tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1199946789857220942024-02-07T10:05:27.642-08:00Aesthetics TodayTom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.comBlogger416125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-86614626396007848072023-08-29T11:43:00.000-07:002023-08-29T11:43:05.018-07:00Truth<p><span style="font-size: large;"> I think that this comment about truth is also about aesthetics, but you can judge. I am currently teaching Plato's <i>Apology </i>and found myself thinking that Socrates really has a very different idea of truth, just as he has a very different idea of knowledge and wisdom. Let's say that his view of truth is not a correspondence, coherence or even pragmatist theory, although perhaps closest to pragmatist. I will call it an existentialist theory of truth. It is closely tied to his theories of knowledge and wisdom. There is an odd tie as well to the implicit theory of truth offered by Protagoras in the two sentences we have from him via Diogenes Laertius. I am thinking appeal to existential truth might be called aesthetic because existentialism focuses on the personal and the inner in the way that good art often, or maybe even always, does. Protagoras says that man is the measure of all things. Plato in the Theaetetus interprets this to mean that the individual is the measure of all things. (I know that the conventional view is that Plato and Socrates both saw Protagoras as wrong. I am questioning this.) This is taken the most to be an advocacy of relativism. Let's say that there is a sense in which the individual IS the measure, the sense in which the truth comes home to the individual and becomes meaningful to the individual as their own. Perhaps what is being said by Socrates is that yes the individual is the measure in the sense that existential truth (deep, meaningful truth, truth that is not just based on conventional definitions of terms) is a matter of a identification between self and other whereby whatever sentence is deemed to be true is not such simply because it corresponds to some fact but rather because it reveals a deep sympathy between self and sentence or self and concept, i.e. in a way that makes the sentence a living truth for the self. The constant return to "What is?" with regards to each concept of philosophical concern is the path to wisdom in this sense. (Knowledge based on scientific method is of course not of any less value. It is just not what we are getting at when we ask the "What is" question in a philosophical way.) Rather than rely on correspondence or coherence one is relying here on the Socratic daemon, i.e. the aspect of one's self which is able to intuit existential truth after long debate and dialogue, a truth, the having of which, is nothing other then the wisdom that Socrates deemed the only possible wisdom for humans. That wisdom is not simply knowing the extent one is ignorant but rather a wisdom that arises out of taking a questioning approach to conventional "wisdom" recognizing that a search for philosophical or existential truth will, through rigorous dialogue and debate, yield deeply personal results, actually yield virtue. </span></p>Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-11148720332620696172022-05-02T14:52:00.002-07:002022-05-02T14:52:23.161-07:00Is Metamodernism the answer?<p> <span style="font-size: large;">It seems that since the 1980s we have been looking for the answer to the question, what comes after postmodernism. The most recently published effort in this direction is an impressive book by Jason Ananda Josephson Storm, a religious studies professor, titled <i>Metamodernism: The Future of Theory.</i> The University of Chicago Press, 2021. I very much enjoyed reading this challenging book which I originally ordered because of my ongoing interest in Weitz's anti-essentialism. Storm shows a great deal of wisdom about ongoing debates both in philosophy and in the social sciences. However, as with all other writers on the topic, he missed Weitz's main point and principle discovery, namely that the history of defining art is a history of successes, not failures, as long as we take the proposed real definitions to actually be honorific re-definitions. Unlike Weitz I hold these honorific re-definitions to be descriptions/constitutions of the emerging and always changing essences they define. So my solution to this classical problem mediates between essentialism and anti-essentialism. Storm rightly sees that we cannot stick with traditional essentialism and hence cannot define such key terms as "religion" and "art" in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. He also raises excellent objections to the family-resemblance approach (which he wrongly, along with everyone else, attributes to Weitz). However he believes that the solution to the "legitimation crisis" of our time is a "process social ontology" which replaces the idea of "natural kinds" with that of "social kinds." He believes that this gets beyond anti-essentialism. He sees social kinds a "homeostatic property-cluster kinds" and a similar approach has been followed in aesthetics. However, this approach drains any discussion of essentially contested concepts of their dynamic energy. We just end of up with what was once called "descriptive metaphysics." Dialectic is lost.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Some of the things that he says about social kinds do capture what I mean by "essences." But they miss the Socratic question and the
Socratic quest which I take to be foundational of philosophy and the
paradigmatic philosophy language-game.
Such theories are merely descriptive and do not recognize the ideal
aspect of essences. As I have said (although mainly in unpublished writing), the
ideal aspect is empty in content but is eternal and unchanging. One might say that the "social kind approach" to essences fails to see and deal with the ladder of love in Diotima’s sense. In doing so, it fails to capture the best of idealism. On my view, the essences (of social kinds) are emergent from the dialectic
between the ideal aspect of essences and the processual social kind. Without this dynamic there is no possibility
of creativity in the analysis of, and constitution of essences. I worked out my views on this way back in the 90s in <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">-</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“The Socratic Quest in Art and Philosophy,” </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
51:3 (1993) 399-410. and </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">“Metaphor and Metaphysics,” <i>Metaphor and Symbolic Activity</i> (Special Issue on Metaphor and Philosophy) 10:3 (1995) 205-222. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I do like the term "metamodernism" and I would say that metamodernism is the answer, but not Storm's version. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p>Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-40119830588827773722022-04-27T16:23:00.002-07:002022-04-27T16:23:52.979-07:00Objections to Epicurus on Death<p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li> <span style="font-size: large;">It is argued by Epicureans that death is necessary and inevitable and once one sees this one will realize fear of death is irrational. (Jeffrie R. Murphy. "Rationality and the Fear of Death." The Monist 59 1976 187-203. I will refer to the version in Fischer. The Metaphysics of Death.) I think that fear of death is irrational. However this argument, by itself, is not sufficient. (See my other recent posts on death.)</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> I started thinking about death when I was eleven. I was horrified to realize that I would die. I came to philosophy by this path. What is death? Why do we die? Religion did not seem to offer a solution to the problem of death. I do not remember much about my thoughts then, just that I was obsessed with death. When my grandmother died, about that time, I did not feel grief. I am not sure why. But I did think that grief was irrational. Since then I have felt my fair share of grief. But the problem of death remains a living thing for me. Now, at 72, I am surely much closer to my own death than I was at 11. But, then, anything can happen, and surely I could not know when 11 that i would live to at least 72. I was was once walking across campus and a tree fell on me (probably when I was sixty). People usually die when that happens. I didn't. But the experience led me to think again about death.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">Fear of death is pointless because it cannot help us to avoid death. (Murphy 52) This seems true. It is part of the Epicurean argument.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">Mary Mothersill "Death is the deadline of all of my assignments." </span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> "a prudent fear of death is perfectly rational. By a prudent fear of death I mean simply (a) one that provokes people into maintaining a reasonable (though not neurotically compulsive) diligence with respect to living the kind of life they regard as proper or meaningful....and (b) one that is kept in its proper place (i.e., does not sour all the good things in one's life" Murphy 56. Murphy says this while affirming the truth of Spinoza's claim. Seems reasonable to me.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">"Fear of death is irrational and properly extinguished, then, when it can serve no legitimate purpose in our lives - when it cannot aid us in avoiding bad things....in a way that is consistent with the successful and satisfying integration and functioning of our person." Murphy 56. But we have those who oppose the Epicurean/Spinozistic approach to death.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">Nagel is one. "life is all we have and the loss of it is the greatest loss we sustain" Nagel 61. There is a lot of confusion here. Life is the condition of having things. It is not really something we "have." Or perhaps there is a different sense of "have" operative here. Is the loss of one's life the greatest loss? Does every life end in the greatest of all possible losses? The answer is not obviously yes. I am not sure you can even lose your life, although we say that. You just die. </span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> First you are not dead. Then you are dead. Is it the same "you" that is featured in each of these sentences?</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> "death is an evil because it brings to an end all the goods that life contains." Nagel 62. Really? Is there an "end" to these goods? Could we define that end? </span></li><li> <span style="font-size: large;"> "it is good simply to be alive." Nagel 62 That seems obviously true. Is it implied that it is therefore evil to simply be dead?</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> "life is worth living even when the bad elements of experience are plentiful..." 62 This might be a good argument against suicide.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> "If we are to make sense of the view that to die is bad, it must be on the grounds that life is good and death is the corresponding deprivation or loss, but not because of any positive features but because of the desirability of what it removes." 64</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> Most of Nagel's argument assumes that death is an unfortunate state or condition. But the Epicurean claim is that it is not a state at all. Nagel hypothesizes that, like an adult who has somehow become infant-like, a dead person "does not mind his condition." (66) But a dead person is not in the position to mind anything. A dead person is dead. </span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> Most important though is that although Nagel makes some true claims, they do not refute Epicurus. For example, he says, truly: "There are goods and evils that are irrevocably relational; they are features of the relations between a person, with spatial and temporal boundaries of the usual sort, and circumstances that may not coincide with him either in space or in time. A man's life includes much that does not take place within the boundaries of his life. These boundaries are commonly crossed by the misfortunes of being deceived, or despised, or betrayed." (66)</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> Nagel's argument comes down to, of the dead man, "if he had not died, he would have continued to live...and to possess whatever good there is in living" (67) and therefore death is a great harm to a person. Let's assume that it is possible to be harmed after you die. This does not mean that there is someone who is actually harmed and therefore is harmed by being in the condition of being dead which is the condition of having lost all of the goods of life. </span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;">Nagel writes: "Observed from without, human beings
obviously have a natural lifespan and cannot live much longer than a hundred
years. A man's sense of his own experience, on the other hand, does not
embody this idea of a natural limit. His existence defines for him an essentially
open-ended possible future, containing the usual mixture of goods and evils
that he has found so tolerable in the past. Having been gratuitously introduced
to the world by a collection of natural, historical, and social accidents, he finds
himself the subject of a life, with an indeterminate and not essentially limited
future. Viewed in this way, death, no matter how inevitable, is an abrupt
cancellation of indefinitely extensive possible goods." (69) Perhaps this shows the source of Nagel's mistake. A human's sense of their own life DOES include the fact that we are going to die. We all know this, or at least all after a certain age. This is not not just from the outside. We KNOW that our lives are not essentially open-ended. There is no "indeterminate and not essentially limited future." We KNOW that our future is essentially limited. So it is absurd to think of death as "an abrupt cancellation of indefinitely extensive possible goods." </span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> Williams notes that for Lucretius "for oneself at least, it is all the same whenever one dies, that a long life is no better than a short one. That is to say, death is never an evil in the sense not merely that there is no one for whom dying is an evil, but that there is no time at which dying is an evil - sooner or later, it is all the same." (75) Williams seems to think this implies "one might aw well die earlier as later." This is actually inconsistent with the first position. I also think this second issue is handled by Murphy. But is there something irrational about Lucretius' overall position. </span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> For Williams more life is, per se, better than less life. (81) Therefore death cannot be nothing to us since we always want more life. </span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> For Williams, it is "not necessarily the prospect of pleasant times that creates the motive against dying, but the existence of categorical desire" (92) of the sort that is described by Unamuno when he says "I do not want to die ...I want to live for ever and ever and ever. I want this 'I' to live - this poor 'I' that I am and that I feel myself to be here and now...." (91)</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> "we are naturally inclined to feel sorrow for the very person who has died, to continue to talk about him (or her), and to continue to adopt attitudes such as love and honor towards him." Yourgrau. 138 These things are true, although when I feel sorrow for the loss of a friend I do not feel sorrow for his loss since I do not really think he has lost anything (although conventionally we say he lost his life, he dis not lose his life...he <i>had</i> his life.) </span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> How can one say that Socrates is dead? (138)</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> How can one continue to love Socrates after he died" (138) I can continue to love Socrates since Socrates continues as an entity although not as an agent. Socrates still has being, but has no experiences and no ability to act. I love all the things Socrates was. I love Socrates. But he is dead. I would still love Socrates even if it turned out he was a fiction of Plato.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> "Death is an evil, a misfortune, and one that befalls the nonexistent themselves." Yourgrau 138. This I think is false.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> "death is not a misfortune because it gives rise to so many unhappy grievers" Yourgrau 140 That seems quite obviously false to me.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> Dead people simply do not exist. Yourgrau 141. Socrates does not exist. "Socrates" continues to exist. Socrates continues in avatar form. But he has no agency. He cannot change or become. But "Socrates" although he has no agency, can change or become. As can any concept. I can love "Socrates" as I can also love any fictional character. "Socrates" cannot love me back.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"> "We should distinguish ...between being something, being an object...and being an existing object. Existence is that property, delicate as an eyelid, which separates the living from the dead." (142) He agrees with Wittgenstein that Socrates death is not an event in his life. So do I. It is a genuine even but it does not befall Socrates. So we can discuss Socrates even though he is dead. "If the bad news is that you are going to die, the good news is that you will not 'disappear' -- i.e., become nothing." (143)</span></li><li><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></li></ol><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-86687292210623521612022-04-27T10:47:00.001-07:002022-04-27T10:47:31.077-07:00Death is Nothing to Us: Drawing on Epicurus and Parmenides<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Death is Nothing to Us:
Drawing on Epicurus and Parmenides<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Thomas Leddy</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">San Jose State University</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The Epicurean theory of death is that it is nothing to
us. In this paper I adapt and expand on
this view of death. Upon death, one
achieves nonexistence. And yet, one
could argue, paradoxically, that no one actually dies since just as you cannot
get something from nothing you cannot get nothing from something. "death is nothing to us" has a
double meaning: first that it involves
becoming nothing (or rather, ceasing to become), and second, it is of no concern
to us. Yet the death of a close friend
IS something to us, since we grieve his or her loss. But even here, we cannot get nothing from
something. The dead one does not become
nothing. The dead one is no more. And yet the dead one continues, and not just
in memory. The dead have being but no
longer a being that is a becoming. In
sum, the Epicurean approach to death combined with the insight of Parmenides
offers consolation within the context of atheism. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Death is nothing to us; for the body, when it has
been <a name="14"></a>resolved into its elements, has no feeling, and that
which has no feeling <a name="15"></a>is nothing to us.” Epicurus.
<i>Principle Doctrines</i>. <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/princdoc.html">http://classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/princdoc.html</a> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Death is nothing to us, for while we exist it is not our
concern, and when it comes, we are not.
We cannot experience death. Yet,
to say “I am dead” or “I will be dead” implies that there is an I that is or
will be dead. But when I am dead I no
longer exist. So, there is, then, no “I”
who is dead. It is not that when I die I
become nothing. It is that, after I die,
I am not. After death there is no being to have
feeling. If there is no feeling, no
experience, then there is nothing for me to feel. And so there is nothing for me to fear. Death
is nothing to me in that an Epicurean does not care about death. Death is not a big issue. There is nothing to worry about after
death. To be sure, projects I was
working on will never be finished by me, plans I had never actualized, after I
am dead. Yet since death is inevitable,
this too cannot be avoided, and what cannot be avoided is nothing to us.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">How can I care if I am dead if there is no “I” when I am
dead? There is no “I” to be dead. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Further, you cannot get nothing from something. As Parmenides argues, What is is, and cannot
not be. But Parmenides also argued that change is not possible, which goes too
far since obviously false. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The interesting thing about death is that it seems that it
violates fundamental principle. It seems
that in death a thing has become nothing.
We have to realize that this is an illusion. You cannot get nothing from something. Death is nothing to us does not mean that in
death one becomes nothing. In death, one
ceases to become. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">But how can you combine Parmenides and Epicurus? This would seem to combine idealism and
materialism. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Further, I fear death even though Parmenides and Epicurus
have shown this is irrational. Why is
this? Evolution has designed me do so. If you die you do not maximize your genetic
heritage either as a parent or as a nurturing elder. When you die you cease to contribute. And so nature makes us fear death. Yet reason
tells us there is no reason to fear death.
<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Epicurus writes, “The body receives as unlimited the limits
of pleasure; <a name="88"></a>and to provide it requires unlimited time. But
the mind, grasping in thought <a name="89"></a>what the end and limit of the
body is, and banishing the terrors of futurity, <a name="90"></a>procures a
complete and perfect life, and has no longer any need of unlimited <a name="91"></a>time. Nevertheless it does not shun pleasure, and even in the hour
of death, <a name="92"></a>when ushered out of existence by circumstances,
the mind does not lack <a name="93"></a>enjoyment of the best life.” Epicurus.
<i>Principle Doctrines</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The first sentence here is difficult to understand. How can anything received as unlimited have any
limits? What is the body providing? The point begins to make sense when we get to
idea that once we have accepted the Epicurean truth, one we accept that we do
not need unlimited time, then we can have a complete and perfect life. The idea of perfection is difficult
here. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">If death is nothing to us, we can banish the terrors of
beyond death. If death is nothing then
there is no afterlife, no heaven and no hell.
We no longer need unlimited time to live a good life. Heaven is not needed by an Epicurean. Even in the hour of death “the mind does not
lack enjoyment of the best life.” Death
is nothing to us since we can have pleasure in life, and pleasure is even
available in the last hour, although this is obviously the most difficult of
pleasures. We do say, however, It is not
over till it is over. Pleasure can come in the form of a sense of completion,
of fulfilment of promise. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The death of others, however, is not nothing. The death of my friend causes me great
suffering. So how can I say that death
is nothing to me? Here, Parmenides can
help. My friend cannot become
nothing. He did not become nothing. He simply ceased to exist. He ceased to be something that becomes. Moreover, he has completed something. His life has become an organic whole. It now has a beginning, middle and end. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">My suffering is that he is no longer here. But he is not elsewhere. He is not gone in the sense of being
elsewhere. He is still here in my mind
and my mind. I read his letters and I
cry. He is present to me in his letters.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Nature compels me to mourn.
So I must mourn. And yet you
cannot get nothing from something. My
friend did not cease to exist. I mourn him because he is still there. He froze
in time. He can no longer do
anything. It is as though he had left
the room. He just won’t come back. And yet if, per impossible, he did come back
we could resume our conversation. And I can imagine that conversation. When I read dead people it is as as if I were
in conversation with them. My friend does not simply exist in my memories. He exists in my entire world, except as dead. People believe in religious solutions to this
problem because it seems so hard to accept death. The alternative would be to accept that
nothing came from something: that my
friend became nothing. Yet there is no
other case where nothing comes from something.
<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Epicurus further writes “It would be impossible to banish
fear on matters of <a name="59"></a>the highest importance, if a person did
not know the nature of the whole <a name="60"></a>universe, but lived in
dread of what the legends tell us. Hence without <a name="61"></a>the study
of nature there was no enjoyment of unmixed <a name="62"></a>pleasures.<a name="63"></a>” “There would be no
advantage in providing security against <a name="64"></a>our fellow humans,
so long as we were alarmed by occurrences over our heads <a name="65"></a>or
beneath the earth or in general by whatever happens in the boundless <a name="66"></a>universe.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">And in a the <i>Letter to Menoeceus</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">“<i>Take the habit of thinking that death is nothing for us.
For all good and evil lie in sensation: but death is deprivation of any
sensitivity. Therefore, knowledge of the truth that death is nothing to us,
enables us to enjoy this mortal life, not by adding the prospect of infinite
duration, but by taking away the desire of the immortality. For there is
nothing left to fear in life, who really understood that out of life there is
nothing terrible. So pronounced empty words when it is argued that death is feared,
not because it is painful being made, but because of the wait is painful. It
would indeed be a futile and pointless fear than would be produced by the
expectation of something that does not cause any trouble with his presence.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>And that of all the evils that gives us more horror,
death is nothing to us, since we exist as ourselves, death is not, and when
death exists, we are not. So death is neither the living nor the dead, since it
has nothing to do with the former and the latter are not.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>But the multitude sometimes flees death as the worst of
evils, sometimes called as the term of the ills of life. The wise, however,
does not ignore life and did not afraid of no longer living, for life he is not
dependent, and it does not consider that there the lesser evil not to live</i> “<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Death is nothing to us because Epicurean truth “takes away
the desire of immortality.” We don’t
need immortality because of completeness.
This factor needs to be considered.
Taking away the desire of immortality allows us to enjoy this mortal
life. That death is nothing to us
intensifies our pleasure in life. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">So when we exist “as ourselves” death is not. Death has “nothing to do with” the
living. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">But what if there is a soul that exists after we die? On this view our body dies, but the soul
continues to live. I do not believe
this. There is no sound evidence that
there are souls that survive death.
There is no soul independent of the body. Death is nothing to us.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">There are some contemporary arguments against Epicurus, as
we can see in the SEP article on death. Here is one: “we are harmed by what
makes our lives as wholes worse than they otherwise would be, and benefitted by
what makes our lives as wholes better than they otherwise would be” and death
makes our lives worse, and therefore our own death is a harm to us…. According to comparativism, when a death is
bad for us despite not making us accrue intrinsic evils such as pain, it is bad
for us because it precludes our coming to have various intrinsic goods which we
would have had if we had not died. We might say that death is bad for us
because of the goods it deprives us of, and not, or at least not always,
because of any intrinsic evils for which it is responsible….” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The last point in the Principle Doctrines is “40. Those who were best able to provide
themselves with <a name="185"></a>the means of security against their
neighbors, being thus in possession <a name="186"></a>of the surest
guarantee, passed the most agreeable life in each other's <a name="187"></a>society;
and their enjoyment of the fullest intimacy was such that, if <a name="188"></a>one
of them died before his time, the survivors did not mourn his death <a name="189"></a>as if it called for sympathy.”
<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">“Accustom thyself to believe that death is nothing to us,
for good and evil imply sentience, and death is the privation of all sentience
; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the
mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an illimitable time, but by
taking away the yearning after immortality. [125] For life has no terrors for
him who has thoroughly apprehended that there are no terrors for him in ceasing
to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not
because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect.
Whatsoever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless
pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing
to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we
are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the
living it is not and the dead exist no longer.<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0258%3Abook%3D10%3Achapter%3D1#notea"><sup>133</sup></a> But
in the world, at one time men shun death as the greatest of all evils, and at
another time choose it as a respite from the evils in life. [126] The wise man
does not deprecate life nor does he fear the cessation of life. The thought of
life is no offence to him, nor is the cessation of life regarded as an evil.
And even as men choose of food not merely and simply the larger portion, but
the more pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the time which is most pleasant
and not merely that which is longest. And he who admonishes the young to live
well and the old to make a good end speaks foolishly, not merely because of the
desirableness of life, but because the same exercise at once teaches to live
well and to die well. Much worse is he who says that it were good not to be
born, but when once one is born to pass with all speed through the gates of
Hades.<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0258%3Abook%3D10%3Achapter%3D1#notea"><sup>134</sup></a> [127]
For if he truly believes this, why does he not depart from life ? It were easy
for him to do so, if once he were firmly convinced. If he speaks only in
mockery, his words are foolishness, for those who hear believe him not.” <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0258%3Abook%3D10%3Achapter%3D1">http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0258%3Abook%3D10%3Achapter%3D1</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Note “when we are, death has not come.” One reason why death is nothing to us is that
it is no concern to us now. We
exist. We are not dead. When death comes, we no longer are.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">But it is thought that “Death is a harm to the person who
dies because it deprives him of certain goods- the goods he would have enjoyed
if he had not died.” (Li 2002
44) Who is being deprived of
goods? When you are dead you are no
longer a person. You cannot be deprived
of goods if you are dead. There seems to
be a trick of language in here. What
sense can be made of “deprived of goods he would have enjoyed if he had not
died”? It is true that I have interest
in certain things happening and not happening after I die. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Bibliography<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Fischer, John Martin
ed. <i>The Metaphysics of Death</i>.
Stanford University Press, 1993.
<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Konstan, David, "Epicurus", <i>The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy </i>(Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N.
Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/epicurus/>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #3a3a3a; font-family: "Source Sans Pro", sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Li, Jack. <i>Can
Death Be a Harm to the Person Who Dies?</i> Dordrecht ;: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 2002.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #3a3a3a; font-family: "Source Sans Pro", sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Luper, Steven,
"Death", <i>The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy </i>(Fall
2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2021/entries/death/>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #3a3a3a; font-family: "Source Sans Pro", sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Rosenbaum, Stephen
E. “How to Be Dead and Not Care: A Defense of Epicurus.” <i>American
Philosophical Quarterly</i> 23, no. 2 (1986): 217–25.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20014142.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p>
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Tim, "Death is nothing to us – Epicurus,
February 1, 2022, " in <i>Philosophy & Philosophers</i>, February
1, 2022, </span><a href="https://www.the-philosophy.com/death-epicurus"><span style="font-size: large;">https://www.the-philosophy.com/death-epi</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">curus</span></a></span></p>Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-5778097277559731322022-04-27T10:41:00.000-07:002022-04-27T10:41:06.519-07:00Death and Aesthetics<p> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.69); font-family: -apple-system, system-ui, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 24px;">Spinoza writes, “A free man, that is to say, a man who lives according to the dictates of reason alone, is not led by fear of death, but directly desires the good, that is to say, desires to act, and to preserve his being in accordance with the principle of seeking his own profit. He thinks, therefore, of nothing less than death, and his wisdom is a meditation upon life.</span><span class="quote_sign" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.69); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6); font-family: -apple-system, system-ui, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 24px;">” Ethics 4 68.</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Death is nothing to us, says Epicurus. For Spinoza, a free man is someone who lives according to reason and does not therefore fear death. He follows the "principle of seeking his own profit" which seems like a kind of egoism, but really, in the end, is not. The free man has a wisdom that is "a meditation upon life." We meditate on the joys of life, on the pleasures of life, on the goods of life. Many, perhaps most, of those goods are aesthetic. The Epicurean sees this. Death is nothing to us means meditate on the goods of life, which is to say the goods of us as sensuous embodied beings. These goods are, mainly, aesthetic goods. Death is nothing to us and thus we should follow the philosophy of Pater. Maximize the moments of aesthetic perfection in life. </span></p>Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-89299886430728933282022-04-20T16:19:00.006-07:002022-04-25T12:15:48.595-07:00The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Everyday Aesthetics<p> <span style="font-size: large;">An important event in the life of Andy Warhol was when he was shot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Philosophy of Andy Warhol,</i> he imagines how a close friend (called “B”) might describe this event to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However we need to understand that whatever a B says (an B stands for any close friend) throughout this work it is just as likely an expression of Warhol’s own views (Warhol uses A for himself):<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>"The founder of the Society for Cutting Up Men [the shooter] wanted you to produce a script she'd written and you weren't interested and she just came up to your work studio one afternoon. There were a lot of people there and you were talking on the telephone. You didn't know her too well and she just walked in off the elevator and started shooting. Your mother was really upset. You thought she'd die of it. Your brother was really fabulous, the one who's a priest. He came up to your room and showed you how to do needlepoint. I'd taught him how in the lobby!"</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">As with many of his vignettes this one is quite funny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="color: red;"> </span>The first four sentences are straightforward.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, as with Nietzsche’s aphorisms, the twist comes at the end. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The next two sentences make sense since Warhol was close to his mother, although they are written in a deadpan way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The last two sentences are more philosophically interesting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His brother is typecast…he is a priest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he is not “fabulous” in the way priests are supposed to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, he shows Andy how to do needlepoint, an everyday life skill used as a hobby more often by women than men in our society. The priest does the opposite of what he is supposed to do qua priest, i.e. directing Andy to God, especially at this moment when, according to his mother, he might die.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> He</span> learns this skill from B just before coming up to Andy’s room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Divine salvation is rejected in favor of everyday life.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">In this paper I will interpret <i>The Philosophy of Andy Warhol </i>as an important contribution to the aesthetics of everyday life, and, more broadly, to "life aesthetics" in general. (I have been influenced by several contemporary Chinese aestheticians in stressing the latter.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> But first we must deal with a possible confusion. Wh</span>en most philosophers hear the name "Andy Warhol" in relation to aesthetics they immediately think of Arthur Danto.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Throughout his life, </span>Danto frequently referred to the moment he walked into the Stable Gallery in New York City and saw Warhol’s <i>Brillo Boxes </i>as the moment in which he discovered the essence of art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He first wrote about this in in his famous "The Artworld" in 1964.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in 1975 Warhol writes this book which, I shall argue, basically refutes Danto’s entire philosophy of art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Danto’s point was that Warhol provided him with an insight that gave him his definition of art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That definition changed over the years, but basically, as in 1964, it was that something is art if it can be seen as art by someone with appropriate art historical knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In being seen as art it has the “is” of artistic identification.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Danto had asked what makes the <i>Brillo Boxes</i> art and their indiscernible counterparts in a warehouse owned by the Brillo Corporation not art. The answer is that because Warhol’s boxes are in an art gallery at a particular time in art history they are appropriately seen as art, i.e. appropriately seen under the artist’s interpretation, i.e. under Warhol's interpretation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Brillo Boxes </i>had been “transfigured” into the world of art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Danto shows himself to be essentially a dualist in that he holds that there are two realms:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the realm of art and the realm of “mere things.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course this does not make him a dualist in the classical sense, for he does not hold that the realm of art is a realm of souls or a spiritual realm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> But his use of the term </span>“transfiguration” should be taken seriously. Just as Jesus is transfigured into the realm of heaven, so too the boxes are transfigured into the realm of art. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Danto says later, the Brillo Boxes in the gallery have “aboutness” whereas brillo boxes, as "mere things," do not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus even if we assumed that Danto did not literally believe in anything supernatural we can also assume that the structure of his theory is dualist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">As a result, it would make no sense to Danto for us to talk about the aesthetics of everyday life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Aesthetics has been reduced to the Philosophy of Art, and Philosophy of Art to Danto's own definition of art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, for Danto, aesthetics isn’t important anyway since Brillo Boxes and the brillo boxes on the factory floor have the same look and hence the same “aesthetics.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What distinguishes them is something the eye cannot descry!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> The art work is a physical object plus its interpretation. It is its interpretation that makes it art, just as, for a Christian, a person is a body plus a soul, and it is the soul that makes a person a person.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Warhol, writing nine years later, pretty much refutes Danto, and retroactively, since what Warhol really meant had nothing ever to do with the apotheosis of objects into the art world or the creation of art as a two-sided thing, mere material object as body, and meaning as soul.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This idea, which Danto, none-too-originally, shared with earlier writers such as R. G. Collingwood, is deconstructed by Warhol's book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The point of Warhol, even back in 1964, was deconstruction the world/artworld dichotomy, NOT setting up a wall between the two or a situation in which one is privileged and the other is only "mere."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">One cannot read TPAW as a normal book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> It</span> is more like an aphoristic work by Nietzsche.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What readers have not generally recognized however is that it has a complexity of structure, and considerable depth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> It</span> consists of fifteen chapters:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Love (Puberty), Love (Prime), Love (Senility), Beauty, Fame, Work, Time, Death, Economics, Atmosphere, Success, Art, Titles, The Tingle, Underwear Power. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The chapters most relevant to the concerns of aestheticians are Beauty, Atmosphere, and the last four.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Tingle is worth an article on everyday aesthetics of its own since it is an obsessive dialogue between B and A about cleaning one’s apartment where it can be seen that cleaning can transcend mere cleaning and can take on an aura of its own, perhaps even of the sublime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> U</span>nderwear Power does something similar in relation to the activity of shopping.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> However I will focus here on the early chapters and their relation to the</span> aesthetics of everyday life and more broadly the aesthetics of life.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I say “life aesthetics” or "aesthetics of life" since in part I want to forestall those who would say that the art and work of Andy Warhol is as far from “the everyday” as one can get.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> He seemed the apostle of fame and glamour. </span>Although he was fascinated by fame and glamour he was equally fascinated with the everyday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One could say that he devoted his life to making the extraordinary seem ordinary and the ordinary seem extraordinary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Bluejeans </span></b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">It is significant that Warhol said “I believed in bluejeans too” in the context of talking about the value of uniforms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jeans were treated as uniforms in the early 1970s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were essential to everyday life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everyone wore them as a symbol of solidarity with the cultural left (the hippie movement) and the political left.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Warhol treats them as objects of aesthetic delight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>"The ones made by Levi Strauss are the best-cut, best-looking pair of pants that have ever been designed by anybody. Nobody will ever top the original bluejeans. They can't be bought old, they have to be bought new and they have to be worn in by the person. To get that look. And they can't be phoney bleached or phoney anything. You know that little pocket? It's so crazy to have that little little pocket, like for a twenty-dollar gold piece."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Bluejeans are not aesthetically simple.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are levels of quality, for example Levi Strauss being at the top for a variety of reasons, including cut.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One aspect of their aesthetic excellence is that they are the originals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, there are those who intrude a phoney aesthetic onto jeans, where they think that the jeans have to look worn and that this is best effected inauthentically by various means that do not actually involve the owner wearing them for a long time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Authentic beauty in jeans requires that something about the history of the jeans must obtain. Another example of the phoneyness is the bleaching of the jeans. But an example of charming authenticity is the little pocket, which was more likely there for a small watch then for a gold piece. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanse"><span color="windowtext">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanse</span></a> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">We realize that Warhol must have done thorough research on them, say in an encyclopedia, since the information and the set of aesthetic issues are essentially the same as those found in the wikipedia article.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">he dialogue continues, when B says "French bluejeans?" and A replies "No, American are the best. Levi Strauss. With the little copper buttons. Studded for evening wear." "How do you keep them clean, B?" "You wash them." "Do you iron them?"</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">As observed in the anonymous Wikipedia article, the little copper buttons, which were put in for structural support, also had a secondary aesthetic function. Thus, having the buttons which look nonfunctional, yet are not, is enhancing. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The talk about American being the best again has to do with authenticity, in this case cultural authenticity, even though that authenticity has its own inauthenticity in that one might think that jeans arose in cultural consciousness because of construction workers or cowboys, but it was really movie stars, westerns, and youth rebellion, all distinctly American that gave jeans their meaning. Another sign of inauthenticity would be ironing: <o:p> </o:p>"No, I put fabric softener. The only person who irons them is Geraldo Rivera." Ironing them would be inauthentic in the very way that Geraldo Rivera, with his fake hair and manner, was notoriously inauthentic, possibly the paradigm of inauthenticity.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p>A says "</o:p>This talk of bluejeans was making me very jealous. Of Levi and Strauss. I wish I could invent something like bluejeans. Something to be remembered for. Something mass." It may strike one as odd that Andy Warhol envied anyone, and yet from his perspective, having this kind of impact on the aesthetics of everyday life would be massive, hence the reference to “mass.” Of course he is remembered by us for his art. It would be inventing jeans or something like that in the way Levi and Strauss did, something both tasteful and nearly universal, that he would consider truly memorable. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">On the Aesthetic Republic under a Warhol Presidency</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">"Oh, A," B said impulsively, "you should be President! If you were President, you would have somebody else be President for you, right?" This riff on being President is related to the idea of cultural importance. Warhol would make a good President because he would delegate responsibility in a radically democratic way.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">B says: "You'd be just right for the Presidency. You would videotape everything. You would have a nightly talk show—your own talk show as President. You'd have somebody else come on, the other President that's the President for you, and he would talk your diary out to the people, every night for half an hour. And that would come before the news, What the President Did Today. So there would be no flack about the President does nothing or the President just sits around. Every day he'd have to tell us what he did, if he had sex with his wife . . . You'd have to say you played with your dog Archie—it's the perfect name for the President's pet—and what bills you had to sign and why you didn't want to sign them, who was rotten to you in Congress . . . You'd have to say how many long-distance phone calls you made that day. You'd have to tell what you ate in the private dining room, and you'd show on the television screen the receipts you paid for private food for yourself. For your Cabinet you would have people who were not politicians. Robert Scull would be head of Economics because he would know how to buy early and sell big. You wouldn't have any politicians around at all. You'd take all the trips and tape them. You'd play back all the tapes with foreign people on TV. And when you wrote a letter to anyone in Congress you would have it Xeroxed and sent to every paper."</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">At this time in his life Warhol was obsessed with a tape recorder he had. He took it with him everywhere and taped every conversation he could. He referred to the tape recorder ironically as his wife. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Warhol realizes, as we found with Trump, that the Presidency is the ultimate platform for popularity and fame.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unlike Trump, who was, after all, not a talk show host but a Reality TV host (a very different, less intellectual thing) Warhol would make his Presidency a nightly talk show, thus raising the level of intellectual discourse on a daily basis for the entire country.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">My philosophy of everyday aesthetics has to do not just with description but also with serious thinking about the ideals of everyday life, as for example was engaged in by such thinkers as William Morris and Le Corbusier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Note that Warhol as President would not consume a great deal of time and space:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>his show would be half an hour every night, and it would involve talking out his diary, which would be the same sort of stuff we are getting in this book, that is, reflections on the aesthetics of everyday life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is why it would come before the News.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>News, in an important way, is NOT about everyday life, or ordinary things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is about murder and wars and other such things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If it were everyday stuff it would not be “news.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So although we may see the news every day, and although that is part, then, of our everyday experience, the news itself is precisely NOT a window onto anyone’s everyday world qua everyday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">What is everyday includes such mundane, but probably immensely important, stuff as having sex with your wife or playing with your dog, and the work of actually signing bill, and the worries over moments of disrespect from colleagues, and what and where you age, including how you financed that eating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So Warhol as President would be a hero of returning to the everyday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rest of the aphorism, if I may call it that, is influenced by Plato probably.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are talking here about an ideal aesthetic republic here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So instead of politicians Warhol would hire experts to, for example, buy and sell properly. And unlike Nixon or Trump or multiple other politicians, Warhol would tape but never hide his tapes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So too with letters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Total transparency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course he would not agree with Plato’s idea of the noble lie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So his politics would combine expertise and democratic openness in a way much more conducive to harmony, which was after all Plato’s own goal, then Plato’s own Republic.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">B says: "You'd be a nice President. You wouldn't take up too much space, you'd have a tiny office like you have now. You'd change the law so you could keep anything anybody gave you while you were in office, because you're a Collector. And you'd be the first nonmarried President. And in the end you'd be famous because you'd write a book: 'How I Ran the Country Without Even Trying.' Or if that sounded wrong, 'How I Ran the Country with Your Help.' That might sell better. Just think, if you were President right now, there'd be no more First Lady. Only a First Man."<span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p> </o:p>This relates not only to politics but also to ethics, one based on aesthetics. So niceness is more important than duty since niceness demands empathy and sympathy, which require imagination, which is the aesthetic faculty. This faculty would compel him to be an aesthetic minimalist President in his tiny office. He would not take up airs. He would not let ego take over. Also, along an aesthetic dimension, Warhol allows for primacy given to collecting of loveable objects. And of course he is a Taoist, trying to achieve goodness in the state through action through non-action, i.e. through aesthetic simplicity. The Taoist says you can run the country best when you follow the Way and do not even try. You do not make being the ruler a matter of power and glory but a matter of elegant action that achieves harmony as in the work of a master craftsman. And then it is no surprise that the alternative version of his book entails a great democratic modesty, more appropriate to the true spirit of America. So, the title of “First” is moved from the pathetic secondary position of the first lady to the primary position of a man of excellence who follows the Tao and actualizes will to power in an authentic way, to paraphrase Nietzsche. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p> </o:p>“You'd have no live-in maid at the White House. A B would come in a little early to clean up. And then the other Bs would file down to Washington to see you just like they file in to see you at the Factory. It would be just like the Factory, all bulletproof. Visitors would have to get past your hairdressers. And you'd take your extra-private hairdresser with you. Can't you see her in her inflatable jacket, ready for war at any moment? Do you realize there's no reason you couldn't be President of the United States? You know all the bigwigs who could get you in, all of society, all the rich people, and that's all anyone's ever needed to get to be President. I don't know why you don't declare yourself in the running right away. Then people would know you weren't just a big joke. I want you to say every time you look at yourself in the mirror, 'Politics: Washington, D.C.' I mean, quit fooling around with the Rothschilds. Forget about those long trips to Montauk in the Rollses. Think about a little helicopter to Camp David. What a camp it would be. You'd have such a camp. Do you realize the opportunity of the White House? A, you've been into Politics since the day I met you. You do everything in a political way. Politics can mean doing a poster that has Nixon's face on it, and says 'Vote Mc-Govern.'"</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Warhol recognizes the inevitable hypocrisy of everyday life when one hires maids.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In our household we learned this I think per necessity during the pandemic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Previously we had</span> cleaners who came in once every two weeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We prided ourselves in our democratic treatment of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that was false in a way. After he had to lay them off because we were in partial quarantine, we had to clean everything as the same level of perfection once per week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We achieved this, and by doing so we avoided the hypocrisy of false smug appeals to democratic sentiments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We also became much more mindful, along the lines of Thich Nhat Hanh of the minutiae of dirt and grime, and ofthe subtle joys of cleanliness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large; mso-spacerun: yes;"><b>His Factory and His Business</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">It is wonderful the way Warhol conceived his own studio workplace as something everyday by calling it a factory and treating it as such.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are just a business, he implied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We on the outside always saw the setup as one of glamour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it was quite the opposite, just as it was the opposite of Danto’s idea of an isolated Artworld.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To repeat my introduction, Warhol was the non-Danto.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, instead of the Presidential world being like Plato’s world of Forms or Kant’s transcendent or transcendental domain, Warhol’s Presidency would not involve a President-World (Danto being himself just another Platonist with dualist assumptions and thin surface of anti-dualism) or an Artworld, but just another factory making things for the people.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Beauty</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Warhol insists “I've never met a person I couldn't call a beauty.” (61)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He sees beauty everywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This makes him like one of my ideals in the aesthetics of everyday life:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Plato’s Diotima, who speaks of the ladder of love in which the rung next to the top is one in which we see a vast sea of beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Warhol puts it, “Every person has beauty at some point in their lifetime.” (61)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He does not share the common belief that personal beauty is stable and exclusive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As he says, “Sometimes they have the looks when they're a baby and they don't have it when they're grown up, but then they could get it back again when they're older. Or they might be fat but have a beautiful face. Or have bow-legs but a beautiful body.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(61)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Neither beauty nor ugliness is permanently attached to any person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know a woman who is obese, and yet she spends a couple hours day attending to her face. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She is perhaps beautiful in that one area. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Experience of personal beauty and evaluation of it is part of the aesthetics of everyday life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like an ordinary language philosopher, Warhol thinks about what we say when we use the word “beauty”:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">“I always hear myself saying, "She's a beauty!" or "He's a beauty!" or "What a beauty!" but I never know what I'm talking about. I honestly don't know what beauty is, not to speak of what "a" beauty is. So that leaves me in a strange position, because I'm noted for how much I talk about "this one's a beauty" and "that one's a beauty." For a year once it was in all the magazines that my next movie was going to be The Beauties. The publicity for it was great, but then I could never decide who should be in it. If everybody's not a beauty, then nobody is, so I didn't want to imply that the kids in The Beauties were beauties but the kids in my other movies weren't so I had to back out on the basis of the title. It was all wrong.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">In short, everybody is a beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Warhol is quite aware that he is doing philosophy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He even pins down the difference between beauty and “a beauty.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He can judge it, but cannot define it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He further says: “I really don't care that much about "Beauties." What I really like are Talkers. To me, good talkers are beautiful because good talk is what I love.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">This could be straight out of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Symposium.</i> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Diotima places love of the soul of the interlocutor at a higher stage of the ladder of love than mere physical beauty.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Unlike Plato, however, Warhol prioritizes fun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He just thinks it more fun to be with talkers, and generally, with people who are doing things, than with beauties, who are just being something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Fun,” we might also observe, is a primary category in the aesthetics of everyday life.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Warhol’s Platonism extends to his handling of portraiture. He observes that, “[w]hen I did my self-portrait, I left all the pimples out because you always should. Pimples are a temporary condition and they don't have anything to do with what you really look like. Always omit the blemishes—they're not part of the good picture you want.” This must have been how the idealistic Greek sculptors saw it too.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Returning to the question of relativism, Warhol says “When a person is the beauty of their day, and their looks are really in style, and then the times change and tastes change, and ten years go by, if they keep exactly their same look and don't change anything and if they take care of themselves, they'll still be a beauty.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This seems to imply there can be a kind of permanence even in a world dominated by fashion.<span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">For Warhol, there are certain looks and styles that are eternal in a way in that they are right as long as authentic: “Schrafft's restaurants were the beauties of their day, and then they tried to keep up with the times and they modified and modified until they lost all their charm and were bought by a big company. But if they could just have kept their same look and style, and held on through the lean years when they weren't in style, today they'd be the best thing around. You have to hang on in periods when your style isn't popular, because if it's good, it'll come back, and you'll be a recognized beauty once again.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Warhol spends considerable time thinking about what does and does not make one a beauty. It might be a matter of lighting, as good lighting can make all the difference. He makes a big difference between a temporary beauty problem and a permanent one. "Being clean is so important. Well-groomed people are the real beauties. It doesn't matter what they're wearing or who they're with or how much their jewelry costs or how much their clothes cost or how perfect their makeup is: if they're not clean, they're not beautiful. The most plain or unfashionable person in the world can still be beautiful if they're very well-groomed." Previously I had written about cleanliness, but in fact it is very important to beauty.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-11806388236814935772022-03-19T06:23:00.002-07:002022-03-19T06:27:35.821-07:00The first draft of my comments on Adajian was very different in style and content to my final draft: much more conventional. I still hold by it.<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Pacific Division comments
on Tom Adajian’s paper. This was the
first draft of my comments. But I decided
to do something different in the session.
I gave an extemporaneous talk critiquing Jerrold Levinson’s theory of
beauty. This talk was based on the paper
on Levinson’s theory which I just posted on this blog.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I entirely agree with Tom.
That makes for an unusual, although not unique, conference commentary. In these comments I will raise one or two
additional points against his opponents from my own, slightly different,
perspective. I will also show why and how we agree through a brief discussion
of our mutual Platonism. This will
require saying a couple words about my somewhat unorthodox interpretation of
Plato.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In a review of Lopes’s book,
Stephen Davies has argued, in relation to art pluralism, that he “sets out to
dismantle the currently orthodox approach to art's definition and to replace
this with his preferred alternative, which he calls the buck-passing theory.
The orthodox approach sets out to define art by asking why something is a work
of art.” Yet as far as I can see today it is the buck-passing theory that is
orthodox, although admittedly Tom and I are returning to an older theory widely
considered, not too long ago, to be orthodox. Our version of course is
different from that one. Well, one person’s orthodoxy is another’s radical
departure. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Lopes says “there is no
characteristically artistic value… artistic value is the aggregate of pictorial
value, musical value, and other such values; it need not be their common
denominator… [Further] [t]here is no ‘substantive unity’ to the values realized
by works in the different arts. Artistic value is a disjunction of the values
that works have as members of specific art kinds.” I will set my own contrary view here by
simply rewriting Lopes: “Artistic value is not a mere aggregate of pictorial,
musical, and other such values. It is
supervenient on those values under the concept of ‘art.’ This does not mean
that it is or has some sort of common denominator, but simply that there is a
substantive unity to the values realized by works in the different arts. There
is, as Tom and Plato would say, a real determinable here. Moreover, contra
Lopes and other pluralists, artistic value is hardly a mere disjunction of the
values that works have as members of specific art kinds.” [To be clear: this is my own view and is only quoting Lopes
in a slightly satirical way. These are
my words. This quote is not a quote from
any other text.]<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Tom says that “Determinates
are ways of being determinables. [For example] <i>Blue </i>and<i> red </i>are<i>
determinates</i> of <i>color.</i>” A
determinate is like a species under a genus, as blue is to color, where a
determinable is like a genus to a species.
However there is one difference: the species/genus relation is simply
one of classification, the kind of thing Aristotle did with his logic; whereas
in the view I share with Tom, the determinate “participates,” to use Plato’s
terminology, in the determinable. Tom also
says that, for Levinson, another pluralist, “beauty has only a superficial
unity….beauty is not one,” whereas our view posits no superficial unity because
beauty really is one. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For Tom, “Levinson’s
pluralism about beauty amounts to saying that <i>artifactual beauty</i>, <i>natural
beauty</i>, <i>artistic beauty</i>, <i>formal beauty</i>, <i>human beauty,</i> <i>moral
beauty</i> are, as determinates of the determinable (<i>visual) beauty, </i>more
fundamental than the determinable <i>beauty</i>.” Now Tom says, “Whether determinable
properties are real, or are reducible to determinates, is a controversial
metaphysical question.” This implies
that he is not taking a position, perhaps not wanting to stray into perilous
territory. But I am happy to insist that
they both determinates, and that determinables are real …. and that none are
reducible. Moreover, I suspect that any
determinate can be a determinable in relation to another determinate, and any
determinable can be a determinate in relation as well. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Tom says: “Lopes’s
pluralism about artistic value holds that <i>painting value</i>, <i>musical
value</i>, <i>poetic value, etc.,</i> as determinates of the determinable <i>artistic
value</i> are ways of being artistically valuable that are more fundamental
than the latter, which is nothing over and above the former.” He also notes that Lopes’ buck-passing theory
of art is similar in that “works of art are nothing more than poems,
sculptures, and the like.” As I have said above, I agree with all of this.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Tom also spells out the
space of possible positions in this way: “Anti-realism about determinables says
there are no determinables. Reductionism takes determinables to be identical to
classes or broadly logical constructions of determinates. <i>Disjunctivist</i>
reductionism says determinables are identical to disjunctions of
determinates.” All of these positions, Tom
and I hold, are false. Beauty, contra Levinson and Lopes, is not a
matter of either reduction or assimilation.
Tom then says that “Non-reductionism about determinables holds that
determinables are both real and fundamental.”
