverse sexual fantasies). But when it comes to aesthetics, absorption does do a better job making sense of our affective states.

When I look at a painting which is masterfully done in a museum, I walk, look, am captured by the image and the way it manipulates my perception. My eyes move across the image in accordance to its design, often directing me around in various patterns which enable me to become immersed in its form. During this process, I wound not say I am 'pleased". The work itself is working my eyes to drown me in its image. This engagement is a consequence of aesthetic absorption, and the absorption is an aspect of my understanding, evaluating, perhaps even liking the work. But without the absorption, I cannot apprehend it properly.

This definitely does avoid the paradox in question. For if during my perceptual movement I encounter a disgusting sight, it may surprise, it may shock or cause me to physically recoil, but even if I genuinely feel disgust, by being immersed in the form of the work, I cannot simply break my concentration. It is a further element which causes me to continue to move along the picture. When I experience the affective recoil without averting, or violating the trajectory of my perception, I am experiencing what Korsmeyer calls the 'sublate'.

Just as the sublime is grounded on fear, so is the sublate grounded on disgust. Both of these aesthetic apprehensions reveal to the mind at a distance as a particular meaning which falls flt when formulated linguistically. The sublate reveals truisms about mortality by bringing one to encounter, through a physical or cognitive distance, the physical embodiment of that meaning.

"Unlike the sublime, the sublate can come in small and subtle doses--little indignities, wry insifhts, furtive curiosities, comic interruptions. WE need not always yank at the veil of Isis, descend int joissance, or contemplate nonmeaning as such in order to register the somatic spasm of aesthetic disgust. The worm in the rose can appear in modest guise, prompting only a slight intake of breath, a squirm, a hesitation, a queasy little--oh." (135)

After a chapter exploring the various instances of aesthetic disgust surrounding the human heart, Korsmeyer hopes to once and for all annihilate the perceived incompatibility of disgust and beauty by showing that some artworks are capable of eliciting disgust without losing its visceral character while remaining beautiful.

Beauty is a notoriously difficult concepts with a complicated history. Often it is bound up with pleasure, and to an extent, I must agree. When something is beautiful, it brings a certain pleasure to the affected. However, there are many examples of what Korsmeyer calls 'terrible beauty' where beauty is bound up with painful qualities such as grief or death. How are these to be reconciled? I think there is a class of beauty which is beautiful in its very painfulness. This is distinct from the sublime since it is not a matter of danger and awe of power and reverence at a distance. It is a more delicate and fragile pain.

There is also a distinction between easy and difficult beauty. Easy beauty is simple to appreciate and understand. The affect is aroused without much effort on the part of the affected. Difficult beauty, in contrast, requires more imagination and engagement. It requires that one use their own faculties to remain engaged with a work and to appreciate the beauty therein, whether subtle so that one needs to pierce the work deeply to see it, or melancholy so that one needs to bear the unpleasant emotions to appreciate it. Korsmeyer thinks that the disgusting or the sublate is one feature which difficult beauty may utilize.

Though it has been shown that disgust can be an aspect of a positive aesthetic encounter, this does not mean that disgust can also be a feature of beauty. Korsmeyer wishes to show that it can by offering examples of works which cause the 'somatic spasm' of disgust while still being beautiful. She passes over, as I think she should, certain obvious artworks which provoke disgust such as the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch or Francis Bacon. She does not wish to argue that these artworks qualify as beautiful, instead she wishes to point to works which are beautiful and contain elements typically considered disgusting. Her examples from literature I do not find entirely convincing. Where those elements typically would evoke disgust, the emotion seems transformed or unprovoked. However, her example of Caravaggio's Doubting Thomas is convincing. In this, Thomas is literally sticking his finger into Jesus' wound, penetrating his flesh. The skill of the painting and its realism make it difficult not to feel the pang of disgust and recoil. But, nevertheless, the work is still beautiful.



I wonder whether this disgusting element becomes beautiful or if it is some pro tanto element which is overshadowed by the beauty of everything else in the work. Though this is not entirely significant to Korsmeyer's overall program, it is an interesting question in its own right.

It is surprising that for so long, disgust has been disregarded and not given a proper treatment in aesthetics. Fortunately, Korsmeyer's wonderful book rectifies this. Both concepts of aesthetic absorption and the sublate are useful not only in the aesthetics of disgust, but aesthetics in general. After reading this work, I found many of my old aesthetic ideas to be in need of serious reconstruction and improvement. It must also be noted that Korsmeyer's writing is exceptional for an academic study. This is definitely a highly recommended read.

[Madeline]

This book is so interesting. I really appreciate the way Korsmeyer shows how far back the evocation of disgust goes in Western art, because I think there's a tacit assumption that it "really" is a "new" thing. It would make interesting reading alongside Siebers' "Disability Aesthetics" article.