Comparing Yoruba and Western Aesthetics: A Philosophical View of African American Art, Culture and Aesthetics

Abstract

I have selected the above definition of aesthetics—with special attention to the fifth more narrow use of the noun, aesthetics—for the purposes of beginning this inquiry. I prefer the use of "aesthetics" as a noun because the word presumes a philosophical theory or idea of aesthetic validity at any given time or place. The noun, aesthetics, places the term in the context of cultural processes. Cultural influences shape the artist in the practice of his or her craft in Africa as well as in the West. "Culture" is the inescapable shaper that affects everything from the artists' sense of identity (national and artistic) to the political and spiritual postures from which that identity springs.