He says this is a controversial metaphysical question, which implies that
he is not taking a position. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">He also says: “An extreme
non-reductionist would hold that beauty and artistic value are one, but not
many – that is, that only determinables are real and fundamental.” I find this position tempting, but I will not
pursue that thought here. Tom gives what
I take to be his own theory of moderate non-reductionism when he says such a
theory “holds that beauty and artistic value are both one and many, and that
those determinables are no less fundamental or real than their determinates.” I agree with this theory.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Plato is a monist. However he does integrate elements of the
pluralist position, which further gives reason to abandon it. One might describe the position of Plato, Adajian
and Leddy as “unity in diversity.” We
recognize diversity even though unity rules overall. Plato synthesizes these by way of Socrates
and Diotima’s theory of philosophical friendship, love and beauty in the <i>Symposium.</i> .<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Tom considers a possible
paradox in Aristotle where pluralist claims are inconsistent with comparisons claim, viz.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Pluralism:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> F-ness is not
one. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">(UNICOMP):</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Things can be compared
in respect to F-ness only if F-ness is one across the comparables.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Comparisons:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Some comparisons with
respect to F-ness are possible.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Our Platonism escapes the paradox. Tom writes, “</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Consider
sonic beauty pluralism, a view parallel to Levinson’s pluralism about visual
beauty. On this view, sonic beauty is not one: there is only sonic natural
beauty, sonic artistic beauty, sonic human beauty, etc.” But, he continues, “What’s all this about funniness, triangles,
length, mass, redness? Those determinables are entirely different from beauty
and its determinates.” Our Platonism
rejects that they are different.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">To the objection,<i> </i>“<i>Even
if philosophers of science are willing to talk loosely about relations between determinables, determinables can be
neither real nor fundamental. For what is real and fundamental must be
maximally determinate, or more determinate,</i>” Tom replies, “</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Maybe. But it is
or should be an open question whether reality is vague – especially in its
aesthetic dimensions.” </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I agree also with Tom that Levinson
is wrong that formal, artifactual, artistic, human, and moral beauty are
“fundamentally different properties of visual beauty.” </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">
Levinson’s argument, as Tom construes it, is invalid because it depends on the problematic
concept, “radically different kinds.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
are no such things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The concept doesn’t
even make sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Levinson says “If any two beauty responses
have radically different causes/subvenient bases, or radically different
intentional objects, or radically different phenomenologies, then they are of
radically different kinds.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t see
how any of these conditions can be met, again, largely because I do not see
“radically different” as having coherent meaning.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Tom
ends with analysis of an argument by Lopes that features the idea that “All
art-making acts involve manipulating inert materials belonging to specific
art-forms.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since I cannot imagine what
materials being “inert” might mean, and I cannot imagine that there is any
one-to-one exclusive pairing of materials and art-forms, since art-forms, in my
view, are always hybrid in some way, I cannot see how this argument can get off
the ground.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Pluralism
in aesthetic value and in definition of art, exemplified by Levinson and Lopez,
was and is a wrong turn in recent philosophy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An in-between position that involves synthesis
of both sides will work better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tom and I
call this a Platonic moderate pluralism, or perhaps “moderate essentialism.” It
is moderate pluralism by way of moderate essentialism. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I owe you, the Pacific Division audience,
is an explication of the exact nature of my version of Platonism, so different
from the one that we were taught at out mother’s knees that Carroll called it
“quirky” when I first introduced it to this group.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That will have to be for another occasion. I
have a manuscript on that, but so far no one has wanted to read it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I
will post it on my blog.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-7728762022782011342022-03-19T06:01:00.000-07:002022-03-19T06:01:22.631-07:00Comments on Adajian on Pluralism: Final Draft Presented to the ASA Pacific Division<p> </p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Unity in Diversity:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Comments on Adajian’s Unity of Beauty <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas Leddy, San Jose,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">ASA Pacific Division, March 18, 2022<o:p></o:p></span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Abstract:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Adajian is entirely right.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">My own non-pluralist theory of beauty
is to be found in Chapter 4 of my book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">More about me:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>my extended comments on Tom’s paper and on
Levinson’s will be posted today on my blog Aesthetics Today<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://aestheticstoday.blogspot.com/">http://aestheticstoday.blogspot.com/</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I may also comment there on Dom’s
pluralism and on some of the other papers in this conference on my blog soon.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I have some other related projects.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">My SJSU page gives links: <a href="https://www.sjsu.edu/people/thomas.leddy/">https://www.sjsu.edu/people/thomas.leddy/</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">My project of photographing my
neighborhood in San Jose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This involves
thousands of art photographs most of which are on my phone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I post some on my FB page.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I am very involved in various FB
groups.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would be happy to be a FB
friend with anyone here today.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I have formed a new FB group you
would probably all enjoy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Philosophical
Song Lyrics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>113 members.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-22603116883430200622022-03-18T22:14:00.003-07:002022-03-18T22:14:25.769-07:00Unity in Diversity: A Critique of Jerrold Levinson's Pluralist Account of Beauty<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal">This is the paper that provided the basis for my ten minutes of extemporaneous comments on a paper by Thomas Adajian attacking pluralist theories of beauty. Delivered on March 18, 2022 at the Pacific Division of the American Society for Aesthetics in Berkeley, CA. Comments are welcome.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Thomas Leddy, SJSU Department of Philosophy, thomas.leddy@sjsu.edu</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Beauty is Not One:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Irreducible Variety of Visual Beauty.” Jerrold Levinson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But beauty is one.<a href="file:///C:/Users/000029069/Desktop/Documents/Beauty%20is%20One%20%5b2%5d.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
This is not to say however that the variety of visual beauty is
reducible. So much for the title of his paper. When looking at a
variety of things, I may say "How beautiful" in very different
cases. Levinson wonders whether in each case I am attributing the
same property. He thinks the answer is NO. I think it is YES, although
more has to be said about "same property."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson's position is inspired by Clive Bell, which is
refreshing in a way since Bell has been maligned too often.<a href="file:///C:/Users/000029069/Desktop/Documents/Beauty%20is%20One%20%5b2%5d.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Unfortunately, the quote Levinson admires, to the effect that what the average
man means by “beauty” is basically synonymous with “desirable,” and that the
most beautiful things for such men are beautiful women and, secondarily,
pictures of them, is, in my view, one of the most wrongheaded of Bell’s claims.
On his view these two properties, both called “beauty,” are quite
distinguishable. Levinson and Bell seek, then, to radically distinguish
two senses of "beauty" in regards to a beautiful woman. The
ordinary man simply means by it "desirable" in the sense of sexually
attractive, or, more crudely in Levinson's case, someone who is sexually wanted
for intercourse by a heterosexual male (more on this shocking move later),
whereas the rare aesthete, like Bell himself, might apply it to something that
gives a true “aesthetic emotion.” Levinson likes it when Bell says "the
word 'beauty' is used to connote the objects of quite distinguishable
emotions." This is where we disagree.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">According to Levinson, most theorists hold to the sameness
of beauty, which opinion goes back to the pre-Socratics, who based aesthetics
on proportion and number. Certainly the Pythagoreans, with their
central concepts of harmony and symmetry, had an objectivist account of beauty
as unity, an account that dominated theory of beauty for centuries, and is
still an important strand today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do
not intend to support that theory here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What
I oppose is Levinson's idea “that the genus of beauty has only a superficial
unity." (191) There may well be different species of beauty, but
this does not imply that the unity of the genus is only superficial. As I
will show in this paper, the different species are only superficially
different.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So one could say that my
position is basically Platonist and thus traditional in Levinson’s sense.
Spelling this out will require saying some things about Diotima’s theory of
love and beauty in the last part her “ladder of love” passage in the speech of
Socrates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will turn to that later in
this paper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That theory forms a model
for my form of monism.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I understand that Levinson is interested not in general
beauty, where beauty is the genus of all aesthetic properties, but in beauty in
the sense traditionally associated with "harmony, order and
pleasingness." However, he misunderstands beauty in this sense
since he finds it roughly equivalent to "charm, prettiness, loveliness
[and] gorgeousness." As I argued in my entry in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Encyclopedia of Aesthetics</i> on "Pretty,” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“pretty” is not equivalent to, or just a
lesser sister to "beautiful" in this sense. Nor are the others
so equated, generally speaking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
general rule is: if two concepts are the same then there is no need for two
different words in that language. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If there are two words then the two concepts represent two different,
although related, realities. , <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems
odd that Levinson conflates charm, prettiness, loveliness, gorgeousness and
beauty as specific aesthetic quality, given he has no problem seeing the
distinction between beauty and gracefulness, delicacy and elegance. (191)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson thinks that paradigms of visual beauty have in
common an essential feature, a connection with pleasure in viewing, beholding
or contemplating. As he puts it, "visually beautiful things
are things it is pleasurable to view....in virtue of how they look or
appear visually, and not, say, in virtue of their being instrumentally valuable
or cognitively intriguing to us." (191) This seems a strange way to start
an argument for pluralism in beauty since it starts from excluding an entire
type of beauty, i.e. beauty in virtue of instrumental or cognitive value. More
important, I do not see how instrumentally valuable and cognitively intriguing
aspects of the pleasure of viewing beautiful objects can clearly be separated
out from other aspects of the experience. I do not mind talk of "things
we derive pleasure merely from beholding" since other factors can be
packed into whatever is meant by “beholding.” The trouble is with the terms
"merely," and "mere appearance." What is
"mere" about appearance? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson sees his approach as Kantian, which is not
surprising given his adherence to Bell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He then mentions another, non-Kantian, tradition that goes back to Plato
and that makes beauty "a richer affair, or sets it for a higher standard,"
and holds that beauty is “that which inspires us, summons us to transcendence
and offers us...a vivid" promise of happiness. This is my tradition.
But he denies that this tradition succeeds in characterizing "all objects
or occasions of beholding," and he wants to downplay this perspective as
severely narrow, or parochial. He prefers the more “earthbound"
Kantian line as "more apt for covering the full range of things that are
found visually beautiful." (192) Yet the full range of such
things is precisely what is best handled by the Platonic line as it is traced
back to the lessons of Diotima and Socrates in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Symposium</i>, where Beauty itself, the Form of Beauty, represents the
unity of beauty we are debating, and all other varieties of beauty participate
in that. Levinson holds that there are "several fundamentally different
species of visual beauty," which is okay except that the differences
are not particularly important, or even “fundamental.” <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Moreover, when Levinson talks about the power to give
pleasure to viewers, the word "pleasure" is<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>problematic because ambiguous. There
are simple and complex forms of pleasure, and his definition is acceptable only
if complex and rich forms of pleasure are implied. He refers to the
pleasure that characters in Ballard's novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crash
</i>experience at the sight of car crashes as “perverse,” for they do not focus
on the visual beauty of such crashes, their pleasure deriving from mere
appearance <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">per se</i> here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet, this is problematic since all pleasure,
including perverse forms, are rooted in something more than appearance <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">per se</i>. (192)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(I read the novel, being a Ballard fan, and
it gave me pleasure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Was I perverse?)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson correctly observes our inclination to say that
different beautiful things each have beauty in their own way and that
"beauties in the different categories differ in how they strike us as
beautiful, in a way that weighted things do not in respect of their
weight." (192) This is fine so far, but he ends the paragraph by
saying, "Beautiful women, beautiful paintings, and beautiful bridges
differ in the respective beautiful appearances they present; apart from all
producing immediate visual pleasure in the viewer, their beautiful appearances
seem to be of radically different sorts." (193)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I argue that they are not radically different
at all. Of course, to do this I can only appeal to my own experience, and the
reader must look to their own. For me, the sense of intense pleasure I have in
all beautiful women, paintings and bridges, is radically similar, indeed almost
indistinguishable. So maybe Levinson and Kantians experience the world in
a radically different way than Platonists and myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We will see.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson believes that there are, with surprising
specificity, six fundamentally different properties or types of visual
beauty: the types are abstract, artistic, artifactual, natural, physical,
and moral. I however will argue that all of these are, although
admittedly distinguishable, fundamentally quite similar and interactively
engaged in ways that make them phenomenologically not very distinct.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson stresses that formal beauty, or “configurations by
themselves,” a type of abstract beauty, is distinct from the beauty of abstract
art, say the work of Klee, the latter being a species of artistic beauty.
This is the way an Aristotelian, the originator of strict categories arranged
according to logic, thinks, namely wanting and insisting on strict boundaries, as
we find with those who seeks rigid definitions of properties in terms of
necessary and sufficient conditions. It is this methodological commitment
that leads, I believe to most of the many errors I will find in Levinson’s
thinking.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I do agree however that, in artworks, "patterns...are
not appreciated merely for their geometric or spatial properties, but also for
what they may represent, symbolize, exemplify or express." Levinson
quotes Danto that "art has a content that must be grasped." But
things get problematic when he continues the quote: "in contrast with
skies and flowers." Here we disagree. I am a pretty good amateur
photographer, who recently has been focusing on skies and flowers, and can then
talk about their appearances with some authority. When I take a
photograph of a flower against sky or some other backdrop, I frame it first in
my mind and then with the camera where everything I want is framed in the
viewing screen of my iPhone. The picture is practically taken even before
I click the shutter. I do not<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>need
to look at it afterwards since I know what it will look like already. I
have captured a very specific appearance of sky or flower or both. Now,
the question is, is this appearance, and the consequent digital photograph,
which I first see on my camera screen, importantly distinct in that the second
has content and first has none. No. The CONTENT of the two
appearances are virtually identical, and they both have just about the same
amount of content. Is there an important phenomenological difference
between the aesthetic content of the sky or flower I experience in taking a
shot of it and the art object which I produce by clicking that shutter? No.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson thinks that a Barnett Newman painting "expresses
oneness and infinity" in a way that the same object qua not artwork does
not. (193) No again. There isn't an object qua not artwork in
Newman's studio or on the wall of the museum show. This is a fictional
object, favored before Levinson by Danto, that just does not exist. What
I see in the show expresses oneness and infinity, period. It does not
lose that quality if it is taken out of the show and out of the artworld and
relegated to a dump, for example. Art is not, contra Danto and Levinson,
disenfranchised as art when it leaves the artworld. If I discover the
Newman being used by a hobo as a blanket I still discover something that
expresses oneness and infinity. Not to be too crude about it, but that is
why it still has great monetary worth. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson writes, "[and] a stripe painting by
Noland...has an import not found in the mere pattern it contains, bearing a
message of streamlined cool and machinelike efficiency." (193-4) I agree
that it bears that message.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what can
he mean by "import found in the mere pattern it contains"? Can
such a "mere pattern" be found "contained" in the painting
by Noland. And can a specially different "import" be found in that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t think so.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He continues in the same vein: "Thus, even if
both the pure patterns or configurations and the paintings that contain them
are all beautiful, the beauty of the latter seems a different property from the
beauty of the former." (194) Not only is the notion of a painting
containing patterns different from what it actually contains as part of it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">qua </i>painting, absurd; but equally absurd
is the notion that these two aspects of the same thing have different
beauties. The sentence continues by referring to art as a function of
meanings, and stating that they are embodied in a supposedly different object
than the one that resides in the artworld, different from its indistinguishable
counterpart, which, in this case, actually inhabits THE SAME SPACE in the same
gallery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such an object supposedly has
embodied meanings, whereas its entirely made-up shadow object does not. This
obviously is a serious problem for Danto’s entire project, which Levinson
endorses.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But Levinson insists he is simply taking the Kantian
position that beauty of patterns in art is always “dependent” beauty, the
beauty being perceived under some concept, i.e. as an artwork, which is to be
distinguished from an abstract sensory presentation. When it is seen in this
way it takes on properties based on that. But, remember that when the
good amateur photographer sees a rectangular sky appearance, frames it, and
takes the shot (say with bits of trees and roofs in it, all carefully arranged
by his or her eye) and, in doing so, is, phenomenologically, not just looking
at, or capturing, an abstract sensory presentation, this something also has
content. This was a fundamental point for Husserl and
Merleau-Ponty. It follows that ALL beauty is dependent beauty, even in
the case of flowers, contra Kant. Of course this is not to say that, in
moving from visualized to actual photograph displayed in a gallery, there is
not a creative process in which meaning-content is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">enriched</i> through subtle, and sometimes not so subtle,
manipulations of the image. Art, as Dewey taught us, intensifies and
concentrates experience. So it is okay to say, as Levinson does of an
object of a certain kind seen under that category, "it takes on a
different appearance, and displays properties it would otherwise lack."
(193) That is, it displays properties that are modifications of properties,
and these modifications were lacking in the original visualized, or
"framed," scene. (194) All of this leads me to be
pleasantly surprised by Levinson's next paragraph, which begins, "[m]uch
the same can be said when one considers patterns as found in works of
craft..." (194) and hence the beauty of rug patterns are dependent rather
than free: correct, although also inconsistent with what he said previously.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Consider now formal beauty. Levinson writes that it “is
normally not conceptually mediated ...and may hence be considered more or less
free beauty....thus distinguishing it ...from all other varieties of visual
beauty..." (194) His point relies on Kant's strict Aristotle-like
distinction between free and dependent beauty. But his own examples,
including an interesting discussion here of cycloids and catenaries (194) undercuts
the distinction, hence his entire theory. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson then turns to much neglected topic, namely the
physical beauty of humans and animals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He begins with humans, which for reasons we will come to question, he
limits to adults.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He claims that
physical beauty is almost equal to sexual beauty, which is, at least, on his
view, the core of physical beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
says that this, too, is a form of dependent beauty, which is acceptable since <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all </i>beauty is dependent beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He thinks, however, that this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">means </i>that the beauty is “perceived as
such only when its possessor is seen as a human being.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(195)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That part is too limited.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Human
beauty can be dependent on any number of different concepts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Think of how actors portray different things
using their bodies on stage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can
perceive a human as a monster, for example, if the actor and the costumier have
done a good job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some actors are
particularly good at portraying monsters seen as beautiful, not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">qua</i> human, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">qua</i> that kind of monster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Levinson quotes Zangwill as saying that a person “is beautiful not as an
abstract sculpture, but as a human being.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(195)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this is not universally
true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People can be beautiful as abstract
sculptures, as, for example, when they portray them in plays or at street fairs
painted in silver.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admittedly it is hard
to portray an abstract sculpture on stage, but not impossible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I agree, though, that human beauty <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">usually</i> involves a concept of “human”
deployed by the beholder.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However this
concept is also brought in when appreciating the beauty of a monster on stage
insofar as it is depicted by an actor who is him or herself doing so <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">qua</i> human.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson says that “the perception of human physical beauty
impels us toward the beautiful object. We are drawn to it, transfixed by it,
and long to possess it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is
clarified somewhat by a quote from Etcoff that, when one sees human beauty, one
“can’t breath,” and by Higgins when she says that such is not a “spiritual
radiance, but a sexual magnetism that pulls the enchanted viewer off course.”
(195)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I reject all of these as universal
characterizations of physical beauty, although each can and does apply sometimes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before going on, I wish to stress that,
unlike Levinson, I do not distinguish, except in rare cases, between physical
and moral beauty in humans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover,
being anti-anthropocentrist, I also attribute moral qualities to some animals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If someone, human or animal, strikes me as
being morally beautiful, they take on an aura that intensifies their so-called
physical beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By “moral beauty” here
I do not mean simply the beauty of altruism but that of any human or animal
excellence. Likewise, if I am struck by someone’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">physical</i> beauty I will automatically assume (and this seems true in
psychological studies) that there is some human excellence being manifested
that leads me to this judgment of beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So, phenomenologically, I have trouble distinguishing between what
Levinson calls moral and physical beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perhaps that is why I see his account of physical beauty as degrading
and reprehensible (as we shall see) and his notion of moral beauty as
disturbingly dualistic in a way that would be fiercely opposed by Nietzsche,
Marx and Dewey, although not by Aquinas, Descartes and Kant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Further, although I am drawn to beauty, and “transfixed by
its vision,” I seldom “long to possess it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There are many ways in which this idea of possession can be interpreted
in this case, few of which are attractive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Certainly I do not long to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">enslave
</i>or legally own any beauty I see.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Although l consider my wife beautiful I do not see myself as
“possessing” her except in the sense that she is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my </i>wife and therefore, by mutual agreement, not available to other
men.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But l do not “long to” possess her
in any way other than what we agreed to when we first became a couple.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do not yearn to possess any other woman
whom I consider beautiful, except as a matter of temporary fantasy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I agree that the intensity of personal beauty
of both men and women is such that, on rare occasions, I hold my breath in awe,
finding the glamorous body’s allure to be very much a spiritual radiance.
However this radiance is also <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">due</i> to
sexual magnetism that, as Higgins nicely puts it, “pulls the enchanted viewer.”
Well yes, sometimes the magnetism does pull us off course, for example if one
is tempted by the beauty of someone to whom is outside of moral
availability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The very idea of radically
separating spiritual radiance and sexual magnetism, in the way Levinson likes,
is dualistic in the bad sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
are, of course, people who strike one visually <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">more</i> with sexual than spiritual radiance, and vice versa; but this
is a matter of degree, not kind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Marilyn Monroe brilliantly combined both the spiritual (in the sense of
human excellence) and the sexual in one visual display that made, and still
makes, her truly a star.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson reduces physical beauty unfortunately to the desire
to have sexual intercourse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As he puts
it, “[not] to put too fine a point on it, we want, if only subconsciously, to
mate with, have intercourse with, or make love with, the person who displays
it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(195)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I admit I have felt that way a few times,
especially in my twenties, but it is not true for me genuinely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reader has to look into his or her own
experience to check its validity as a claim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I may be singularly innocent in this regard, although I must say I am
shocked by Levinson’s attitude, which seems stuck at very first stage of the
“ladder of love” in Diotima’s famous story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s a good starting point, but one does try to move beyond it. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson justifies his position by appeal to evolutionary
theory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, sexual attraction for
the purpose of creating babies does play an important role in our experience of
human beauty, but, as Levinson himself admits, there are many kinds of human
beauty that are not reduced to this, for example the beauty of a baby or of a
great-grandparent, neither of whom are normally objects of sexual attraction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The beauty of an infant <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">does</i> invoke pleasure and rivet attention and impel action, for
example, in the mother’s breastfeeding it, and this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">does</i> have an evolutionary advantage. But that goes against limiting
physical beauty to the beauty of an object of lust, where, as Etcoff say,
Levinson approving, “[we] love to look at smooth skin, thick shiny hair, curved
waists, and symmetrical bodies because in the course of evolution the people
who noticed these signals and desired their possessors had more reproductive success.”
(195)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ironically, babies have all of
these features and yet, although this has importance for selection and
survival, it does not entail their being sexual objects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We do look at the smooth skin, shiny hair,
and symmetrical bodies of babies as beautiful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Interestingly, most babies are seen as beautiful by someone, and
practically all by everyone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I have no problem with beauty here being connected with
“desire” if that includes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i> sorts
of desire including the desire to nurse a baby, or cuddle with one’s own child,
or to be close to an elderly parent in a physical way through hugging or even,
when they are senile, through feeding and helping to shower.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are all appropriate desires in addition
to the desire to have intercourse whether for the purpose of reproduction, or,
as is usual, not (strangely this last behavior seems not to be sanctioned by
evolutionary theory as described here.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson stresses that saying someone may be physically
beautiful without being sexually attractive is “not a little
sanctimonious”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(196) which is a strange
thing to say since a considerably older married copy might find each other
quite physically beautiful although not having any desire to have intercourse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know whether Levinson would consider
the desire to cuddle with one’s lifetime mate of seventy years counts as sexual
attraction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, who, on Levinson’s view “are the appropriate viewers for
a subcategory of human sexual beauty”?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(I cannot see how some viewers of beauty can be seen as more appropriate
than others.) He answers that, “[for] the beauty of women the default answer,
one might suggest, albeit with trepidation, is adult heterosexual men, and
perhaps within that class, the subclass that is of the same race as the woman
in question.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(196) !! The trepidation,
unfortunately, was/is warranted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
cannot agree that women cannot be attracted appropriately to women, or whites
to blacks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Levinson tries to recover by
saying that the point is “not who is capable of judging of such beauty, but rather
whose pleasurable reaction of desire or attraction should be taken as criterial
of the species of human beauty in question.” (196)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I cannot see what good this does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Actually Levinson and I have some areas of agreement with
respect to human beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am, for
instance perfectly happy when he notes the social construction of sexual beauty
admitting the role of cultural context and tradition in the norms of
beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I agree that, nonetheless,
certain features “such as symmetry, smoothness, youthfulness” in womanly beauty
“occupy a non-negotiable place in what makes for human physical beauty…” (197)
except for one problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Being 72, my ideas of womanly beauty have changed with my
years and commitments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am devoted to
my wife, but if I became single again I would, after initially being tempted by
younger women, naturally gravitate to someone in the above-60 range, for even
now I prefer the beauty of such women, and would especially do so if thinking
of a life partner, even though their physical features are far from
perfect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would not ignore these
features but would (and do now) find them sexy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">if </i>the woman is intelligent, knowledgeable, interesting,
sympathetic, emotionally available, attractive, a good dresser, virtuous, has
good taste both in the arts and in everyday life, and loves nature. If an older
woman has these features then all of the features that may <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">seem</i> decrepit on first glance are enhanced as well. They take on an
aura of beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can live without
Levinson’s touted values of symmetry, smoothness and youthfulness that
characterize women in their twenties if all my other criteria are met, since <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">if </i>they are, then these criteria will be
met as well. I will see my beloved’s skin as smooth, I will see her manner as
youthful, and I will see her as symmetrical even if she is not so,
mathematically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson says that resistance to his idea of typing physical
beauty with sexual desirability might go away if we distinguish judging beauty
and experiencing physical beauty, the latter only requiring seeing the person
as sexually alluring, (197) although he hedges that view, saying that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">even judging</i> presupposes feelings of
sexual attraction to “the appropriate reference class for human beauty in
question, even if the judger does not himself have such sexual feelings.”
(197)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet I believe that no man in my
position in life should be required to limit his feelings of attraction to
white heterosexual women of child-bearing age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I find many older lesbian women fascinatingly beautiful, for example,
contrary to Levinson’s requirement of appropriateness, even though I have no
interest in having sex with them, and that goes<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>for older homosexual men as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When I judge a woman of my age, of whatever sexual persuasion, race,
ethnicity, or disability status, as sexually attractive in the sense of being
beautiful, it is because their physical features present themselves as
manifestations of their excellent non-physical features.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am not just speaking abstractly, and I am
certain that I am not unique in this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Many of the women I currently find attractive are philosophers,
scientists, artists, and politicians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
is not merely that I find them exemplars of virtue:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am not talking about moral beauty alone
here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Levinson notes, other kinds of
beauty, including moral, come into my perception. But, again, I do not concede
that beauty <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is </i>plural in the way he
sees it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No: the package is one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no moral beauty without physical
beauty, and no physical beauty without moral beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I do not accept the language he favors of
“mixed nature of beauty” or “proportion that narrowly concerns physical
beauty.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(197) <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson and I agree that physical beauty cannot be detached
from sexual attractiveness, except of course in the cases of children and the
very aged, where thoughts of sexual attraction are entirely inappropriate and
impermissible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Almost everyone is
grossed out by the dressing up of little girls or great grandmothers to look
like sexy glamour queens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, for people
sexually “of age,” physical, sexual, and moral beauty are necessarily combined
so that there no mere mixture but one beauty with (at least) three
manifestations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson admits the beauty of young children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he assimilates it to “natural beauty of
an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">animate</i> sort, such as that
exhibited by swans or gazelles.” (198)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That is, he thinks that the beauty of young children is not at all like
human beauty but more like swan beauty. Interestingly, he does not mention<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>monkey, cat, snake, crab or cockroach
beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Swans and gazelles fit a very
peculiar category of animal beauty given that we find those two species to be
very specially graceful and elegant and often think of them in conjunction with
thoughts of ballerinas. I cannot imagine what it would be like to see the beauty
of children as being essentially like swan beauty, or the “swan beauty” of the
“swan” in Swan Lake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course human
infant beauty is very much like cat or gazelle infant beauty. We use the word
“cute” to describe this type of beauty, but that is not the point at
issue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson also admits the beauty of the “wizened sage” and
the “kindly grandmother.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is
humorous in light of my previous self-revelatory comments, I being of the age
traditionally associated with the wizened sage, and the women I currently find
sexually attractive being associated with the kindly grandmother age. In fact,
many of these women are both kindly and grandmothers…and…by the way….
“hot.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I insist on the possibility of
kindly sexually interesting grandmothers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Take Laurie Anderson in her recent videos, or Joan Didion in the
documentary of her in very old age, or Joan Mitchell in documentaries of her
near the end of her life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are
attractive women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As mentioned above,
Levinson thinks “moral beauty” comes in here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(198)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But my point has been that
it comes in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">everywhere</i> at every age,
as does erotic, sexual, and physical beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There is no plurality of beauty, if I,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Diotima, Socrates, and Plato are right.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So when Levinson says “for moral beauty to count as a
species of visual beauty…the pleasure must derive from beholding such traits as
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">seemingly manifest</i> in a person’s
appearance,” he gets it all backwards, although, strangely, not too horribly
wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The problem here is with the
word “seemingly.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, it turns out,
that is the central word in his analysis, for he says “nor is it a matter of
whether the person presenting such traits in appearance actually possesses them
as personal qualities, that is, is in fact a virtuous, noble, or soulful
person.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(198-9)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
minute one of my attractive kindly grandmas turns out not to be actually noble
or soulful then she becomes instantly, in my perception, much less
attractive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So when Levinson says,
“moral beauty…is no guarantee of moral worth, though part of its appeal is no
doubt the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">suggestion </i>that such worth
obtains,” the opposite is true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A mere
“suggestion” is a fake, is fake beauty, is ugly.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson says, “we have seen some reasons that formal beauty
and artistic beauty are not the same thing, that formal beauty and physical
beauty are not the same, and that physical beauty and artistic beauty are not
the same.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(199)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I have shown quite the opposite in each
case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is actually fun to write about
someone with whom one disagrees so thoroughly!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(Of course I am very fond of Levinson as a person and philosopher.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have a sweet picture of him lazing in his
formal clothes on a beach at Asilomar in, probably, 1983.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My measure of respect for him, of course, is
measured by how seriously I take his thinking and by how much it informs my own
so much by being so wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can just
picture him chuckling at this with his characteristic chuckle.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Levinson backs up this claim which I consider
very wrong with a number of points about differences which I do not at all object
to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So my problem is more with the
validity of his argument.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I accept the
premises for the most part but find that the conclusion wildly off and
certainly is not supported by the premises.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Yes, there are differences between each kind of beauty, but they are
minor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He speaks of differences between
the responsible bases of beauty, and yet these are, on my account, mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He speaks of differences in what viewers
attend to, but these are subtle at best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But its seems that it is nearly impossible to distinguish
natural in any important way from human beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For example, I may appreciate the beauty of a kitten in much the same
way I appreciate the beauty of a human baby.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I use the same cooing language, for example: “You are so cute!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Similarly I may be stunned by the beauty of
an elegant, stately, tree ornamented by flowers and subtle leafing of spring in
much the same way as I am with a beautiful and elegant woman ornamented by
flowers and by the subtle movements of her hair in spring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The differences are so little that poets
throughout history have described human beauty in terms of natural beauty and
vice versa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Think of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Song of Solomon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson quotes, with approval, Malcolm Budd’s saying that
“we delight in the seemingly endless and effortless variety of” thrush’s song
“but not as the product of artistry.” (199)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So, let’s compare my delight in the thrush song (we have one going on
right now in our garden), and that of Rene Fleming (on a CD I’m afraid).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I find it hard to tell the difference,
except that Rene is more complicated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perhaps Levinson cannot get beyond the thought that the first is
“effortless” (how would he know) in its variety whereas the second achieves the
same beautiful affect through “artistry.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this just begs the question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fleming has enormous talent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For her singing with great beauty IS
effortless when her singing is going well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Artistry surely went into her training, but it is that point at issue
whether you can hear THAT in the beauty of her performance, although perhaps
some can.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We know less about bird song
because, as complicated as their songs are, we tend, with our anthropocentric
bias, to downplay it as without “artistry” and as “mere instinct.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The quote from Budd also stresses that “the object of
aesthetic delight is the sounds as issuing naturally from a living, sentient
creature, more specifically, a bird.” (199)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But what is the point of saying that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Clearly Fleming is also a living, sentient creature, more specifically,
a simian, who issues sounds that give aesthetic delight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only difference is that she is of one
genus, whereas the thrush is of another, one that is much more closely related
to us humans, by the way, than a sponge, worm, or bacterium. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, again, there is no <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">important </i>difference here.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But l begin to see where Levinson goes wrong when he says
that, by “the response to natural beauty I mean the beauty response proper to
nature as nature, where the thought of the object of perception as natural
permeates and regulates the response…”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(200)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This, on my view, is wrong-headed
dualism and anthropocentrism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is
no “nature as nature” in contrast to products “of human qua human,” as though
humans were in some way completely separate from nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, I find the appreciation of nature,
where “the thought of the object of perception as natural permeates…” a bit
perverse, even though aestheticians of nature are often attracted to it as a
kind of ideal. Elsewhere I have argued for an alternative view of the proper
appreciation of nature which stresses multiple aspects or perspectives while
avoiding what I consider the “nature as nature” fetish. I take this fetishized
perception to be a narrow and romanticized idealism that, in a strange way,
treats nature as a kind of pre-human Eden, and humans as a kind of post
apple-eating alienated group needing salvation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I am not saying that Levinson consciously believes in this Christian
mythology, but that his thought, and that of other “nature as nature”
enthusiasts seems subtly infected by it, as by dualism.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Once again, with respect to crossing over from one type of
beauty to another, Levinson writes, “a portion of nature, such as [a mountain
scene] might be regarded as if it were just an abstract array of colors and
shapes, or…as if it were some sort of monumental artwork.” So it requires a
somewhat artificial operation of the imagination, on his view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it doesn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The “as if” is totally redundant.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I do not deny that mountain scenes can be regarded <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as</i> abstract arrays of colors and shapes
(the “as” being different from “as if.”)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>However, again using my own experience as a serious amateur photography
as my intuition touchstone, when I take photographs of natural scenes, usually
I am in the urban environment of my city, and so, usually, whatever appears in
my frame is partly natural and partly not, for example partly trees and flowers
and creek water, but also partly houses and people (are people nature or not
nature? Levinson only allows children to partake of natural beauty…another wrong
aspect of his theory) <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I just can’t regard all of this as if “just an abstract
array of color and shapes.” The “just” is what galls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, giving credit where credit is due, I
do regard what I see in formal terms, that is, in the sense that I select the
rectangular scene in my viewfinder to capture an image based on such things as a
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>harmonious relations of lines and
colors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do not see this as a matter of
“as if” at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am photographing
trees, houses, people, etc. being fully aware that that is what they are. Yet
this is done with attention to the composition of a picture in the two-dimensional
space that is the locus of my creative activity of choosing and framing; this
resulting in a digital photograph that I might share with friends as a work of
amateur photographic art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I admit that,
in the creative process, imagination plays a role. I might even think, “how
like a monumental artwork,” when taking a photograph, which, in fact, I have
done frequently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet, for me, the
interaction of art and nature appreciation is close.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I often do not think about these comparisons
consciously, but, if asked, I might say: “This shot is inspired by Altoon
Sultan and Richard Diebenkorn, with a touch of Bierstadt in the corner, and
even some Andy Warhol in the display of children’s toys in the other
corner.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I believe that that enhances my
artwork, and also my experience of nature, since I do not bother with the
mythical and distorting notion of “nature as nature”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Levinson, however, says that, although
regarding a natural scene in this way might cause one to see it as beautiful,
“that would not be a perception or registering of the scene’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">properly</i> natural beauty.” (200)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there is no such thing as “properly
natural beauty.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson also thinks there is a thing called “athletic
beauty,” found in both humans and animals and involving “suppleness, grace,
speed, and assurance.” But he thinks it “distinct from the physical beauty of
face and body,” which he discussed earlier in terms of the desire to have
sexual intercourse through possession of the appropriate sexual and racial
other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(I still find it shocking to
recount this.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is deeply
wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no facial or bodily
beauty that can be disconnected from the features discussed here under the
misleading term of “athletic” beauty, i.e. beauty of movement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Greeks discovered, and such enlightenment
writers as Herder in his great book on sculptural beauty, recognized, that
these two things cannot be divorced without ruining each.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Human beauty is a matter of faces, arms, and
other body parts <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in graceful motion</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is exemplified not only in athletic
beauty, as described by Hans Gumbrecht in his book on the topic and with that
title, but also in great sculptures throughout <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>history, and in great paintings by such
figures as Perlstein, da Vinci, Rembrandt, and van der Weyden, as well as great
ones nonwestern traditions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just think
of van der Weyden’s “Deposition.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here,
even the body of a dead Christ has this quality of totally synthesized moral,
“athletic,” erotic, personal, social-historical, mystical, non-sexual
intercourse-related, religious, human, artistic, beauty.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Non-art artifacts such as oriental rugs do not raise
significantly different issues, again, contra Levinson and a number of other
philosophers working on this issue, including Carlson, Parsons, and
Forsey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Levinson observes “assessments
of intention and purpose and of the adjustments of means to ends” in artwork
beauty and not in non-art artifacts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
can only think that he has not paid much attention to non-art artifacts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The prejudice this exemplifies can be found
for example in Collingwood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
widespread.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet, to use Levinson’s
own example, the rug created in the early 20<sup>th</sup> century in
Afghanistan, for instance, is worthy of much thought about intention and
purpose (are the two distinct?) and adjustments of means to ends. We might not
know the names of the creators of this hypothesized rug, although in many instances,
contemporary collectors and curators make a point of finding out, since, as
with any other artform, the style of the individual master will inevitably be
unique, and this will give rise to a kind of sense of humanity we find in more
accepted forms of “fine art.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The truth
is that the distinction between “fine art” and not is mainly based on classist,
sexist, racist, colonialist, ageist, and other similar disagreeable
assumptions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is, as curators and
theoreticians are now at last well aware, no interesting or non-oppressive of
note here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson thinks that unique to non-art artifacts is not “a
dimension of content, and a sense of the fittingness of such content to the
form in which it has been embodied” and yet I just cannot see this in Navajo,
Mayan, Afghani, Chinese, or any other kind of finely worked run from any part
of the world or from any class, sex, or race.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Levinson says “viewed as art, the perceivable form of an artwork is
apprehended, not in relation to the fulfillment of basic human needs, nor in
relation to the satisfaction of utilitarian ends, nor again as merely abstract
painting, but as something which potentially has something to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">say </i>through such form.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of this would cover perfectly any and all
of the finely crafted rugs from throughout the world we have been discussing
unless Levinson has a meaning for “say” that includes a work by say Joan
Mitchells, but not one by a specific Indian master of rug design.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just don’t think there is any such meaning
that is not just something really subtle and specific to historical
context.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In order words, “fine art” does
not really “say” anything significantly different in kind from “craft,”
although there is certainly a range of less to more content in any artform and
any two art practices might be placed in different spots on that range in
general.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just do not know enough about
it to be able to say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I am willing
to talk about specific works from each form to see whether one actually “says”
more, or says something rather than the nothing of the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Levinson ties the distinction to basic vs.
nonbasic human needs, and yet I just cannot see how an Indian Mughal rug, for
example, from the 18<sup>th</sup> century, fulfills more or less basic human
needs that the Venus de Milo. I very much doubt that ANY human needs are
“basic” in Levinson’s sense or that this idea of “basic” can help distinguish
various kinds of beauty or art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The same
goes for “utilitarian ends” since utilitarian is just a fancy word for useful,
and there is no reason to think that fine art objects are any more or less
useful than so-called merely utilitarian objects if we are talking about such
things as richly conceived and constructed rugs as opposed to very cheap
hammers, which no-one, by the way, thinks are beautiful in any way, even though
they are sometimes useful, hence utilitarian in that narrow sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But perhaps Levinson is forgetting here the
distinction between pushpin and poetry, where the latter is MORE utilitarian on
the account of Mill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Levinson does
admit (200) that something like a rug can say something and hence be beautiful
as an artwork and not as an artifact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
why am I complaining?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, that
admission simply destroys his theory which depends on not allowing artifacts to
save the unity beauty by migrating to art whenever they are actually good as
artifacts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the beauty of an artwork
is not at all “something different from, if related to, the beauty of a non-art
artifact, such as an automobile, wardrobe, hammock, or hammer.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(201) (It is funny that he tacks on hammer at
the end as if, all of these beauties are functionally the same, as if the
beauty of a Jaguar Sedan is functionally the same as the beauty of the hammer I
just bought for five dollars at the hardware store and functionally different
from the beauty of a Rembrandt portrait which itself is functionally the same
as the beauty of the Thomas Kincaid artifacts my neighbor loves to use to
decorate her house.) <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson thinks that a set of silverware “might be
considered less beautiful because….the pieces simply appear too heavy, and thus
likely to be unwieldly in practice.” (201)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Yes, that sounds right, although I am not sure it supports any of his
points about beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It might be related
to the question he asks whether works of architecture are artefactual or art
beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is not a problem for me
since I do not see an important distinction here, nor is the question “whether
all works of architecture works of art” (201) useful or even meaningful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No architect or architecture historian I know
would find it interesting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So perhaps
philosophers shouldn’t either. Levinson thinks that “some architecture is
simply artifact” and so only capable of “at most artefactual beauty.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(201)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This nonsense is just based on previously criticized distinctions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thankfully, Levinson does say that the
original Brillo boxes as artifact did have content, i.e. they were “designed
for commercial purposes.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But no, they
were designed for far more than that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They were designed to persuade people to buy something as part of a
vision of a lifestyle that itself incorporates aspects of “high culture” which
makes it not surprising that the original designer was himself a “failed” New
York artist (I would not accept that he was a failure).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The design is sophisticated and has tons of
content.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course Danto, Levinson’s
master in this, saw it just as a “mere real thing,” which meant that it was in
the mere world of ordinary objects and not the transcendent artworld that
Warhol (who Danto completely misunderstood) transfigured it up into, in a kind
of holy Platonistic apotheosis. (This is not my Symposium-based Platonism in
which dualism is overcome by a continuum much more like the later emanation
theory of Plotinus.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, no, I will
stick with Nietzsche who says we should be “true to the earth” and reject such
baloney.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, Levinson just
creates a new category to satisfy himself about such a “borderline case.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You guessed it…its “commercial art.”
(201)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course it has its own
unique beauty, on his account. But returning to natural beauty, Levinson notes
there is something he calls “accidental beauty” which in my view is not more
accidental, or less, than any other “kind” of beauty he has described.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His example certainly is beautiful, and this
is indeed an area of agreement between us.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Despite our theoretical difference, Levinson and I actually
tend to find the same things beautiful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
maybe our differences are just those typical academic differences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One close nonacademic friends says my writings
always look like legal briefs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On one
level, that was friendly, as it showed that he actually read some of it, and on
another level, not so much, since people are generally wary of lawyers, seeing
them as hired guns with no morality whatsoever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I said in reply that we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">can</i> do
that but, in my view, true philosophy is more like an art, in fact IS an art,
and that it requires judgment, taste, creativity, and imagination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He responded with skepticism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems these days that whenever I further
develop a position in response to counterarguments I am accused of
“backtracking” as though being careful and covering your tracks backwards like
a 18<sup>th</sup> century scout is a bad thing!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Accidental beauty examples are, says Levinson, “accidental
arrangements of elements, man-made or natural, that one just comes across and
finds somehow absorbing and compelling.” (201)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Well, I take literally scores of photographs of what I consider
beautiful and interesting in my neighborhood every day, or at least week, and
on Levinson’s account, the objects of these photos are ALL accidental beauties
(most are BOTH man-made AND natural, as in both a house and a tree.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>None of these arrangements were designed by
anyone, and yet I found them all both absorbing and compelling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The truth is I just do not see any non-accidental
beauties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course each of the beauties
I see has elements of a number of things Levinson saw as separate and
distinct.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there is an element of
intentionality in all of these, even in the trees, which, in the urban world,
have almost all be planted by someone for some aesthetic effect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, there is intentionality everywhere in the
biosphere, especially if, as modern ecology indicates, there is some form of
plant intentionality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, each one
of my photographs exhibits tons of intentionality since I intended to frame
them in this way and I intended to snap the picture and I intended to save
these images -- and I intended sometimes to show them as pieces of amateur
art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although Levinson and I both think beautiful
“the look of a city from on high, as from the roof of a skyscraper” (201) I
don’t understand why he believes something so politically naïve (in terms of
community politics) that this cityscape “though the byproduct of numerous
individual creative acts was not envisaged or designed by anyone, and yet is
often visually arresting.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Has he not
heard of Robert Moses or Louis XVI or Napoleon or the heroes who defended the
Western Addition and the Haight in San Francisco in the 1960s, or the heroes
who kept a freeway from coming into Santa Cruz in same period, or those who
defended the natural-looking farmland of Marin County, or, the list of
intentional designers of urban landscapes goes on and on. The same goes for
seemingly accidental arrangements that are “redolent of some hidden meaning,”
for in truth every arrangement of front yards and neighborhoods involve complex
aesthetic negotiations both within families and between families.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could give a myriad of examples.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What seems to be accidental hidden meaning is
almost always intentionally negotiated meaning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So, to nail his mistake into the board of his argument Levinson says,
quite wrongly in stunningly ignorant way (ignorant that is of community
interactions:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know this because I have
been a community organizer and leader for twenty years and have seen tons of
these aesthetic negotiations, and have participated in most of those, some of
them, I must say, almost leading to fisticuffs in terms of “that is ugly” vs.
“that is beautiful” about the same arrangement of elements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would go so far as to say that this kind of
engagement forms the essence of concerned community life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think the members of the Roosevelt Park
Neighborhood Association, and other such nearly associations, for this
insight.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says that “such
phenomena…are neither artistically beautiful, nor artifactually beautiful, nor
naturally beautiful; that is, they are not beautiful in the way of art, or
artifact, or nature.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet in fact such
phenomena are inclusively and non-exclusively artistically, artifactually, and
naturally beautiful, no one kind being clearly distinguishable from any of the others,
or from any other kind of beauty Levinson has mentioned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, the unity theory of beauty, going back
to Plato, and further to Parmenides and further again to Thales, and maybe even
to Homer, wins.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But it might be argued that I have missed the forest for the
trees, that Levinson’s overall theory, as summarized at the end of his article
is far more sophisticated than I have let on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I agree with this criticism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
have not for example dwelt on Levinson’s tripartite structure of
differentiation of types of beauty<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“the
features of the object on which the given response is directed…the properties
causally responsible for…the given response…the phenomenology of the given
response…[in short] the intentional, structural and phenomenological grounds
for distinguishing beauty responses.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(204)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This seems, of the face of
it, formidable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All I can do is focus on
the specifics.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson turns to bilateral symmetry to start with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remember that he believes this is a necessary
condition of human beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ever since I
read this I have been looking at humans who I consider to have some beauty to
see whether they always have bilateral symmetry. I admit that it is relatively
rare.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, I found myself thinking
about a newsreporter who as eyebrows that are asymmetrical. One is clearly
higher than the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She looks a bit
peculiar,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and I don’t personally find
her beautiful, and yet some executive at a news organization hired her. And no
one said “we can’t show her:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>she is just
too ugly.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another example is some
beauty marks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some women are considered
more beautiful if they have a small mole on one side of their face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This can also be true for tattoos, which do
not always follow principles of bilateral beauty in humans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some people of both sexes have long hair that
does not part in the middle or that falls at different lengths onto both
shoulders. Some people with genetic defects that entailed breaking of bilateral
symmetry in body or face are considered beautiful by some people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In some sports muscles on one side are
developed more profoundly than on the other side, and yet few complain that
these people are ugly as a result, and some probably see this feature itself as
conducive to beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, as I said
earlier in this paper, on my view bilateral symmetry is by no means necessary
for beauty when one considers the way we see such individuals under concepts of
moral or intellectual virtue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So much
for the idea that it is the “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">since qua
non</i> of…human beauty” (204)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He holds
this to distinguish human from other beauties, but since it is not true, then
there is no basis for a strict distinction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(Of course I have held throughout that there are distinctions between
types of beauty, but they are relatively minor and not of great importance in
our question for understanding beauty itself.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But Levinson also argues that human beauty is much different from
artistic beauty phenomenologically since the “former necessarily involves
desire….while the response to the latter necessarily includes thoughts about
meaning.” (204)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both of these claims
are, as I have shown, patently false.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
should go without even saying that parents find their babies beautiful without
any implication of sexual desire, especially in Levinson’s sense of that term,
i.e. in terms of having the “possession” of penetrating intercourse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The second is also false since art lovers who
enjoy a later abstraction by Jackson Pollock need not be concerned at all about
meaning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Contra Levinson and Danto, the
title of Pollock’s late abstractions is of little or no importance.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson also insists that, with regards to intentional
focus, the response to physical and artistic beauty is quite different from the
response to abstract beauty since it focuses “more on visual form as
such.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“In the case of physical beauty
such form is normally seen past unreflectingly, giving way immediately to an
image of the desirable person, while in the case of artistic beauty such form
is not rightly seen past, but is rather dwelt on in relation to any figurative
or expressive meaning that results.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(204-5)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One is reminded here of
the rather puritanical denial of sexual interest in beauty found in the
writings of Clive Bell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I have argued
earlier, this position is infected by dualism, which I join Nietzsche and Dewey
in seeing as the worst of the philosophic maladies with which we must continue
to contend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The phrase “giving way
immediately to an image of the desirable person” seems strangely coy for
someone who has previously made perfectly clar that this immediacy involves the
perceptual of possibility of immediate sexual possession in the manner of
sexual intercourse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But even if we think
less concretely, as this sentence implies, it is false that appreciation of
beauty in humans requires picturing to oneself with that person as desirable or
having an image of someone considered objectively desirable by the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is such a thing as appreciating beauty
in a Platonic way with the immediate interest simply being in the aura of
beauty that person gives off and only the possibility of a secondary interest
of a sexualf nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If this were not
true I can attest that I would find walking across my university campus
sexually unbearable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead I delight
in both the female and male beauties that constantly surround me, the beauties
of youth so unrelated to the beauties of maturity which I consider, at this
stage in my life, the more appropriate objects of sexual desire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And please don’t condescendingly say that I
am just deluding myself or trying to hide my true prurient nature!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know my own desire better than those who
would impose their narrative on me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Levinson sums up everything with a chart of the distinctness
of the seven species of beauty that itself induces my closing comments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(a) “apprehension of the beauty presupposes a
conception of the object as a thing of a particular kind, and not simply
attention to the object’s visual form.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This doesn’t fit anything distinctive since all apprehensions presuppose
conceptions, as Kant taught us, and also the all involve attention to the
visual form of the object.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(b) “involves
estimation of purpose or use in relation to form”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This does not seriously distinguish anything
since anything made has both an intended purpose and perhaps several functional
purposes that shift and change over time, just as true for a painting that
originated as an altarpiece as a house that originated as a church or a human
body formerly an object of loving gaze but now seen as a stimulate for
autoerotic behavior.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(c) “estimation of
meaning or content in relation to form.” This is not of any crucial importance
since, as Husserl teaches us, everything has meaning content in relation to
form. (d)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“involves estimate of moral
character.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This does obviously
distinguish human from non-human, non-animal beauty, since we cannot for
example consider the moral character of a sunset.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However the distinction is not particularly
importance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, in every art form
and in every craft form we keep in the mind both the moral character of the
artist/artisan and the effect the object might have on moral character in the
culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These considerations go back to
Plato’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Republic.</i>(e) “involves desire
for and attraction to the object.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
distinction is of little importance since humans can desire and desire to
possess anything:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>stamps, paintings,
knives, to have a baby, sexual intercourse with other humans,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to see visual human beauty again, clean
water, cool sunglasses, the death of an enemy, answers to one’s prayers,
enlightenment, and so forth. And anything one desires one is attracted to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(f) “depends on a relatively narrow range of
underlying properties.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be honest, I
do not know what this means.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“Abstract beauty exhibits none of the above marks, thus
emerging as in some sense the purest of beauties.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(205)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>On my contrary view, if “abstract beauty” is defined as such, there is
just no such thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Levinson goes to
talk about the various ways in which the various touted “seven kinds of beauty”
partake of each of these lettered properties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The path my critique of this should be obvious by now so that I do not
have to spell it out in each case.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What about distinctive properties for each kind of
beauty?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Levinson notes that the same
property may supervene on different bases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So maybe “visual beauty is the same property in all cases despite
supervening on different subvenient bases” to which he replies that “if the
base properties are really quite different, as between physical and natural
beauty” then the beauty properties are distinct.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/000029069/Desktop/Documents/Beauty%20is%20One%20%5b2%5d.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
Levinson, Jerry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Beauty is Not
One:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Irreducible Variety of Visual
Beauty.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In The Aesthetic Mind:
Philosophy and Psychology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ed. Elizabeth
Schellekens and Peter Goldie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oxford
University Press.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2011.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>190-207.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All internal citations refer to this unless otherwise state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="file:///C:/Users/000029069/Desktop/Documents/Beauty%20is%20One%20%5b2%5d.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bell, Clive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Art</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>London:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Chatto and Windus, 1914.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
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</div>Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-37991482586405419972022-02-20T22:14:00.004-08:002022-04-15T14:06:16.371-07:00Proof of Atheism <p><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); text-size-adjust: auto;">To see the relevance of this proof to aesthetics, see my other posts on atheism You can use the search function on the right. Search "atheism."</span></span></p><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;">This is an certain disproof of the existence of any Abrahamic God, i.e. Yahweh, God, or Allah. </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;">This proof is personal and second-person-directed. So it is an existential proof. That is, it starts from your own personal experience of great psychological pain in sympathy to great physical or psychological pain in someone else. So the proof is not ego oriented. </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;">It is put forth in a logical way, but is based on intense personal experience. It is inspired by my own experience of the deaths of loved ones. But it not supported by, or derived from those experiences. Readers should think of the deaths of their own family and friends. </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;">Intensity of experience. The experience of the suffering dying and subsequent death of a loved one or close friend is as intense, although negative, as any experience any person could have of God, even through that experience would be incredibly positive. Therefore, this argument from experience cannot be refuted by any argument from personal experience of God. However, this argument cannot, and does not, refute such experience. </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;"> </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;"> </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;">Proof:</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;">Somebody you know has died, or will die, in great physical and/or psychological pain. God, as defined by the Abrahamic religions, is all-powerful and all good. Such an entity would never allow this to happen to your loved one or friend. Therefore, God, as defined, cannot exist. Whatever God does exist (if any) can be all-good but not all powerful, or all-powerful, but not all-good. This argument does not disprove either of these. Other arguments can do that. </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;">Counter-argument: Great suffering just before death is an “evil,” admittedly. Yet evil is necessary for us humans to have free will. (This is called the “Free will” defense of God, which is directed against “the problem of evil.”)</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;">Reply: Free will could not possibly be of any use to your loved one i. The time in which they die in agony. They are no longer in the position of making real choices. Nor could it’s existence console you as you suffer sympathetically. No one says, as a dying peson screams their last scream, “but it’s Okay, for God gave them free will.” </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;">Counter: Eternal happinesses in heaven makes up for this suffering. </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;">Reply: No good God would offer us this poor recompense which is like saying that a billion dollars recompense and tortured death of the perpetrator could make up for your being brutally raped. </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;">Therefore. God does not exist. God cannot exist. God never did exist. God will never exist. </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;">If you accept this proof you are an atheist, and not an agnostic. </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;">This proof, although it borrows from many previous ones, is my own creation. If you refer to this proof, please give me credit by calling it “Leddy’s Proof.” I reserve the right to revise it, if needed. Any revision will be numbered. I will also post this on my blog Aesthetics Today and will submit it for publication in a humanist or atheist journal. It is copyrighted by me. </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;">Reply. Aren’t you worried about the wrath of God. </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;"><br /></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-size-adjust: auto;">If I am wrong, and God does exist, such a good God will reward me for this proof in heaven. I hope I do not have to prove why this is true.</div>Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-40500925725041409442020-10-07T11:54:00.002-07:002020-10-07T11:54:41.830-07:00Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Part 1<p><span style="font-size: large;">The dialogue begins with a letter from Pamphilus to Hermippus. The letter discusses the advantages and disadvantages of dialogue as a form. Pamphilus argues that questions in philosophy that are obscure and uncertain, such as natural religion, lead naturally into the style of dialogue. There seem to be two reasons for this. First "reasonable men may be allowed to differ, where no one can reasonably be positive." So, presumably, the dialogue style displays these disagreements. Interestingly he also believes that this sort of debate will "afford an agreeable amusement" and that such a book will provide these two purest pleasures of life, "study and society." Now he makes a big point that we are not here to be questioning the existence of God, since after all, the existence of God provides the "surest foundation of morality" and "the firmest support of society." The importance of this truth is such that it should always be present in our thoughts. I suspect, as others have, that Hume is being extremely cautious here. He does not want to be accused of being an atheist even though his dialogue might encourage atheist conclusions. Even Philo the skeptic will assume that the existence of God is unassailable. The paragraph ends with the admission that "nothing but doubt, uncertainty, and contradiction, have as yet been the result of our most accurate researches." His last paragraph refers to Cleanthes' "accurate philosophical turn" to Philo's "careless skepticism and to Demea's "rigid inflexible orthodoxy." As a student of Cleanthes it is natural that he would be more favorable to him. Philo's skepticism seems hardly careless.</span><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Part 1 is mainly a debate between Cleanthes and Philo about skepticism generally. As with Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, the dialogue begins with discouraging younger students from entering into these debates. But mainly here we are talking about children. Demea insists that students only study the nature of the gods after logic, ethics and physics: "this science of natural theology...being the most profound and abstruse of any, required the maturest judgment in its students..." and this requires that their minds should be "enriched with all the other sciences."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Philo worries that this means that the children have not been taught "the principles of religion." But Demea is only holding them back from religion as a science, i.e. as something that can be debated. He will teach them piety through precept and example so that they will have "habitual reverence." Also, as they are studying the other sciences he will point out "the uncertainty of each part" the debates surrounding them and "the obscurity of all philosophy." He will also observe the "strange, ridiculous conclusions" derived from mere reason. It is only then that they were learn the "greatest mysteries of religion." He will now feel that they are safe from the "assuming arrogance of philosophy" that might lead them to reject "the most established doctrines," for example the existence of God. So, interestingly, Demea is committed to promoting a kind of skepticism, at least about the sciences.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Philo is excited (perhaps ironically) about this early teaching of piety, which is needed in our "irreligious age." But mainly he admires Demea's drawing from principles of philosophy in this, principles which people have always seen as being destructive of religion. Vulgar people who have not studied science and observing the disputes of learned people will have contempt for philosophy and will settle on religious belief too quickly. People who have studied only a little philosophy think that very little is "too difficult for human reason." They then presumptuously question religious doctrine. So the way to avoid this is to follow and even improve on Demea's principles, i.e. becoming "thoroughly sensible of the weakness, blindness, and narrow limits of human reason." Philo even goes so far, in this skeptical vein, to note the uncertainty of reason "even in subjects of common life and practice." He then brings up the common skeptical theme that the senses deceive us. (It looks here that he is no longer talking about advice in the upbringing of children.) "Let the errors and deceits of our very senses be set before us" and in addition, all the difficulties entailed in the first principles of philosophical systems. These include contradictions involved in natural science, i.e. those which "adhere to the very ideas of matter, cause and effect, extension, space, time, motion" i.e. all areas that are quantifiable. This skepticism is extreme since this area, physics, is the only one "that can fairly pretend to any certainty or evidence." At the end of this, no one can retain confidence in "this frail faculty of reason" especially on such sublime and abstruse points that are far from everyday life. If we cannot explain how a stone hold together then how can we decide about the origin of the universe.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Pamphilus notes that Demea and Cleanthes were both smiling during this speech. But whereas Demea was happy, Cleanthes seemed to think that Philo was joking or just being artificially mean. Cleanthes says to Philo that he is proposing to "erect religious faith on philosophical scepticism." And he believes Cleanthes thinks that if we reject certainty in every other discipline it will still exist in theology, even acquiring "superior force and authority." But he questions whether Philo is as absolute and sincere in his scepticism as he pretends. If he were then he might well go out of the room through a window and might doubt that he would fall or be harmed by such a fall, since he questions the senses and experience. But if skeptics were earnest then we would not have to worry about them long. And if they are jokers they are not dangerous. Sure, a man might "after intense reflection on the many contradictions and imperfections of human reason, may entirely renounce all belief and opinion" he cannot continue in total scepticism or act by it for more than a few hours. External object, internal feelings, lightening of spirit will intervene: he just can't impose such violence on himself. The followers of Pyrrho should have confined their scepticism to their schools. Actually they are like the Stoics in having their system "founded on this erroneous maxim" viz. "that what a man can perform sometimes, and in some dispositions, he can perform always, and in every disposition." The Stoic thinks that the mind can withstand utmost bodily pain, but he cannot support such enthusiasm. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Philo replies even the Stoic when his mind cannot "support the highest flights of philosophy" still retains its disposition, and this will appear in how he lives his life. Similarly a sceptic will continue as a sceptic. Sure he must "live, and converse like other men." Also he notes that everyone has this philosophy to some extent in order to make advances, and that philosophy is the "methodical operation" of this kind. But when we look to "the properties of surrounding [nonhuman] bodies" and speculate about the "creation and formation of the universe" as well as the "existence and properties of spirits" and "the powers and operations of one universal spirit, existing without beginning and without end" [God] "omnipotent, omniscient, immutable, infinite, and incomprehensible" we will, like the skeptics, think we might have gotten "quite beyond the reach of our faculties." With more practical matters of business, morals, politics, criticism, we appeal to "common sense or experience" and these "strengthen our philosophical conclusions" and this partly removes sceptical worries. But in theology we cannot do this. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-73806147661793056582020-09-23T10:23:00.000-07:002020-09-23T10:25:02.350-07:00Confucius Analects Book 1 <p> <span style="font-size: large;">"As though cut, as though chiseled, As though carved, as though polished" quote from the <i>Poetry. </i>This is found in the <i>Analects</i>.<i> </i>(1.15)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The junzi (noble human) is as a sculpture, chiseled, carved, polished. He polishes himself, creates himself as a work of art. "To be poor but joyful; to be wealthy and love li." (1.15) The <i>junzi</i> achieves joy through this process of self-creation in which the civilized arts (li) are encountered with love. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">"A junzi is not concerned that food fill his belly; he does not see comfort in his residence." (1.14) The <i>junzi</i> is no crude aesthete in the sense of being concerned with good food and a comfortable home. But consider the rest of the saying. "If a person is apt in conduct and cautious in speech, stays near those who keep to the <i>dao </i>and corrects himself thereby, he may be said to love learning." The alternative to the narrow aesthete is someone who loves learning. But this is not necessarily literal love of reading and writing. It is sufficient to conduct oneself well, speak carefully, and choose friends who follow the <i>dao. </i>Still, all of this can be done in an aesthetic way, understood more broadly.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Another passage that concerns aesthetics: "In the practice of <i>li</i>, Harmony is the key. In the Dao of the kings of old, This was the beauty." (1.12) <i>Li</i> is translated usually as ritual, but this is ritual considered broadly. Ritual can be seen as a kind of aesthetics of daily life. One tries to achieve harmony and beauty in one's actions. So, even in small matters one should follow this path. But do not "act in harmony simply because one understands what is harmonious." To do this would be to pursue beauty for beauty's sake. Rather one must "regulate one's conduct according to <i>li.</i>" (1.12) What would that be? Think of li as a broader aesthetic that takes the shaping of relations in society as intrinsic. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Much of the first two books is devoted to virtues, for example trustworthiness, righteousness, reverence, and filial piety. It is said we should not depart from our father's way after he passes, for three years. What sense can be made of not departing from one's father's way? (1.13, 1.11) The father's way might not be the way of one's literal father. It could be symbolic for the proper and ethical way of tradition. But even tradition has its sell by date. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">We are all concerned that others will give us credit. But "do not be concerned that no one recognizes your merits." It is better to worry about recognizing the merits of others. This is like the golden rule. (1.16) People think too much about their personal honor. Recognizing the merits of others is a constant project.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">"If a person treats worthy people as worthy and so alters his expression..." (1.7), and does various other moral things he is "learned" although perhaps not in book learning. What one says is one thing but how it appears in one's face is another. The look of disgust shows no respect. "The look" is a central part of our moral/aesthetic space.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">"exerts all his effort when serving his parents" (1.7) A moving period of my life was when my parents were still alive, both having dementia. I didn't exert <i>all </i>of my effort to them, but it was a major project. I felt better about myself and felt good about paying them back care for care. "exhausts himself when serving his lord" (1.7) Being naturally a rebel in my teens and twenties, it took me a while to see the advantages of being a good servant, a second-in command sometimes to the chair of my department. "is trustworthy in keeping his word when in the company of friends" (1.7) Here trustworthiness is associated with friendship: of course it extends to non-friends as well. But if you are engaged in creating a harmonious lifestyle, this is central.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">"if a <i>junzi</i> is not serious he will not be held in awe. If you study you will not be crude." It takes a long time to realize how important it is to be serious. It takes a long time to realize how important it is to really study. Refinement comes with serious study. (1.8) But again, you need someone to share this with. For me, it has been my wife, with whom I constantly study the arts and domestic harmony, my colleagues both in my department and in my specialization (aesthetics), my students, and my oldest friends. "Take loyalty and trustworthiness as the pivot and have no friends who are not like yourself in this." (1.8) And then, of course, "if you err, do not be afraid to correct yourself."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">"pursue respect for the distant dead" (1.9) Is the serious study of Kant, Hume, Confucius, Chuang Tzu, and so on, anything less than pursuing respect for the distant dead. It is the philosophy teacher's way of devoting "care to life's end." </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">"[T]o study and at due times practice what one has studied, is this not a pleasure" (1.1) There are two pleasures here. Study is one. We philosophers read a lot of philosophy. But also you need to stand back a bit and see how these ideas might fit one's life. That too is a source of pleasure. And note that Confucius, although not a hedonist, does not ignore pleasure. For also, "when friends come from distant places, is this not joy?" Pleasure, as we have seen, is not just a solitary thing. Joy comes with the best moments of friendship. But again, what about the worries that haunt us: am I successful? Well "to remain unsoured when his talents are unrecognized, is this not a <i>junzi</i>?" (1.1)</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">"the <i>junzi</i> works on the root - once the root is planted, the <i>dao</i> is born." (1.2) Study until you find the root. But the root is not just previously there. You need to plant the root. The <i>dao</i> is not just a pre-existent path, it is something that is born, flourishes, declines, and possibly dies away. "Filiality and respect for elders, are these not the roots of <i>ren</i>." (1.2) <i>Ren</i> is commonly translated as humaneness. There are not only the wise masters of the past, Nietzsche, Simone de Beauvoir, etc., but also one's seniors in the profession, one's personal teachers, one's elders. To respect them is to listen to them carefully, gain inspiration from them, and show gratitude. Hard thing to do. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">He who "does not like opposing his ruler" does not raise a rebellion. Sure, and yet not opposing one's ruler (and we need not think of political leaders here) is a matter of showing respect, of studying seriously. (1.2) </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">What is <i>ren</i>? Well "those of crafty words and ingratiating expression are rarely <i>ren.</i>" You do not show respect in this way. (1.3)<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">And then sometimes you get to rule yourself. On a couple occasions I got to be chair of my department. It was not a "state great enough to possess a thousand war chariots" but I still had to be "attentive to affairs and trustworthy...regulate expenditures and treat persons as valuable." And that was an important part of my education, even though it happened late in life. (1.5) One also had to "employ the people according to the proper season" which is to say, find the right way to handle the community of the department, fitting person to task, and so on. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">As I have mentioned, in the first book there is much focus on ethics and yet some mention of the aesthetic dimension as well. In 1.6 it is said that we should be filial at home (respect for parents) and "respectful of elders when outside." One should also be "careful...trustworthy...caring of people at large" and, as said before, be friends with those who are <i>ren.</i> All good things. "If he has energy left over, he may study the refinements of culture (<i>wen</i>)." But isn't there some ambiguity here? It seems at first that study is superfluous but, as we have seen, it is central. And it is significant that the comment comes at the end of the passage, where often the most important issues are addressed. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Each of the key terms in Confucian thought is defined by all of the others. We cannot separate <i>ren</i> from <i>wen</i>, humaneness from culture, in the end. And neither of these from <i>li</i> (ritual).</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-7036281958358921082020-08-18T17:03:00.001-07:002020-08-18T17:03:28.628-07:00What is a philosophical theory? Wittgensteinians are partly right, partly wrong.<p> </p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">There is much debate over the nature of philosophical theories. Are they like scientific theories? Is so, to what extent? Wittgenstein thought that no realm of phenomena is the special business of the philosopher. Paul Horwich in his article "Was Wittgenstein Right?" published in <i>The Stone Reader, </i>says that for Wittgenstein there are no phenomena about which a philosopher "should devise profound a priori theories and sophisticated supporting arguments." Further "There are no startling discoveries to be made of facts, not open to the methods of science, yet accessible 'from the armchair' through some blend of intuition, pure reason and conceptual analysis." </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">So this is what I think. Philosophical theories and arguments are stories which are more or less illuminating depending on the context. They are <i>a priori</i> only in the loose sense that they are not tethered close to sense data or scientific experiment. But they <i>are</i> based on experience, and there is nothing to keep philosophers from developing their theories in a way that is at least consistent with contemporary science. Philosophical theories are based on philosophical dialogue (whether implicit or explicit.) Sure, philosophy tends to be done in armchairs, although that's true for a lot of science too. And philosophers are not horribly limited by that since their armchairs are generally in front of computers connected to the web. And usually those armchairs are in well-stocked libraries. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">So the question remains whether there are startling discoveries that philosophers can make. Probably not, or not often. However there are moments of inspiration. There are discoveries. I like to think of these as sudden revelations of essences, although, in an unorthodox way, since I see essences as evolving through history. It is more like "I now see how to say something interesting about art that is relevant to our own times" rather than "I now see art's eternal unchanging essence."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Horwich describes Wittgenstein's attitude as "in stark opposition to the traditional view, which continues to prevail. Philosophy is respected...for its promise to provide fundamental insights into the human condition and the ultimate character of the universe, leading to vital conclusions about how we are to arrange our lives." I partly agree with the traditional view and partly do not. Yes, Philosophy should be respected for its promise to provide fundamental insights. However I doubt there is just one human condition, or that there is just one ultimate character of the universe. Philosophy can just reveal essential things about the world as we experience it, and that world changes. Doing this, revealing essences, however, is enough to lead to vital conclusions about how we should arrange our lives.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Wittgenstein thinks we are bound to be disappointed if we take the traditional view, and I agree. But Horwich goes on to say that the perennial controversy of philosophy is an embarrassing failure. I would say, taking more of a Hegelian line, that it is not embarrassing at all...something more like a wondrous success story. Each successful philosophical project, i.e. the ones that ultimately make it into the history books, is both insight and invention.... a further development in the ongoing evolution of essences. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Horwich/Wittgenstein (for now I treat them as the same) believe that traditional theorizing must be replaced by "painstaking identification of its tempting bu misguided presuppositions and an understanding of how we ever came to regard them as legitimate." This is a fine thing to do. But this is part of the dialectic, and there are other parts to the dialectic. It is the process of destroying the thesis. But dialectical process, and hence Philosophy, is not complete until it provides an antithesis and a synthesis. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">So Wittgenstein thinks that philosophical investigation should only destroy everything interesting. I think it does this, but only to make new interesting things. He thinks the point of Philosophy is "clearing up the ground of language on which they [the so-called interesting things] stand." I think that this is just one sub-project in philosophy. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">So, unlike Horwich and Wittgenstein, who are extreme pessimists about Philosophy, I am an optimist. (Although I must say that I am a pessimist about a lot of other things.) The difference between me and Wittgenstein here is that he is a disappointed absolutist. I never was an absolutist and so, hopefully, avoid the illusions of being a disappointed absolutist.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">So I have no problem with the primary goals of traditional philosophy, which Horwich describes as "to arrive at simple, general principles, to uncover profound explanations, and to correct naive opinions..." I just disagree with anyone who wants to see these things as much like what scientists do under the same names. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">The place where I most agree with Horwich is when he says: "our concepts exhibit a highly theory-resistant complexity and variability. They evolved, not for the sake of science and its objectives, but rather in order to cater to the interacting contingencies of our nature, our culture, our environment, our communicative needs and our other purposes." Hear hear! Except that I disagree with "theory-resistant." This evolution is theory-<i>dependent</i>, or better, it just is the development of theory. I also agree that "the commitments defining individual concepts are rarely simple or determinate and differ dramatically from one concept to another." The "general principles" we look for here are very unlike the ones we look for in science: they are best seen as philosophical definitions offered as part of the ongoing dialectic.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">But it is fundamental to Wittgenstein to avoid theory-construction and to be merely therapeutic, and this will be an exposing of irrational assumptions on which theory is based. I just do not see why this is an either/or situation. Theory-construction IS story-telling that is therapeutic. To expose some assumption of an opposing theory is just what one does in dialectic. Be prepared for that to happen to you too, later down the line.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Horwich then goes on to apply this thinking to the evolving idea of "truth." His point, as always with the Wittgensteinians, is that the entire history of the concept is a history of failures. But no theory ever really fails, it just recedes, or is sublated. It goes underground, for awhile. It can be reinterpreted and enter the fray again. True, "truth" is not like an empirical concept such as "red" or "magnetic." It is, to follow Gallie's terminology, an essentially contested concept. So it doesn't quite stand for a property: it stands for an object of philosophical contest, an essence. But this means that Horwich is profoundly wrong when he concludes that "Truth emerges as exceptionally unprofound and exceptionally unmysterious" because he accepts the disquotational theory of truth, i.e. ""It's true that E = mc2" is equivalent to E=mc2."" This is just ignoring the problem of truth. It is a deliberate avoiding of Philosophy, and I think there is something inauthentic going on here. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">No, <i>all</i> of the essentially contested concepts are profound, all are mysterious. Diving deep into the nature of anything is diving deep into a nested collection of essences and thus, for example, into an entire culture. What he calls a "wild goose chase" is really the point...except it is never just one goose. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Of course belief in the disquotational theory of truth is belief that there is one final definition of truth, one that, it turns out, is marvelously unmarvelous. This is the path of a disappointed absolutist who is still, really, an absolutist at heart. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></p>Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-64840689549946317512020-04-23T14:30:00.005-07:002020-04-23T20:46:46.622-07:00Everyday Aesthetics: quote by Kierkegaard<span style="font-size: large;">Consider the following quote, which I found in Adorno's <i>Aesthetics </i>(302): "To transform the leap of life into a gait, absolutely to express the sublime in the pedestrian - that only the knight of faith can do - and that is the only miracle." Soren Kierkegaard. <i>Fear and Trembling. </i> tr. Sylvia Walsh (Cambridge U. Press, 2006) 34. When I read Kierkegaard as a graduate student I wondered what if anything I could do with him. I was then, and still am, an atheist, and Kierkegaard's message seems entirely for the religious-minded, and even more so for the Christian. And yet even atheistic existentialists were inspired by him. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A question that has often exercised me is something like "what is the highest calling for everyday aesthetics?" I think that the Kierkegaard quote speaks to this, and it is psychologically helpful for me that I find it in a work by Adorno, who, although like Kierkegaard, influenced strongly by Hegel, is no ally to orthodox religious thinking. I also find interesting the idea of "the only miracle" since I take this to mean that no miracle produced by any religious hero goes beyond this. This is as metaphysical as it gets. Also, one would think (might well think, falsely) that the everyday aesthetician would be committed to what Kierkegaard believed to be the lowest kind of life, the sensuous. But then it turns out the the highest form of life, the life of "the knight of faith," is a matter of bringing the extraordinary down to the ordinary, to "express the sublime in the pedestrian." I think that everyday aesthetics can serve many purposes, but the most important of these is to find a new home for religious sentiments, a home for atheists and agnostics during a time of crisis. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">So this connects with another question which is how does one find meaning in life during the time of the Covid epidemic. For those who still believe in God the path may well be similar, but I will only address it for the non-believer. To put it simply, to find meaning one must every day find meaning in what is experienced every day. This takes on a special potency in a time in which the significant moments of our days are associated with the daily walks, working in the garden, cooking at home, and so on. The daily walk is of particular interest here. I have been reading <i>Wanderlust: A History of Walking </i>by Rebecca Solnit. Solnit treats walking as a kind of secular meditation, as, one could say, did Thoreau. Kierkegaard's point, for me, is to try to experience what I see, hear, and smell as I walk (the last requires taking my mask off for a bit when no one is around) in such a way as to experience the extraordinary, the sublime, in the ordinary, in the, literally, pedestrian. </span>Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-85774458315000010172020-04-08T21:02:00.000-07:002020-04-08T21:10:30.694-07:00From My Unpublished Book: Essences in Aesthetics and Philosophy 2<br />
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1. </span></span></b><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span></b><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Essences and Imagination.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;">Plato
thought that the Forms were apprehended only by reason and that we need to
escape the world of sensation to enter the world of essence. Essences belong to
an invisible world very different from the visible world. This is partially
true, although it is hard to tease that part out while sticking to anti-dualism,
as we here wish. Essences belong to our world and they are perceived in the
world (the world as we experience it), but they are invisible (i.e., non-evident)
usually. They are not invisible in being something else than what is seen. Rather,
they are something normally not seen in the seen. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;">Essences can
be seen in things as giving rise to a kind of aura:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>when we see something in its essentiality it
emerges from everyday being as with intense aesthetic quality, as participating
in Beauty (as Plato would put it). <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;">So essences
are not objects of a special faculty called “reason” (unless, of course,
“reason” were redefined to mean something more like the kind of activity and
perception I will be describing here…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>something I would favor.) Essences, rather, are objects of a process
that might be best described as the activity of a kind of imagination. We are
not talking about any sort of imagination, not about, for example, creating
images in the mind from adding elements not previously seen together, such as
horns to horses, but the capacity to “see as.” In particular, this is a “seeing
something as” in which we see something as what it essentially is. (As we shall
see, this often takes the form of metaphorical seeing: seeing something as it
essentially is by way of seeing it as something it is not.) And this process
inevitably is involved with searching out of essence through dialogue and
dialectic. Change of perception comes with change of language.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;">Plato almost
saw this. For example, when he spoke of “recollection” he stressed that
something perceptual in the world stimulates mental perception of the Forms,
and elsewhere that this is a matter of attending to the meanings of words in
dialogue. These two things do in fact work together except that essences are
revealed in experiential being. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;">Moreover,
essences are models tied to words. Before, I said they are between concept and
Form, but it is more accurate to say they are between perception, concept and
Form. Hence Plato’s specific denial of the body and sensual experience is
overcome, rejected. Essences are not just in a private mind:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>they emerge in a shared world through
philosophical dialogue and through other dialogue-like engagements. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;">Essences are
models, or model-like (in that the perceived thing becomes a model, a paradigm),
and they are real and true to the extent that they work. And they are
manifested both in enhanced creative activity and in the experience of aura. So,
as indicated above, they are and are not seen. In effect, to see something in
essentiality is to truly see it. Essences are only not seen in the sense of
being unavailable outside the activity of philosophical or other similar
dialectic of the spirit (as in the arts). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;">Thus, the
world of essences is, unlike the world of Forms, just an aspect of our dynamic
phenomenological space that emergences from out interaction with the
environment as living beings trying to solve problems and live life. It can be
seen as a special realm since one can seem as if in a special transcendent
realm when perceiving the world in terms of essences<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;">The word
“imagination” may not always be helpful here. It is not as though there were a
separate faculty of the mind called “imagination.” Rather, essences are
perceived with the same faculties that we use to perceive things in more
practical contexts. But essences emerge in a special kind of perception.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;">Plato, again,
is oddly right that entering this state of being is like entering another
realm, especially insofar as these things are as if unchanging. And it is also
as if <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">we </i>were eternal and unchanging,
as if <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">we </i>were perceiving all of these
with eternal unchanging souls. Soul emerges as essences emerge:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>they emerge in tandem. But whereas Plato saw
this as escaping the world of the senses, of perception, the current view is
that in essences perception is intensified, as words, through dialectic,
interact with things seen. In a sense it could be said, perhaps Vico saw this,
that essences are created by the imagination:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>again, this just means that we, as fully embodied beings, interact with
the world in such a way that aura and essentiality emerge together. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;">Perhaps all
of this is what Plato was pointing towards when he spoke of a method that was
hypothetical, the hypotheses being the Forms. Essences are hypotheses taken as
first principles, and tested. But unlike Plato, the proof is in the
effectiveness of this emergence, in what is generated. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;">It could be
argued that Plato even saw this too when he spoke of the proof of grasping of
the Form of the Good being in terms of the creative products that emerge. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">The Essence of Art and Dialectics</span></b><span style="line-height: 107%;">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;">The essence
of art is emergent upon art works, the institutions of the artworld, and the
various debates surrounding the question "what is the essence of
art?" and related questions. Traditionally, we think of these debates as
philosophical. Yet there are also dialectical developments within other modes
of what Hegel called Spirit, for example within art and within religion. Within
art, there are debates that are not verbal. The essence of art is emergent
mostly upon debates, both verbal and nonverbal, within the world or worlds of
art, just as the essence of religion is emergent upon such debates (call them dialectics)
within the world or worlds of religion. A nonverbal debate may be exemplified
by Picasso responding to a painting by Matisse with a painting of his own that
indirectly expresses a different conception of the essence of art. However, the
essence of art is also, in part, emergent upon a dialectics not limited to art
itself: first, upon the dialectic within the philosophy of art, and second,
upon a dialectical interaction between the philosophy, art criticism, and art
practice, and finally upon dialectics between classes, nations, political
philosophy and economics. There is a layering of dialectic, although this is
also interactional.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;">Much of the
value of art comes from the way its form and content resonates with moments in
these other dialectics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;">There are
canonical definitions, canonical works, and canonical debates (with competing
positions accepted as at least viable or living) at any particular time in
history…place too. The search for essences takes place within the background of
these.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Philosophy of Art not Parasitic.</span></b><span style="line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;">Although it
is sometimes tempting to think otherwise, philosophy of art is not parasitic
upon art practice. It is not merely a reflection on art practice or on the use
of concepts within the world(s) of art. Nor should we judge it merely in terms
of whether it meets the needs of artists, although it might well meet some of
those needs. Neither is it parasitic on criticism:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>it is not simply meta-criticism. Thinking
about criticism is useful for philosophers in the same way thinking about
philosophy is useful for critics. Spirit manifests itself in these different
ways. That is, the spirit of the age and culture can be found in philosophy,
religion, art and science of a particular place and time. Of course in the
history of the philosophy of art certain critics have attained the status of
philosophers of art insofar as they participate in or contribute to philosophical
debates. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;">Philosophy
of art is dynamically interactive and symbiotically related to both art
practice and art criticism. The claim that it is meta-criticism is a false
modesty hiding an improper inferiority complex. Sometimes philosophy of art is
portrayed meanly from the standpoint of a hostile critic or from that of the
currently dominant "core" of philosophy. These characterizations need
to be countered by all who care about philosophy and about art.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large; line-height: 107%;">Philosophy
of art is primarily philosophy. It is concerned with meeting the needs of the
philosophical side of our culture (i.e. by way of answering the central or
burning questions of philosophy, which themselves are grounded on the burning
questions of the culture and of current humanity).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus philosophy of art (allied with its close
associate, aesthetics) it is in competition and dialectical tension with the
so-called or current "core" areas of philosophy, for example
metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. As we shall see, philosophy of art/aesthetics
poses some significant challenges to these core areas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-63900440174742171862020-03-24T16:27:00.000-07:002020-03-25T16:31:20.386-07:00Taking a Walk with Bob: Stecker's Approach to Everyday Aesthetics<br />
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<o:p><span style="font-size: large;">These comments were originally intended to be given at the American Society for Aesthetics Pacific Division meeting in Berkeley that was to meet last week but was cancelled due to the current pandemic. I rewrote them somewhat after seeing Bob's intended reply. All references are to <i>Intersections of Value: Art, Nature and the Everyday</i> by Robert Stecker, Oxford University Press, 2019.</span></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I went for a walk with Bob yesterday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is such a sensitive observer not only of
art but also of nature and the world of human artifacts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both of us are pluralists about these things.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So there wasn’t much to disagree about, although
I did have one or two worries and some thoughts off in my own direction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, we walked through the U.C. Botanical
gardens, which, although not a pristine natural ecology, certainly offers a lot
of occasions for nature appreciation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Bob explained how there is no one appropriate way to appreciate
nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are many models for nature
appreciation, and each can be useful under some circumstances.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We looked at a potted cactus in the museum store
and we were able to appreciate it even when it was taken out of its natural
context.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We looked at the meadow there
as if it were a landscape painting, and that was enjoyable in its own way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However,
our fiends Allen (Carlson) and Glen (Parsons) were horrified.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They insisted that we look at nature with a lot of scientific knowledge
as background.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bob and I agreed that,
although scientific background can be helpful, it is not necessary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short, knowing the chemical composition of
a flower doesn’t normally enhance our appreciation of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We also agreed that it can sometimes be
aesthetically enhancing to look at something in the natural environment using
one’s imagination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">From there, we moved on to downtown Berkeley, and we turned
our attention to artifacts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bob took
special interest in a frying pan that someone had used to make a satellite dish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some would argue that there is something
aesthetically wrong with this, since being a satellite dish is not the proper
function of a frying pan. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bob took a
somewhat different position.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said
that some artifacts are aesthetically indifferent, having no aesthetic value,
negative or positive, and that this might be an example.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(143) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I was not sure how you can say that
anything is totally without aesthetic value.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In fact I thought that the frying pan satellite dish looked cool. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Isn’t “looking cool,” sometimes at least, an
aesthetic attribute? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bob himself
alluded to the possibility that the satellite dish looked “functionally
interesting.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But isn’t “interesting”
often an aesthetic predicate?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People use
it all the time in artworld contexts. As with nature, this might be an example of appropriate use of imagination.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Bob replied that even though I might find this artifact to
be aesthetically indifferent, I must find some artifacts to be aesthetically
indifferent, neither aesthetically good nor aesthetically bad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought about this for a while.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I agreed that at any particular moment I
might find something aesthetically indifferent, but that at another time I
might not, and this would be true for just about any artifact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course this would introduce an element of subjectivity into everyday aesthetics, but only on this matter of aesthetic
indifference.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also thought one can't say that one prefers a simple cast iron frying pan to other types (as Bob has done) and also say that one finds it aesthetically indifferent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> That would be a contradiction. </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Fortunately, Bob did not think everything that violated its
proper function was aesthetically indifferent. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
example, he directed my attention to a church which had been re-purposed as a
home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He noted that although the church
once had its proper function as a church, it no longer does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bob
thought neither the building’s proper function nor its current capacity
function is uniquely relevant to aesthetic appreciation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He further thought that full appreciation of
the church-as-house requires recognition both of its history and of its current
function.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(143)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I found this idea, which</span> reminded me of his
pluralist approach to appreciation of nature, appealing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought, however, that the idea of “full appreciation” needed the
following clarification, viz. that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a fuller
appreciation is one which draws on more than one model of appreciation, and
this is true both in nature and in artifact appreciation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">But I was disappointed when Bob returned to the claim that
some objects are aesthetically indifferent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Arguing against Carlson and Parsons’ theory that functional beauty is a
matter of something’s look fitting its function, Bob insisted that, generally
speaking, can openers do this but are aesthetically indifferent. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wondered whether this was true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was reminded of Beatrice Wood’s defense of
Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” in which she said that plumbing is one of the great
aesthetic achievements of America. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How
do you respond to people who say that ordinary urinals, and can openers, are
beautiful precisely because their look fits their function?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Le Corbusier and Sullivan tended to say
things like this too. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, this
seems to have been the meaning of the functionalist movement in architecture. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even an ordinary can opener can be
aesthetically interesting if looked at from this perspective. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure, today, unless we are hard-core
functionalists, we do not often find things beautiful just because they fit
their function well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this is a
matter of taste, and taste swings with changes in fashion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Also it is a matter of how one defines "fitting its function."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wondered whether
functionalism has ever been <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">just about</i>
whether things look fit for their function in a narrow sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems to have been more a matter of a
pared-down style that takes certain functional features to, in Nelson Goodman’s sense,
exemplify in certain ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Bob said, no no no, none of this Beatrice Wood talk, if you
want to see a really attractive can opener you have to come with me into this
Williams-Sonoma store.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Turns out that
Bob has a real taste for this sort of stuff. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He thinks that design features of the sort
you see in such a store, ones that have what he calls “formal aesthetic
interest,” are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">necessary </i>for ordinary
artifacts to have aesthetic value.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(146)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I kind of doubt that, as we shall see.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Let’s consider whether, as Bob claims, it is the different
design features of such utensils that makes them aesthetically compelling, i.e.
variable colors and unexpected shapes, features that, as Bob puts it, “please
the eye and engage the mind in forcing it to wonder whether they serve some
purpose or are just decorative.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(146) This does happen sometimes. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what struck me on this occasion was Bob’s
stylistic preference.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He reminded me of
postmodern architects and designers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
opposed to the advocates of functionalism, these figures, prominent in the
1980s, called on us to bring back decoration, without disregarding function
entirely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Now I confess that I’ve purchased one or two things in stores
like this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I kind of feel sleezy
about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe it’s the remains of a
youthful Marxism, but isn’t there something a bit wrong about putting a lot of
value on such commodities? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or does my
discomfort come from a different source?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Could the problem be more one of excess, of gilding the lily, of a kind
of upscale kitsch?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">With these thoughts in mind, we turned to an aisle devoted
to decorated plates.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">We agreed that
attractive designs can enhance the usefulness of these items. (146) </span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">More generally (as Stephen Davies put it) something
is functionally beautiful if it has aesthetic properties that contribute
positively to satisfying its main function.</span><span style="font-size: large;">
</span><span style="font-size: large;">Bob elaborated this in relation to some plates on display.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">He saw them as not only having shapes that
make them better for consuming food but also as having a beautiful visual
pattern that would enhance the experience of a meal.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">He argued that although such patterns do not
make the plates function better as plates, they serve as a secondary aesthetic
function that also contributes to functional beauty. </span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">(147)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Although I understood the distinction, I had a problem with
separating the different aspects of this in my own experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How could the functional beauty aspect be
separated from the aesthetic beauty aspect?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bob says that “the aesthetic
features do not strictly have to enhance the primary function of an artifact to
contribute to its functional value” (148), which seems to be true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what I find more interesting is when he
says that, although “the aesthetic function and the food-containing function of
plates are distinguishable … they are wrapped together in expectations, even
norms perhaps, about the role dinnerware should play in having certain types of
meals.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(148)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What this “wrapped together” means to me is
that the distinction of functions is somewhat artificial. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, it is precisely when functional and
aesthetic beauty are easily distinguished that you have a piece which lacks
unity and appropriate seriousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
may have been the problem with postmodernism, and why the style had such a
short life-span.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The decorative elements
seemed to be added on gratuitously. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">When Bob says, “a design property contributes to functional
aesthetic value if it enhances an aesthetic experience in which the artifact
plays a central role when performing it primary function or functions.” (148) it
is hard to disagree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he also sums up his position in this way: “I claimed that ordinary artifacts have
aesthetic value only when they have formally interesting designs” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(150)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That seems wrong to me since it implies a kind of dualism (function vs.
aesthetically interesting design) and a rejection of the holism he elsewhere
accepts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, sometimes ordinary
objects look visually interesting and have aesthetic value but not for formal
or design reasons, for example a front yard that expresses the owner’s
personality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Because of the joy he took in fancy cutlery I directed Bob
to Chez Panisse, my favorite restaurant in Berkeley.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He thought that in evaluating artifacts we need
to think of their role in an overall way of approaching life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It struck me that this <i>was</i> in line with his
holism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, he focused on the
experience as a whole, and now on life style as a whole. He talked about
experience as embedded in a larger appreciative enterprise, i.e.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“the identification and evaluation of the way
of life in which the artifacts, their use, and the experiences they generate is
understood and evaluated.” (153) And he observed that one does this in
appreciating art as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Bob</span> is also sensitive
to the interplay of different kinds of value cognitive, ethical, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> aesthetic, and to how these values “interact
or conflict in each way of life.” (154)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">But the ethical dimension might pose a problem for the Chez
Panisse experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Bob put it, a life in “which eating
exquisite food in an exquisite environment is highly valued, but there is
complete indifference to the poor and hungry” would be a bad life. (157)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet, although I thought this was probably
true, I wondered how it should play out in practice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Would we be ethically allowed to appreciate
an experience at Chez Panisse while not thinking about the suffering of the
homeless?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Could we enjoy the experience as
long as we tried to do something to help them later? Or does engagement with exquisite aesthetic
experience <i>in itself </i>show complete indifference to suffering?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">After our walk and when I got home I couldn’t stop thinking
about the whole issue surrounding the can opener.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bob uses the example to counter Carlson and
Parsons’ theory that something is functionally beautiful if its form fits its
functions. Their theory is quite technical. Based on Kendall Walton's concept of categories, they argue that an object looks fit when, viewed under a functional category, it is perceived to have no contra-standard features and has, to a high degree, variable features indicative of functionality. In response, Bob writes, </span><span style="font-size: large;">writes, if I may quote at
length, “First, regarding the purported aesthetic property of looking fit, the
fact is that many artifacts are aesthetically indifferent even though they are
well designed to fulfill their function or functions on whichever conception of
function that is relevant to appreciation.</span><span style="font-size: large;">
</span><span style="font-size: large;">Further, the artifact’s ability to fulfill its function may be quite
visible without this making the artifact aesthetically valuable.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">That is, it may have design features that
give it variable features that are indicative of functionality without making
that object aesthetically valuable in any way.</span><span style="font-size: large;">
</span><span style="font-size: large;">The basic metal can and bottle cap opener tends to open cans and remove
bottle caps quite efficiently.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">Because
its design is well known, simple visual inspection may reveal its aptness to
fulfill these functions.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">But this is not
sufficient to make it aesthetically interesting or valuable.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">The can opener looks fit in the sense defined
above" [i.e. “occurs when an object, viewed under a functional concept, has only
standard features"] (144-5).</span><span style="font-size: large;"> "</span><span style="font-size: large;">Hence
looking fit per se is not an aesthetic property, at least not one that has any
implications for aesthetic value." (145)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">What exactly is meant by “looks fit for its function?” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The phrase is quite uncommon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I Googled it, the only users were
Carlson, Parsons, and following them, myself and Bob.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Looking fit” is much more common.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It registers about half a million hits on
Google, most of which have to do with the physical fitness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although it might make sense to simply
stipulate what it means based on Parsons and Carlson I am more interested in
what it might mean torn away from that narrow context, as when we might ask
someone about a bar in a former church, do you think this building looks like
it fits its current function?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is a
natural way to talk about fitting form and function?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">I tend to think that the ordinary houses I see on my walk to
work look like they fit their function if they look good to live in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, as with the plates Bob and I were
looking at, it seems difficult to separate this issue in my mind from whether
or not they look good, period.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is,
if I were looking for a house to buy or rent I would also want it to look good,
to be aesthetically attractive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems
obvious that if something is designed well then it looks good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">What does it mean to say that something looks like it fits
its function?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are we simply saying it
looks like it will do its job?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are we
simply predicting whether it will do its job? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But wouldn’t that be true of most of the
houses I see on my walk, the only exception being the one recently gutted by a
fire (although, to be sure, a walk in gutted districts of a major city, might
find houses that look fit for their function much rarer). <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">So, is functionality just a minimum condition for
attractiveness in houses?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or is
something different happening when we say that something looks good to live in,
which is what I take us to mean when we say a house is functionally beautiful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are we making a prediction about how well the
house will fit its function, such a prediction seeming to have little aesthetic
about it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, again, it is really hard
to separate functionality from aesthetics when it comes to houses once we get
beyond the minimal interpretation of what “functionality” means.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shouldn’t we distinguish here between thin
and thick<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>functionality, only the later
having to do with functional beauty?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again,
what does it mean to say that a can opener looks like it will actually open
cans?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Isn’t this just a prediction of
functionality (a thin one) based on looking at something?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is it really a characterization of something’s
look?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Prediction of functionality is very different from functional beauty,
and functional beauty is ultimately not separable from beauty as such. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Here is another way to look at it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even between two can-openers we can be asked
to choose which is more attractive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Similarly,
between any two houses one can decide which one looks nicer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Looking nice seems at first to have nothing
to do with functionality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what about
“looks nice to live in”?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If a house
looks nice to live in then most would agree that it looks fit to fulfill its
function.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The function of a house is to
BE nice to live in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Admittedly that
might not have anything to do with looking nice: for example it might be nice
to live in this house because the people are nice.) You might say “that house
looks nice but I couldn’t picture living in it,” but normally “looks nice” is
short for looks nice to live in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And to
say that a house looks nice but you couldn’t picture living in it sounds
odd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">So I cannot agree with Bob that there are well-designed
artifacts that are aesthetically indifferent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(Maybe there is a scale here, and ordinary can openers as well as
battery rechargers are relatively indifferent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But isn’t this a problem with our civilization, one that such design
reformers as William Morris and the Bauhaus, as well as the functionalists
generally, rightly tried to oppose?)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An
important function of most artifacts is to look good:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a good knife should not only cut well but
look good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Looking good is one of the functions
of kitchen utensils in general.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Functionality in the thick/rich sense cannot be separated from
aesthetics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although we might be able to
predict by inspecting it that a can opener will be able to open a can
adequately, this has nothing to do with aesthetics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if we look at a can opener and say that
it looks like a nice can opener then we are referring to an aesthetic quality,
albeit a low level one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Nice,” as I have
argued elsewhere, is like “pretty” in this regard:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>one of the neglected low-level aesthetic
qualities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nor does it have to be a
fancy Williams-Sonoma product to have such qualities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Bob denies that the ordinary can opener can be aesthetic
because such things are not aesthetically valuable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet they may have aesthetic properties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, the can opener can still be
nice-looking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Similarly, I wouldn’t say
that a nice looking house is necessarily aesthetically valuable, if by “aesthetically
valuable” you mean something we might find in the architectural guidebooks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Standards for “aesthetically valuable” are a
lot higher than standards for “looks nice,” “pretty,” “looks good,” or
“charming.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Something can have aesthetic
value in the sense of having aesthetic properties without being aesthetically
valuable in the sense of having high level aesthetic values.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such things, however, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>would not be aesthetically indifferent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">However, I like resolving what Carlson and Parsons called the problem of
indeterminacy (how to determine the right function for evaluation) in Bob’s way more than in their way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is, it is not a matter of eliminating all
functions but one, the proper function, but a matter of considering all
functions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Looking at the Plaza Major
one should consider both the original and the current function in order to get
a better, richer, appreciation of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This goes along not only with pluralism but with the idea of combining
different perspectives…a matter already discussed with respect to appreciation
of nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Bob says “to make an
adequate overall judgment one must weigh up all these considerations.” (149)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would go a bit further: one must not only
weigh considerations but synthesize approaches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Bob considers the Zaha Hadid
designed museum at Michigan State.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here,
it is clear that he is concerned with the fact that some functions do not work
well together, for he says that “an evaluation of the overall aesthetic
effectiveness of the museum should consider this defect [that it would work
better in its own space] and weigh it against the building’s virtues.” I am just not surely that weighing here is as important as synthesis, but I am not sure this is a point of real disagreement between us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">On an issue of great concern to everyday aestheticians,
whether we should treat the ordinary as ordinary,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bob answers very sensibly:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“this is a problem if only one way of seeing
the chair is required for aesthetic appreciation” and he replies “this is not
even true for art or for nature, much less for everyday artifacts.” (151)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, on this, Bob and I both take a
pluralist approach and we both think that synthesis of more than one approach
is best. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One can take a relatively
disinterested approach <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and </i>one can
look at it in terms of intentions and context (taking these two stances
alternatively for example).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bob wisely
wants to “leave room for standing back and looking at an artifact in a more
detached manner” (151) but also recognizes that this is just one way of looking
at it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also thinks that in this
regard there is no big difference between aesthetic appreciation of art and of
artifact, although, of course, there <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i>
many differences between the two, some of which he describes. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think that this is a great way of resolving a
continuing debate in everyday aesthetics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Overall, there is no radical break between artifact and art-oriented
aesthetic appreciation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-82625045643225677602020-02-10T15:15:00.000-08:002020-03-30T15:52:47.988-07:00From my unpublished book: Essences in Philosophy and Aesthetics<br />
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: large;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Essences exist.</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Essences exist, but they are not eternal and unchanging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The surprising claim made here is that
essences change historically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since they
change they seem very much unlike Plato’s Forms, and yet, like the Forms, they
are the realities revealed in the deep thinking associated with the “what is
X?” question.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Essences are the main objects of philosophical
understanding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are also accessed
through mythical and artistic investigation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They seem to be eternal and unchanging because they are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as if </i>eternal and unchanging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are emergent historically and
ontologically from, and upon, the natural world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are often emergent upon non-natural
created worlds as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those
non-natural worlds are themselves emergent upon the natural world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Essences, as I will argue, are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not </i>concepts, natural kinds, types,
Forms or Universals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But they are what
Plato was trying to get at when he described Forms (but failed because he
turned them into gods).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are
immanent, not transcendent. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Throughout my discussion of essences my paradigm will be the
essence of art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The phrase "the
essence of art" (as also the phrase "the essence of religion"
and other such phrases) refers to something that can be described, albeit in
different ways, and with different effects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It refers to something that cannot be described literally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nor can it be defined in terms of necessary
and sufficient conditions, although such definitions are often useful as a way
of articulating an understanding of that essence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It does refer to something that can be
described by way of certain <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">seemingly</i>
necessary and sufficient conditions, and by certain metaphors and myths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Essences themselves are metaphor-like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are tensional, interactional, and
capable of multiple interpretation in much the way metaphors are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just as there is a dimension of nature that
corresponds to literally true statements there is an aspect of reality that
corresponds to true metaphors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Good and
powerful definitions of essences are true metaphors. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The metaphoric-like nature of essences points to the idea
that reality in its most significant aspect is a function of a dialectic of the
fictional and the nonfictional, the unreal and the real, the unconcealed and
the concealed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Deep.</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Essences are the objects of investigations that are
deep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Deep investigations are
inexhaustible and comprehensive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They go
beneath mere surface appearance, and they are critical of accepted
foundations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They originate new
fictional worlds, which are also, and at the same time, ways the world is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Deep investigations take into account the entire range of
human experience:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>not just the cognitive
dimension, but also the sensuous, the emotional, and the imaginative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Deep
investigation, then, is phenomenologically deep. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"Essence."</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The word "essence" here, does not refer to natural
phenomena, as in the essence of water.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The search for essences, as understood here, is a search for something
that exists within the lived worlds of conscious and reflective beings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such entities could not exist without
us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Water may have an "essence" under a completely
different sense of that term than that used here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its essence would simply be a matter of what
science is trying to define when it defines water.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One cannot model an essentialist
investigation of human things, such as art and religion, on an essentialist
investigation of purely physical things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is so, first, because human things are generally organic wholes, or
participate in organic wholes, and second because human things are always
constituted, in part, by consciousness. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Culturally Emergent</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Essences are culturally emergent entities, and thus are like
such other culturally emergent entities as minds, institutions, concepts,
meanings, persons, and cultures themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Essences are also biologically emergent through evolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cultural emergence is emergent upon
biological emergence. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Art, for example,
may have been biologically emergent in our species 100,000 years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The essence of art continues to emerge, but
now it is culturally emergent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
cultural emergence of art is on top of its biological emergence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Essences emerge, and continue to emerge:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>they emerge both ontologically and
historically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They emerge upon a
substratum which itself is emergent in many ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, the essence of art is emergent
in part on artists and their activities, and these, in turn, are culturally emergent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Essences are emergent upon, and therefore <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are aspects of</i>, organic wholes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover the parts of organic wholes upon
which essences are emergent also have aspects that are emergent upon the whole,
and therefore upon the whole's emergent essence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Emergence is therefore interactional.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even the material world-as-experienced is
emergent in this way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, the
experienced properties of a patch of paint pigment on a painting are emergent
upon the contextual situation of the pigment within a larger whole (the
painting) and upon the context of that painting within even larger wholes (e.g.
the life of the artist, the historical movement, etc.).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pigment also has emergent properties with
respect to the history of its use and associations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Range of Essences</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We can speak of the essence of a person, an institution, a
painting, or a concept, although the main concern of philosophers is over
essences of things referred to by abstract general terms, such as
"art" and "man."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When does a word refer to an essence?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When it refers to a culturally contested concept, that is, a concept the
nature of which we argue over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other
words, a word refers to an essence we argue over its definition, and this
argument expresses differing overall world-views.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This is one place where essences depart from what Plato
called Forms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Plato considered largeness
itself to be a Form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Insofar as there is
no culturally important debate over the nature of largeness, Largeness is not
an essence in my sense of the word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>However, if there were to be a debate over largeness, as there is over
life or art, then it would be an essence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Instantiation Upon Particulars</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Although culturally emergent entities can have physical
properties, they are unlike physical objects in that they instantiate, and are
embodied in, other particulars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
example, a work of art instantiates the essence of art and is embodied in a
physical object.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The cultural world is
emergent upon the natural world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An
emergent entity is one that is embodied <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in</i>
that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">upon which</i> it is emergent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, the cultural world is also embodied in
the natural world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Particulars become essences when they exemplify that
essence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is perhaps a shocking
claim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We tend to think of particulars
as radically different from essences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But when a particular fully exemplifies beauty, for example, in the
sense that it is a living exemplar, then it is the essence of beauty actualized
and expressed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Essences arise from metaphysical emergence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is an extension of cultural
emergence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just as works of art are
emergent upon persons, communities, and their interactions, so too essences are
emergent upon all of these at a higher level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The essence of art, for example, is emergent upon persons, works of art,
communities, and the art-relevant interactions between these as they relate to
definitional debates. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Metaphysical emergence is not to be confused with
metaphysical transcendence, the concept of which it replaces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The idea of metaphysical emergence is that
entities previously thought to be metaphysically transcendent are actually
immanent within the world of experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>However they are still ontologically distinct from those things upon
which they are emergent. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The idea of foundationalism is here reversed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The metaphysical does not form the foundation
of the structured edifice of knowledge or of being.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather it is the crown of various events of
emergence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, since metaphysical
entities (essences) are organically related to the entities upon which they are
emergent, they can also be seen as "within" these too. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b>The
cultural world is itself made up of emergent entities directly, and upon the
natural world indirectly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, there
is no one-to-one emergence on physical objects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For example, a sculpture is not one-to-one emergent upon a
sculpture-shaped physical object.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Artworks are emergent upon, and embodied in, the materials of the art
object and their relations to artists and public, all of which are culturally
emergent entities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Essences,
Concepts and Forms<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As I said earlier, essences are neither concepts nor
Forms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it is helpful to understand
them as in some respects very like each.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For example, philosophers often see themselves as analyzing
concepts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But on one common
interpretation of concepts this would mean that they are analyzing something in
their minds, or at least something shared by many minds in a culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is not what analyzing concepts really
is since if it were it would be the same kind of work that lexicographers do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or maybe it would be that plus what
psychoanalysts do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if you have an
analysis of the essence of art, for example, you analyze art itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same time, in analyzing art itself you
are analyzing some phenomena arranged and shaped under the word “art” and this
is very much like what we mean by analyzing the concept of art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is why such analysis is inevitably
historically situated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To analysis the
essence of art is to participate in the ongoing dialectic of that essence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To create art seriously is also to do that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-28519427416378859912020-02-10T15:07:00.001-08:002020-02-10T15:07:29.908-08:00Mark Johnson's The Aesthetics of Meaning and Thought: and the neglect of beauty<span style="font-size: large;">There is little I disagree with in Mark Johnson. I have been reading his <i>The Aesthetics of Meaning and Thought: The Bodily Roots of Philosophy, Science, Morality, and Art </i> (2018). Johnson is every bit as much a Deweyan as I am. That makes the little areas in which we might disagree interesting (to me). What I think generally (our one point of disagreement) is that, with all his emphasis on meaning, Johnson neglects, or misses out on, the importance of beauty. So he says, "Qualities are what we live for - the fresh, soft, translucent greens of leaves in early spring contrasted with the hardened, fatigued, dessicated greens in early fall..." (227) "This is the stuff of our lives." (227) There is something wrong here. It is not the qualities we live for but rather the ways in which these qualities can be experienced as enhanced in a pleasurable way, or, to put it another way, experienced as objects of beauty or sublimity. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Something is telling about Johnson's focus on contrast. Contrast between qualities is interesting, and one may think about the contrast between two qualities of leaves in different seasons. But this is not the "stuff of our lives." The stuff of our lives is the quality of the leaves we experience <i>now </i>(say, in the Spring) and it is only really stuff of our lives, only really important for us, if it is experienced as beautiful. After giving a poem by William Stafford, Johnson writes (by way of summarizing the point of the poem), "The air, the water, the memories---all cool and refreshing. And while it lasts, there you are, too, present, just present, taking it in, feeling the morning and the world and peace. And that is the meaning of it all." (227) Well, you might think that a particular intense aesthetic experience is the meaning of it all, but again it is not the qualities alone by themselves. <i> The qualities have a quality: and it is that quality, commonly called beauty, that gives life meaning. </i> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Johnson may be right that this is essentially Dewey. As he puts it "Dewey's claim about the primordial qualitativeness of our lives would seem almost trivial, were it not for that fact that it is hard to think of a philosophy that does justice to this insight" i.e. that qualities are the "stuff of meaningful experience." (227) Johnson stresses the idea of the prevasive unifying quality in Dewey. He refers to this as "Dewey's big idea." And there is reason to think it is! </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">But notice this passage from Johnson, which refers to our ability to immediately recognize a Picasso in a museum: "there is a pervasive unifying quality of this particular work you are now engaging....[a]nd the meaning of that particular work is realized, as a horizon of possibilities for meaning, in and through its qualitative unity" (231). Johnson then quotes from Dewey. But what I wish to stress here, and I will give the quote from Dewey to show this, is that the quote <i>agrees with me and not with Johnson.</i> The quote does not support the position that Johnson is trying to support...i.e. that it is all about meaning. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Here is the quote from Dewey: "The total overwhelming impression comes first, perhaps in a seizure by a sudden glory of the landscape, or by the effect upon us of entrance into a cathedral when dim light, incense, stained glass and majestic proportions fuse in one indistinguishable whole. We say with truth that a painting strikes us. There is an impact that precedes all definite recognition of what it is about." (Dewey, 1987, 150) (Johnson, 231). The point is that this impact precedes meaning, precedes "what it is about." Focus on the term "sudden glory." The pervasive unifying quality is precisely the profound beauty or perhaps sublimity of the object. (Or at least it is completely bound up with that beauty.) </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So it is missing something to say that, for Dewey, "art reveals, through immediate presentation of qualities unified in a comprehensive whole, the meaning and significance of some aspect of the world." (232) This is true but it is not meaning alone that makes experience meaningful. Beauty, "the glory of it," is what counts, and without that, art, and any aesthetic experience, would be almost pointless, and certainly incomplete. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Another quote from Dewey, also quoted by Johnson regarding the qualitative unity is: "There is no name to be given it. As it enlivens and animates, it is the spirit of the world of art." (Dewey, 1987, 193) The animation, the making it so that we feel the work as something highly real: this is what we mean when we say that it has an aesthetic aura (the term I prefer somewhat to "beauty"). </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Finally, at the end of his chapter on "Dewey's Big Idea for Aesthetics," Johnson makes clear what his problem is, that he thinks aesthetic theory fetishizes "the aesthetic." It is quite possible that he would think that this is what I am doing here. (240) But his path is perhaps more dangerous: he has reduced the aesthetic to the meaningful. He is worried that the aesthetic road will separate art from life "as if ordinary living was not an aesthetic undertaking" ---and I agree that this would be bad. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">He has an additional worry. He says, "It is perfectly acceptable to speak, as Dewey sometimes does, of 'aesthetic experience' when we are trying to observe that certain experiences are marked out as meaningful unities....But what is not acceptable is to treat 'the aesthetic' as some quality or feature that descends ....upon a certain select set of experiences." (240) I get the worry. But it is equally not acceptable to reduce the aesthetic to merely meaningful unities...unless, of course, the word "meaningful" packs within it the idea of aesthetic experience. The quality of the aesthetic does not "descend": it is those experiences in their (usually highly pleasurable) intensity. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But Johnson's final paragraph begins with a sentence with which I fully agree: "Dewey's entire philosophical orientation is founded on his insight that all experience, perception, understanding, imagining, thinking, valuing, and acting begins and ends in the aesthetic dimensions of human experience." (241) And I will end on that positive note. </span>Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-58031001756507600042019-11-15T11:44:00.000-08:002019-11-15T11:45:42.536-08:00Gyorgy Lukacs "The Ideology of Modernism" and everyday aesthetics<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This work, first published in 1962, is often anthologized in books about continental aesthetics. I will be working from the version in <i>Continental Aesthetics: Romanticism to Postmodernism: An Anthology.</i> ed. Richard Kearney and David Rasmussen. This piece could just be seen as a rant against the modernist novel, particularly Joyce, Beckett, Musil, Faulkner, and Kafka. It might seem simply a matter of taste: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács </span><span style="font-size: medium;">preferring "realist writers" such as Mann to these others. But of course there are deeper issues of competing ideologies here. And then there are issues of competing </span><i>Marxist</i><span style="font-size: medium;"> ideologies too! </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács' Marxism is very different from that of Marcuse and Adorno. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"> As I do not label myself a Marxist I see no need to determine who among the Marxist aestheticians are truly Marxist. What really interests me about </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> is relevance to my leitmotif of everyday aesthetics. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">The issue of everyday aesthetics for Marxists is pretty straightforward. In capitalist conditions everyday life is alienated. This alienation is based, of course, on exploitation both in the workplace and via manipulation of needs through advertising and marketing. Everyday life, especially for the working class, is aesthetically deprived. In an ideal, communist, society everyone would produce in a non-alienated way according to "laws of beauty" as Marx put it in the </span><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm">1844 Manuscripts</a><span style="font-size: medium;">. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">For </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> the issue of the everyday comes up in two contexts, first in reference to life in a capitalist society and second in relation to Freud's notion of the psychopathology of everyday life. Although he is mainly interested in criticizing a certain type of novel he is also interested in the main problems of Marxism, i.e. in how to explain the world in materialist terms and how to promote socialist revolution, and he situates his critique within that other interest. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">So the modernist text is based, he argues, on an ideology that stresses a static notion of human nature over a dynamic one. It does not allow for a portrayal of human development in conditions of a dialectic between the subjective self and objective conditions. In particular, Modernism (the name I will use here for the ideology of modernist literature) argues, implicitly, that humans have an unchanging human nature, and this human nature is that which is described as thrownness or being "thrown-into-being" by Heidegger. It is the experience of being ontologically alone: our essential and existential solitariness. Of course the view is not only that one is alone in relation to others but also that one is abandoned by God (since there is no God). (I would note that although I often enjoy modernist literature and find Heidegger intriguing, I join </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács in rejecting this view of human nature.)</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">This view is also combined with a view of the nature of possibility. For the Modernist, possibility is only abstract: it is never concrete. But the realist novelist (and also </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács)</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> wishes to stress the need for <i>both</i> abstract possibility and concrete possibility. Concrete possibility is based on the historical conditions of our being. Abstract possibility seems infinite, concrete possibility much more limited. So, for the Realist (we will use this term here as referring to the theory that competes with the Modernist: interestingly, the Realist does not have to be a Marxist), man and human culture are both historically situated. The realist novel then stresses not subjective time alone (unlike the Modernist) but a dialectic of subjective and objective time. Similarly the Realist stresses a dialectic of the subjective and the objective in general. We should avoid the mistake, a form of vulgar Marxism, that would reduce the subjective to the objective. Retaining subjectivity allows for the possibility of human choice: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> is no determinist. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">One of the problems </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> finds with Modernism is that it offers as a solution to alienation a retreat into psychopathology. Psychopathology is no solution to the problems posed by capitalist society. For a Modernist like Musil, if you do not "run with the pack," i.e. join in the capitalist rat race, your only alternative is becoming a neurotic. Modernism, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> thinks, naturally leads to naturalism, i.e. a literary style that stresses sordid details of everyday life. As Alfred Kerr put it, "what is poetic in everyday life? Neurotic aberration, escape from life's dreary routing." And, as </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> observes, this implies "the poetic necessity of the pathological [deriving] from the prosaic quality of life under capitalism." </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> sees a continuity between this older naturalism and contemporary modernism: "Kerr's description suggests that in naturalism the interest in psychopathology sprang from an esthetic need, it was an attempt to escape from the dreariness of life under capitalism." (227) </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> sees this as evolving from "merely decorative function, bringing color into the greyness of reality" into a "moral protest of capitalism." (227) </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">The second point of contact with the everyday comes up a couple paragraphs later. There, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> turns to Freud, whose psychoanalysis he sees as an obvious expression of this obsession with the pathological. He sees Modernism and psychoanalysis as essentially the same. And Freud's starting point was 'everyday life.' Freud explains slips of the tongue, daydreams (and dreams as well) in terms of psychopathology. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> thinks rather that one should see mental abnormality as a "deviation from a norm." </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">So, on his view, "this is not strictly a scientific or literary-critical problem. It is an ideological problem, deriving from the ontological dogma of the solitariness of man." (228) </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> contrasts Modernism to Realism which is based on Aristotle's idea of man as a political animal, and which produces a new typology of humans "for each new phase in the evolution of society." The value of Realism is that it sees contradictions both within society and within the individual in terms of dialectic. In the realist literature of Shakespeare, Balzac, and Stendhal "the average man is simply a dimmer reflection of the contradictions always existing in man and society." (228) And this is made impossible if you believe man is thrown into Being. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">In talking about traditional realists </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> is not necessarily talking about the kind of novel he would like to see today or the kind of ideology he most favors. (Isn't it odd that someone who considers himself part of the wave of the future is going to hold up much older writers as his ideal? Wouldn't those writers, from a Marxist perspective, reflect Bourgeois ideology of their own time?) Indeed he sees these writers as producing an "abstract polarity of the eccentric and the socially average" and he believes that this "leads in modernism to a fascination with morbid eccentricity" which becomes "the necessary complement of the average." Further, this polarity "is held to exhaust human potentiality," which of course he would reject. What is puzzling is how a realism he favors can lead into the modernism he does not. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: medium;">Another issue is one of competing approaches to sensuous details. Although, in discussing naturalism, </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács tends to focus on the ugly details of daily life under capitalism (especially for the worker), the naturalist can also be concerned about the aesthetics of everyday life in a positive way. Tom Huhn quotes from Zola's Nana in connection with this issue: "The company went upstairs to take coffee in the little drawing room, where a couple of lamps shed a soft glow over the pink hangings and the lacquer and old gold of the knick-knacks. At that hour of the evening the light played discreetly over coffers, bronzes and china..." and so forth. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;"> Huhn, Tom (2000), "A Modern Critique of Modernism: Lukács, Greenberg, and Ideology." </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Constellations,</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;"> 7: 178-196. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e; font-size: large;">Huhn suggests that for </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e; font-size: large;">Lukács what is absent is cohesion, whicyh is compensated by a "surfeit of stimulation...a smorgasbord of sensation" (Huhn's essay is excellent on </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e; font-size: large;">Lukács's Hegelianism: I cannot do justice to that here.) Huhn interprets </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e; font-size: large;">Lukács as seeing naturalism in terms of mere sensation as opposed to rich experience. But it seems to me that there is something redemptive in a positive everyday aesthetic as found in this naturalist description.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">At the end of his essay </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;"> says of Kafka (as paradigmatic modernist) that "He has emptied everyday life of meaning by using the allegorical method; he has allowed detail to be annihilated by his transcendental nothingness" and this "prevents him from investing observed detail with typical significance." In short, Kafka cannot "achieve that fusion of the particular and the general which is the essence of realistic art" since his aim is to raise the individual detail to the level of abstraction. (234)</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">What are the implications of this for an aesthetics of everyday life. Consider Modernism and Realism as competing approaches to that aesthetics (and not just towards the aesthetic valuation of novels that portray life). Much of what </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács says is true and yet one cannot follow him in outright condemning Modernist approaches to the everyday. Modernism does seem to shed light on experience by focusing even more on the details of the everyday (only thinking in terms of the "typical" can blind us to the sensuousness of the particular). If, as Huhn suggests, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;"> would reject the passage from Zola, it is because he would reject an approach to everyday life that is sometimes light, sometimes legitimately concerned with sensuous surfaces. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Ultimately Lukács distinction between abstract and concrete possibility hides something more fundamental. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;"> is, finally, a moralist and a moralist requires that the concrete possibility be understood in a moralist way, and thus label any other approach to concrete possibility as "abstract." There is a sense in </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1d1e;">Lukács that a novel cannot be good unless it in some way promotes a socialist revolution, and this seems severely limiting to the novel. Similarly, he would no doubt require that we approach everyday life in a moralistic way as well. I cannot join him there.</span></span><br />
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Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-56704219635793166382019-11-12T17:05:00.004-08:002019-11-12T17:05:56.494-08:00The god and its relation to Heidegger's theory of art<span style="font-size: large;">I have posted before on <i>The Origin of the Work of Art</i> <a href="http://aestheticstoday.blogspot.com/2014/04/heidegger-on-everyday-aesthetics.html">here</a> and <a href="http://aestheticstoday.blogspot.com/2018/11/heideggers-origin-of-work-of-art-in.html">here.</a> So this can be taken as an addendum. I am mainly interested in this quote: "We believe we are at home in the immediate circle of beings. That which is, is familiar, reliable, ordinary. Nevertheless, the clearing is pervaded by a constant concealment in the double form of refusal and dissembling. At bottom, the ordinary is not ordinary; it is extra-ordinary, uncanny." (197 in Richard Kearney and David Rasmussen Continental Aesthetics: An Antology, 2001) So it seems, for what it is worth, that Heidegger is on my side in the debate between the what I have called those who stress the ordinariness of the ordinary and those who do not. But I do not want to appeal to authority here. I just find Heidegger useful.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A key issue is the role of "the god." Here is my admittedly crude take on this. For the world/earth dynamic to work a god must be projected. The god provides a center for the holy precinct. But the god does not have to be an ancient Greek god. The god is whatever makes Being shine. I hypothesize that the god in the Van Gogh shoes example is the peasant woman, although a case could be made for the shoes as belonging to a peasant woman. "The god" on this account is very much like what Kant calls an "aesthetic idea." The shoes in Van Gogh's painting are an aesthetic idea. The god also plays a similar role to Nietzsche's description of Dionysus on stage in ancient Greek tragedy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Something like this can happen in everyday life. In everyday life sometimes a thing makes the surrounding world uncanny. If that happens, the thing is "the god." </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This happens in thinking too. A concept that symbolizes everything and seems to focus one's ideas: that can be the god for a thinker. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Of course this analysis is not inconsistent with atheism. "God" can be replaced by some other term and does not imply literal belief. If you are somewhat successful in finding "the god" you make the world shine again in the same way that the surroundings of the temple when it is set up takes on Being. When Heidegger says we have not been listening to Being.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Note how also Heidegger and Danto are opposed. Danto's Artworld is cut off from the world. The main disadvantage of that is that there is no earth/world dynamic. There is no wonder that beauty is lost since beauty arises along with Truth and Being in the earth/world dynamic. I side with Heidegger on this one.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-17795977099706659962019-11-07T15:28:00.001-08:002019-11-07T15:28:47.533-08:00Marcuse's The Aesthetic Dimension, and everyday aesthetics<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The key passage in Marcuse’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Aesthetic Dimension</i> (originally 1977 in German, 1978 in
English…Marcuse’s first work in aesthetics, a response to Adorno and Benjamin) for
everyday aesthetics is:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“In<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>this sense art is ‘art for art’s sake’ inasmuch
as the aesthetic form reveals tabooed and repressed dimensions of reality:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>aspects of liberation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The poetry of <span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a;">Mallarmé</span> </span></span><span style="font-size: large;">is an extreme example;
his poems conjure up modes of perception, imagination, gestures – a feast of
sensuousness which shatters everyday experience and anticipates a different
reality principle.”</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">(239)</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Mallarmé</span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">of course represents Modernism and
he is precisely the person attacked by Lukacs.</span><span style="font-size: large;">
</span><span style="font-size: large;">The passage for me is key in that art for art’s sake becomes something a
bit different from what we might see in Clive Bell.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">It is a liberation, a new reality principle,
and also a feast of sensuousness.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">So the
shattering of the everyday is directed to a new liberated sensuous
everyday.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">I am not so much interested
here in fine art as in what the art does to life:</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">it reveals something repressed and points to
a new reality principle.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">This is the
bohemian revolt, the hippie revolt which was formed in the early seventies.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">(1977 is really 1969-74 here.)</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">So, “a
pleasure in decay, in destruction, in the beauty of evil; a celebration of the
asocial, of the anomic” is itself the “secret revolution of the bourgeois
against his own class.”</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">This is Kerouac's </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">On the Road,</i><span style="font-size: large;"> Ginsberg,
Burroughs.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">Marcuse also describes this
as “ingression of the primary erotic-destructive forces which explode the
normal universe of communication and behavior.”</span><span style="font-size: large;">
</span><span style="font-size: large;">(240)</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">This “rebellion against the
social order” reveals Eros and Thanatos as “beyond all social control” and
“invokes needs and gratifications which are essentially destructive….even
death and the devil are enlisted as allies in the refusal to abide by the law
and order of repression.”</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">And Marcuse
believes this is “one of the historical forms of critical aesthetic transcendence.”</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">If we grant some of the Marxist fundamentals,
i.e. that our capitalist system is one of exploitation and repression as well
as alienation and false consciousness, then it is absurd to construct a theory
of everyday aesthetics where the dominant model of the everyday is simply accepted.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">Avant-garde art shows the way, i.e. material
(not spiritual) transcendence.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">What is
the everyday?</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">It is the experience of
what is conditioned by the social.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">So
if art transcends the specific social content and form it does so by breaking
the ordinary everyday.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">The ordinary
everyday tells us (i.e. those in my culture) that driving a car is
inevitable:</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">but at the same time we need
to be broken out of this to survive the onslaught of global warming.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">Art can help by revealing libidinous energies
that are repressed by a culture of conformity.</span><span style="font-size: large;">
</span><span style="font-size: large;">“Art is committed to that perception of the world which alienates
individuals from their functional existence and performance in society – it is
committed to an emancipation of sensibility, imagination, and reason in all
spheres of subjectivity and objectivity.”</span><span style="font-size: large;">
</span><span style="font-size: large;">(237)</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">So art is committed to
transformation of the everyday.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
<br />Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-81248130264882644822019-11-05T17:30:00.001-08:002019-11-07T17:13:41.899-08:00Walter Benjamin The Everyday in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction<span style="font-size: large;">Walter Benjamin's famous "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" is mainly about art. But it can also relate to everyday aesthetics. After all, if perception changes with historical conditions so too will perception of the everyday. There seem to be the following changes on his account. First, the authenticity of the landscape changes. The aura of landscape may be reduced as film takes over our representation of landscape. Second, magazine illustrations and advertisements, common objects in everyday experience, change not only our perception of artworks but also our lived phenomenological space. In the age of mechanical reproduction these things take more prominence. They also influence the way we perceive the things they represent. In the subsequent age of digital reproduction the images we see on our screens play an important new role in our everyday experience. Third, the very reduction of cult, ritual and aura in the age of mechanical reproduction means that this also plays less a role in everyday experience. Fourth, Benjamin's account of the architectural, taken as a matter not of contemplation but of distraction, changes (or describes a change in) our perception of architectural space on an everyday basis.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">However these are almost random matters: perhaps the most significant is just the reduction of aura generally speaking (and not just the aura of art). Of course aura is mainly associated with cult experience or experience in an artworld context. But let's say that aura occurs in everyday life outside of cult experience. Benjamin himself discusses what he calls natural aura, i.e. "the unique phenomenon of a distance" which happens for example when you follow a mountain range with your eyes. So, if there is less contemplation, less aura, and less distance, then this is true not simply in the art gallery or museum but in everyday life. Benjamin speaks of the urge of the masses to get hold of things at close range, including picture magazines and newsreels. (He seems to revel in this, finding it a good thing.) If there is now a "sense of the universal equality of things" and aura is destroyed everywhere then even the natural aura is destroyed. Uniqueness and permanence are abandoned for the transitory. Tradition is "liquidated." Ritual is going to be replaced by politics, although there is a deep ambiguity here since later in the essay it is clear that fascism as much as socialism is the politics that replaces ritual....and fascism really just introduces another sort of ritual...and isn't there a fascism of socialism as well? The emancipation of the everyday from aura, cult and ritual into politics seems dubious in this regard. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">There are other points in the essay that glance off of the everyday but which are worth considering. In section VII the dispute of painting vs. photography is discussed as also the question of whether film is art. Benjamin stresses that various theorists who have tried to make film out to be art have done so in a forced way, for example in holding it to be a kind of hieroglyph or a kind of prayer. Most interesting for our purposes, at the end of the section Werfel is mentioned as saying that (in Benjamin's words) "it was the sterile copying of the external world with its streets, interiors, stations, restaurants, motorcars, and beaches which until now had obstructed the elevation of the film to the realm of art." Werfel then says that the true meaning of film is to express "all that is fairylike, marvelous, supernatural." Benjamin mocks this. But perhaps what film does in such a meaningful way (take <i>Badlands</i> as an example) is to film the everyday in such a way as to make it marvelous and supernatural-like. This is what Benjamin misses, that mechanical reproduction can actually assist in the aestheticization of the everyday. Heidegger speaks of us with disapproval as no longer listening to Being and not allowing the reliability of equipment to shine through in truth, something that great art helps us to remedy. Perhaps a way out of our current alienation (an alienation that is markedly of the 21st century sort) is to open ourselves up to the aura in the everyday. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">One place where the everyday is explicitly mentioned in in section XIII where Benjamin takes an interested in Freud, especially in his <i>Psychopathology of Everyday Life,</i> a book which he sees as isolating and making analyzable "things which had heretofore floated along unnoticed in the broad stream of perception." Benjamin observes that this kind of analysis leads to a "deepening of apperception." Through Freud we see the everyday differently. And film does something similar on Benjamin's account: "behavior items shown in a movie can be analyzed much more precisely and from more points of view..." Further, "[b]y close-ups of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring commonplace milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film... extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives..." And then, "[o]ur taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly" until film burst this prison-world open. With the close-up, space expands; with slow motion, movement is extended and new forms are revealed with photographic enlargement. Thus, "an unconsciously penetrated space is substituted for a space consciously explored by man." And then we get a different view even of walking or of reaching for a lighter: "[t]he act of reaching for a lighter or a spoon is familiar routine, yet we hardly know what really goes on between hand and metal..." Film reveals this. In short, "the camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses" and we see the world differently. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">We also learn in section X that film can break down the distinction between art and life: "Some of the players whom we meet in Russian films are not actors in our sense but people who portray themselves - and primarily in their work process." I want to return however to a strange thing in Section VI. First we see that there is some cult value in photography, it is in the photograph of the human face: there is an aura which emanates from early photographs, and these have "an incomparable beauty." Benjamin insist that exhibition value is superior to such ritual value, although this seems strange since exhibition value is value of a commodity, exhibitions being capitalist market places mainly. There is no surprise that aura is lost in such a market-place, but is this an improvement over the aura of the photograph. Benjamin speaks of the "incomparable significance of Atget." But I think he gets Atget wrong. He likens Atget's photographs of deserted city streets to crime scene photographs. But there are no dead bodies in these photographs. This is not Weegee. "With Atget, photographs become standard evidence for historical occurrences, and acquire a hidden political significance." They demand not "free-floating contemplation" but stir the viewer in a new way. I frankly do not see the crime scene or the politics. Atget gives us something for contemplation, the deserted city streets. Now, so many years later, they are also nostalgic...a Paris that no longer exists. They have an aura. They do challenge the viewer in a unique way but not a way so different from the way we look at early photographs of human faces, which Benjamin takes to have cult value. More importantly, they train us for experiencing the everyday. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The last section is about architecture, but in a way that brings in the everyday. Benjamin wants to make the complaint that the masses demand distraction (whereas art demands concentration) into something more positive. Whereas the man who concentrates is absorbed by a work of art the "distracted mass absorbs the work of art" and this happens in architecture whose reception "is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction." This seems, at least on the face of it obviously false. If you are distracted you are not paying attention, and yet to enjoy the fine aspects of a work of architecture even if you are a member of "the masses" you still need to pay attention. No one will appreciate a work of Frank Lloyd Wright if they are all the time distracted by their Facebook activity. But Benjamin goes on to say that "[b]uildings are appropriated in a twofold manner: by use and by perception - or rather, by touch and sight. Such appropriation cannot be understood in terms of the attentive concentration of a tourist before a famous building." There may be some truth in this; the tourist experience is only one way to appreciate architecture. "On the tactile side there is no counterpart to contemplation on the optical side. Tactile appropriation is accomplished not so much by attention as by habit" and in architecture habit also determines optical reception, i.e. "less through rapt attention than by noticing the object in incidental fashion." To bring back in distraction: the distracted person can also form habits. His conclusion is that this also happens in film where the "public is an examiner, but an absent minded one." </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I find nothing helpful in this idea: perhaps the English word "distraction" is a hindrance here. However it is certainly the case that our experience is architecture is just one of rapt attention but also in the incidental and habitual mode...it may only be in the back of our consciousness that this building we walk by is well proportioned. There are in between states as well: today I noticed an architectural element on my campus, a winding pathway, I had never noticed before, and this was delightful even though neither a matter for rapt attention or for incidental and habitual awareness. Indeed, I think that this sort of awareness is more important architecturally in terms of everyday life than the other two. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-20778179785324503162019-10-17T15:23:00.000-07:002019-10-17T15:41:56.291-07:00Roland Barthes' Death of the Author<span style="font-size: large;">In a way the original question about a sentence from Balzac's <i>Sarrasine </i>is the most interesting part of "The Death of the Author." Barthes asks who is speaking the sentence: the hero, Balzac as expressing his philosophy of Woman, Balzac as expressing literary ideas on femininity, universal wisdom, or Romantic psychology. It is not surprising that he next says that we will never know. But then he tells us that "writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin." There is no real support for this throughout the essay. Certainly the Sarrasine example by itself is not sufficient. Mainly he tells us that some modernist writers (Mallarme, Valery, Proust, Brecht, all notable authors) are suspicious of the author, that the author is somehow associated with capitalism, that linguistic theory somehow compels us to accept the thesis (although there is nothing about the idea of performatives that excludes authors who do the performing), and so forth. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Barthes replaces the author with the scriptor, and then says "the modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing" and further "there is no other time than that of the enunciation and every text is eternally written <i>here and now.</i>" This is just mythology. The scriptor has no empirical or phenomenological presence. We cannot find him. To be fair, though, one can take the text as standing on its own without any causal roots or history. This is a methodology that can be useful. But note that the scriptor is not even needed metaphysically. If all there is is the text eternally already written then why posit a scriptor WHO DOES NOTHING? But if Barthes is just trying to convince us that writers should never complain that their hands "are too slow for [their] thought" and that they shouldn't bother to polish their productions, this just doesn't seem like good advice.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">One can agree that the text does not have "a single 'theological' meaning" without accepting the rest of what Barthes says. Why should anyone accept that the text is "a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash." Surely originality is common. It is only great originality that is rare. Sure, there are passages in any text that refer back to earlier times or have been used before in other contexts. The idea of many writings blending and clashing in one writing is a pretty idea, but how can it be spelled out? Similarly, to say that, "the text is a tissue of quotations" is just to make a clever metaphor. Some texts probably are tissues of quotations. Most are not. To say that they all are is hard to translate into something that makes sense. One might say that when Barthes says these quotations are "drawn from the innumerable centres of culture" this explains it. To be sure, we can trace many influences.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Is that all that is being said here? Not at all, since Barthes actually cuts off the text from its history. If the writer's "only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with the others, in such a way as never to rest on any one of them" then how do we distinguish a writer who really does this (i.e. a typical plagiarist) and one who does not, who really does, for example, rest on one idea, i.e. defends a thesis. Barthes rejects the idea that the writer expresses himself, for "the inner 'thing' he thinks to 'translate' is itself only a ready-formed dictionary, in words only explainable through other words, and so on indefinitely..." I agree that it is naive to speak of expression in terms of translating something inner. It seems unfounded however just to assume that whatever is expressed is just some internal dictionary. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Barthes replaces the author with the scriptor. This being "no longer bears within him passions, humours, feelings, impressions, but rather this immense dictionary from which he draws a writing that can know no halt..." Why should we believe that? Why throw out my entire internal life and replace it with a dictionary that, by its nature, only consists of words? What is that motive for this erasure? We often think of Barthes as a kind of humanist, but he seems more intent on making us into language machines without souls. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Again, why should we believe that "life never does more than imitate the book, and the book itself is only a tissue of signs, an imitation that is lost, infinitely deferred"? How can we be serious that events of life are just imitations of an internal dictionary? I can understand, again, that Barthes thinks it a myth to believe that we can arrive at a final answer to the question "what is the meaning of X" and yet we do find answers to that question, ones that work well, have elegance, fit the data, and so forth. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Barthes' motive may be clearer when he says, "To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish a final signified, to close the writing." But what if it isn't? To say that a text has an author (no need for the sly capital A) is to impose a limit on the text (it does not have another author, for example) but it is not necessarily to impose a final signification since there are many possible interpretations for whatever an author might say. This leads me to believe that Barthes is just laboring under a false dichotomy, or committing the black or white fallacy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">He goes on to attack criticism. Of course, if there were a final meaning or explanation for every text then criticism would be a science, and that cannot be so. And of course if criticism were just a matter of "discovering the Author ....beneath the work" then it would be overly limited. Gadamer also opposes this idea, although his replacement, the fusion of horizons, makes much more sense than Barthes. I agree that it is naive to believe that when the Author has been found the text has been explained. But explanation is a complicated thing and, at the very least, one cannot leave out the author when explaining a text. Nor can one leave out "society, history, psyche" or the historical search for liberty and justice, as Barthes does when he incorporates these into his idea of Author. The best one can say for Barthes is that he suggests one methodology. For example, when he says, "everything is to be disentangled, nothing deciphered" this is a rule one could follow with some possible success.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">One is tempted to see the entire essay as just a symbol for the rebelliousness of the 60s, for example when he says "by refusing to assign a 'secret,' an ultimate meaning, to the text (and to the world as text), liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases - reason, science, law." Well, first, refusing God is all fine and good, but it is not at all clear what refusing reason, science and law would even mean. It is also fine to refuse to "fix meaning" but what exactly would it mean to fix meaning? I go the library and see a long shelf of books on Nietzsche. Would fixing meaning be a matter of refusing to publish any more books on Nietzsche? Or would it be to simply accept one book on Nietzsche, one that contains all of the fixed interpretations of all of Nietzsche's writings. Who would do that? How would it happen? In short, fixing meaning is not really a problem since it doesn't really happen, or only does happen in limited contexts (as when the professor insists that the meaning is this and you have to remember that for the exam). </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">At the beginning of this comment I said that the first part of the essay was the most interesting. But then the conclusion insists that <b>no one </b>says the sentence. Instead the reader is held up as opposed to the writer. It is not at all clear how that gives us anything of value since the internal life of the reader would be erased along with the internal life of the writer. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The value of this essay must come mainly from its point of inspiration. Before it was read, people felt oppressed by the idea that the text must be explained by going to the Author's meaning. Now however literary writers can be inspired by the idea that "a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation" and that all of this is focused on the reader, and not the author. I am not sure why a dialogue between the reader and the author is no longer the point at issue. But I can see it as freeing that the reader is allowed some more flexibility in reading especially in finding significance in the work that relates to his/her life. But it gets silly when he says "quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination." And then he admits that this is nowhere, that my talk above about relating to one's life is meaningless, since the reader is deconstructed too: "this destination cannot any longer be personal: the reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted." Wait! Why do we even need a reader to do that. The field that holds all of that together is called, guess what, "the text." "The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author": but of course the reader born is a nobody. </span>Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-73439838638642953052019-10-17T14:22:00.004-07:002019-10-17T14:22:36.547-07:00Hegel on Architecture and Sculpture<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I had previously discussed Hegel's three stages of art in this blog <a href="http://aestheticstoday.blogspot.com/2015/03/hegels-three-stages-of-art-but.html">here.</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Hegel discusses sculpture both when discussing the classical
from of art and when, in a section on the arts, he specifically addresses
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The classical form eliminates the
two defects we find in the symbolic form of art, first that the idea is
presented in the symbolic work indeterminately or abstractly, and therefore, second,
the relation of meaning and shape is defective and merely abstract in such
art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But classical art is "the free
and adequate embodiment of the Idea," the Idea being elsewhere called the
Absolute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So its shape is particularly
appropriate to the Idea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also the Idea
here comes into "free and complete harmony."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I take it that since the Absolute or the Idea
evolve in history through the action of humans, this means that the Idea itself
achieves harmony in the classical form of art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The classical art-form therefore completes the Ideal of art, which is
the harmonious relation of concrete sensuous form and concrete spiritual
content.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hegel notes that it is not
enough to have the content correspond with form (“external configuration”)
since this would mean that "every portrayal of nature, every cast of
features, every neighborhood, flower, scene" would be classical because of
its form/content congruity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the
content is different in classical art since it is the concrete Idea which is
concretely spiritual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So, he asks, what in nature "belongs to the spiritual
in and for itself"?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this case
the subjective Concept, the spirit of art, has found the shape appropriate to
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This shape is the human form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Idea as spiritual assumes this shape when
it proceeds to "temporal manifestation." <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I take this to mean that the Absolute
naturally arises at this point in the course of historical dialectic. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now Hegel is well aware that artists who
represent gods have often been accused of personification and anthropomorphism,
and that it is often thought that such processes degrade the spiritual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But art has, as its goal, bringing the
spiritual to the sensuous, and so must engage in anthropomorphism: "Spirit
appears sensuously in a satisfying way only in its body." The idea of
“transmigration of the souls” is an abstract idea, which is to say that it is
stuck back at the inadequate stage of the symbolic. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hegel goes so far as to chide physiology for
not seeing life as necessarily proceeding to human form as the only possible
sensuous appearance for spirit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[Is
Hegel being crafty here?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, he
sees the romantic as higher than the classical:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>and so HE would not see the charge of anthropomorphism as inapt.] <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Now the human body is not merely sensuous but is "the
existence and the natural shape of the spirit" and hence it must be free
from deficiency of the sensuous and “contingent finitude.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, for the correspondence of meaning and
shape to be perfect, the shape purified.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And the spirituality involved cannot tower beyond the sensuous and
bodily.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It must be expressible
completely in human form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, this
is a defect which leads to dissolving of the classical art-form itself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The romantic form of art cancels this unification of Idea
and reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It reverts to the
opposition of two sides found in the symbolic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The classical form has achieved the pinnacle for “illustration by art,”
and so its defect is the defect of art itself, since art takes spirit in a
sensuously concrete form, the classical finding a complete unification of the
two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And yet spirit's true nature is "infinite subjectivity
of the Idea" which is absolutely inward.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So romantic art has a content that goes beyond classical art, and this
idea coincides with God (in the Christian sense) as spirit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, for classical art, the concrete content
is implicitly the immediate and sensuous unity of the divine and the
human.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Greek god is the "object
of naive intuition and sensuous imagination" and so his shape is the
bodily shape of man, and his power is "individual and particular." The
individual viewer's inner being is implicitly at one with this being.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet he does not have this oneness
"as inward subjective knowledge."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So knowledge of the implicit unity is the higher state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This going from implicit to self-conscious knowledge
is what distinguishes man from animal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Similarly the nutritionist raises the process of digestion to a
self-conscious science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When man knows
he is an animal he ceases to be one. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But this movement from the implicit unity of divine and
human nature to immediate and known unity is no longer a matter of the
spiritual in the body of man but of "inwardness of
self-consciousness." Christianity brings God not as individual particular
spirit but as "absolute in spirit and truth."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It "retreats from the sensuousness of
imagination into spiritual inwardness."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It makes the inwardness the medium and the existence of truth's
content.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Romantic art, then, is the
self-transcendence of art within art. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Hegel then says that art, at this stage, must work, not for
sensuous intuition, but for “the inwardness which coalesces with its object
simply as if with itself.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It strives
for freedom in itself, finding reconciliation only in inner spirit:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The inner world constitutes the content of
the romantic sphere and must therefore be represented as this inwardness” which
is to say “depth of feeling.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Inwardness
triumphs over the external and manifests its victory in and on the
external.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sensuous becomes
worthless.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still it needs an external
medium for expression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sensuous
external shape is now seen as transient, as well as the finite spirit and will of
the individual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All that is contingent
and is “abandoned to adventures devised by an imagination whose caprice can
mirror what is present to it” as it can also jumble shapes and distort them
grotesquely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The external medium now
finds its essence in the heart, and it preserves this “in every chance, in
every accident that takes independent shape, in all misfortune and grief, and
indeed even in crime.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I take it, this
means that romantic art may be wildly avant-garde, as we later find in John
Cage, Jackson Pollock, and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>other late 20<sup>th</sup>
century and early 21<sup>st</sup> century artists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This of course is a replay of the separation
of Idea and shape in symbolic art, but here the Idea “now has to appear
perfected in itself as spirit and heart” and it can only seek union within
itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This, finally, is “transcendence
of the Ideal as the true Idea of beauty.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">When we turn to the specific discussion of sculpture we find
it as part of an overall scene set up by the previous discussion of
architecture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Architecture exists
characteristically at the symbolic level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It involves "manipulating external inorganic nature" to
express spirit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The material of
architecture is "matter itself in its immediate externality as a
mechanical heavy mass" and its forms are the forms of nature in terms of
symmetry, which he sees as a matter of abstract Understanding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But architecture cannot realize the Ideal of
beauty since concrete spirituality is not expressed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is, the material of architecture is not
penetrated by the Idea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or to put it
another way, architecture cannot express the Absolute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although Hegel is right about the importance
of mechanical heavy mass in architecture, nothing else he says about it here
can be true, and one wonders whether he ever seriously contemplated one of the
great Gothic cathedrals that were readily available to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is only by ignoring the masterpieces of
architecture that Hegel can say that its fundamental type is the "symbolic
form."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">However, he lightens up his relatively negative approach
when he says "architecture is the first to open the way for the adequate
actuality of the god, and in his service it slaves away with objective nature
in order to work it free from the jungle of finitude and the monstrosity of
chance."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note that "adequate
actuality of the god" refers to "the god" as within experience
and as evolving within human consciousness: one might say it is the concept of
god rather than God himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are not
talking about any real independently existing god.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So the purpose of architecture is primarily spiritual and
primarily a matter of creating a physical church, i.e. a place for
worship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Architecture "levels a
place for the god" and builds a temple for "the inner composure of
the spirit and its direction on its absolute objects."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In particular it provides a protected place
of assembly for the congregation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
architecture reveals "the wish to assemble." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But when architecture does "fashion in its forms and
material an adequate artistic existence for" spiritual content it has
moved beyond the symbolic form of art to the classical form, which is the
higher stage. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has transformed itself
to sculpture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Architecture is limited in
that that the spiritual is only inner and is not synthesized or cognate with
its external form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sculpture overcomes
this limitation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But when we come to sculpture we find that it needs
architecture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Architecture has prepared
the place, the ground, for the activity of sculpture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The paradigmatic sculpture is the cult
sculpture within the Greek temple.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(And
one could add that the statue of Jesus crucified plays a similar role in the
Christian church.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hegel begins the
discussion of sculpture noting that architecture purifies the external
inorganic world, sets it in order symmetrically, and makes it into something
like spirit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover it creates God's
house, and that of His community.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">At this point we get a bit a mythology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have already seen that architecture has
prepared a protective setting for the community of worshipers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now the god enters his temple "as the
lightening flash of individuality striking and permeating the inert mass"
breaking the symmetry of the symbolic form of spirit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sculpture's task is to spiritually shape
something corporeal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So sculpture takes the classical art-form as its type.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In sculpture expression of the sensuous is
the same as expression of spirit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
only can represent spiritual content in bodily form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when this happens the spirit stands
before us "in blissful tranquility," the form brought to life by the
content.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, instead of focusing on
mechanical quality, mass possessing weight, and the form of the inorganic world
(as in architecture), sculpture focuses on the ideal of the human figure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hegel picks up the idea of blissful
tranquility again when he mentions the spiritual coming into appearance in
"eternal peace and essential self-sufficiency."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This peace and self-sufficiency is shared
both by the external shape and the spiritual content, which is shaped according
to its "abstract spatiality."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He also stresses that the spirit is presented as compact and unified,
not splintered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Abstract spatiality
means that variety of appearance is not emphasized, but rather unity and
totality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-23860371871667255732019-09-19T15:15:00.001-07:002019-09-19T15:15:52.854-07:00Lyotard on Postmodernism some comments<br />
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<li><span style="font-size: large;">This summary and comments is based on the selection on Lyotard in <i>Continental Aesthetics: Romanticism to Postmodernism,</i> Blackwell. In his three points about "postmodern" Lyotard begins with architecture. The first architectural theorist mentioned is Portoghesi, who takes postmodernism to be against the hegemony of Euclid, i.e. of strict classical mathematics. Lyotard does not takes this analysis as seriously, however, as Gregotti's notion that in postmodernism there is a disappearance of the bond between architecture and progressive politics, and this goes along with disappearance of the idea of progress in rationality and freedom. In architecture, there is no longer something universal (in terms of human freedom) to greet the eye. Instead we have a series of quotations "from earlier styles or periods." (One feature Lyotard thinks figures into the postmodern is "disregard for the environment." (363) The new modernism of eco-sensitive architecture, which I will represent here by the work of Leddy, Maytum, Stacey of San Francisco (Bill Leddy is my brother) would therefore not be postmodern.) Here, the "post" simply means "after" in which each period can be identified and the "post" period is a new direction. This "idea of a linear chronology" is itself modern, relying on the idea of something completely new. Even the idea of modernity itself is tied to this idea of something absolutely new. So Lyotard is suggesting that the notion of "postmodern" associated with distinct periods, some of which are completely new; and the idea of bricolage, which is combining these distinct styles from distinct periods, is naive, and not sufficiently postmodern. He suspects the rupture with the past posited by such architects and other cultural figures is really repressing while at the same time repeating it. The postmodern should surpass it. So the new "postmodern" architecture with all of its quotations of earlier styles, even when done ironically, is a retreat from the ideals of modernism. So he is really not happy with architectural postmodernism and this leads him to the second meaning of the term mentioned by Gregotti. Modernism on this view was the notion that developments in arts etc. would benefit mankind as a whole, setting aside the debate over who needed development the most, i.e. between liberals, conservatives, "leftists" (the scare quotes indicating the true left was something else.) The goal was emancipation of humanity. So back to the idea of postmodernism as decline in the notion of this goal. But a new movement arises (at least he hints at this), neither liberal nor Marxist (thus independent of their crimes against humanity, symbolized by Auschwitz) which shows how impoverished the idea of emancipation of humanity was, and this leads to a Zeitgeist of grief. The grief is expressed in reactionary attitudes, but again a new more positive perspective is possible. The grief or malaise is only deepened by the technoscientific development which no longer has the name of progress but is independent of us and our needs. This development is destabilizing for humanity: and we are reduced to "chasing after the process of accumulation of new objects." Our destiny or destination seems increasingly complex, making our needs for security, identity and happiness seemingly irrelevant. What we get instead is a "constraint to mediatize, quantify, synthesize, and modify the size of each and every object." But while one side of humanity faces this challenge of complexity the other faces the challenge of survival, thus failing the modernist principle that the whole of humanity should benefit. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> The third point is that the question of postmodernism is one of expression of thought "in art, literature, philosophy, politics." The dominant view is the great movement of the avant-garde is over, modernity outdated. Lyotard thinks this fails to understand what the avant-garde was trying to do. They were not just a radical military move implied in their name: "the true process of avant-gardism was in reality a kind of work, a long, obstinate, and highly responsible work concerned with investigating the assumptions implicit in modernity." That is, it is serious work. Lyotard is mainly thinking here of visual art, painting and sculpture. The big figures he has in mind, first listed, are Duchamp and Newman. He thinks what they did was something like psychoanalytic therapy. He adds to this list Cezanne, Picasso, Delaunay, Kandinsky, Klee, Mondrian, Malevich, and Duchamp a second time. Through them modernity performs a "working through on its own meaning" much like psychoanalysis. And if this work is not done, the work being a responsibility, then the West's neurosis, the source of all its misfortunes for the last two hundred years, will be unchecked. Thus the "post" does not mean going back or repetition but analysis and recollection. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> <b>Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism</b></span><b> .</b></li>
<li><b> </b><span style="font-size: large;">The first paragraph, under "A Demand" is a list of various ways in which there is "slackening" during our period. That is, referring back to the last section, a failure to meet the responsibility of the avant-garde. The call is to "put an end to experimentation." So one art historian calls for a return to realism and subjectivity, one critic favors the Italian painting movement called Transavantgardism, and yet this is very different from the avantgarde...it is mainly for making money, and then there are the postmodern architects who reject Bauhaus modernism, once again rejecting experimentation. And then there is a philosopher who calls for a return to Judaeo-Christian piety, and those who find Deleuze and Guattari, the French philosophers, too confusing, and those who think that the avant-gardes of 1960-70 spread terror in language and that we need a new way of speaking, that of historians. One gets the sense that Lyotard is feeling that the experimentation and questioning of the radicals of 1968 is fading away, and he feels nostalgic for that. </span></li>
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Tom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.com0