Aesthetics and the Being of beings

I had previously posted on Heidegger and everyday aesthetics here  Here are some further thoughts.

I have been returning to Heidegger to think about the meaning of aesthetics and more specifically of everyday aesthetics.  Nothing I say here should be taken to imply that I am a follower of Heidegger.  Let’s just say that I take inspiration from some of the things he says.  The immediate impetus of my discussion has been reading George Steiner’s Martin Heidegger (University of Chicago Press, 1989).   

The question Heidegger was most interested in concerned the Being of beings.  Unlike Heidegger, I interpret this as a deeply aesthetic notion.  This is how I take this in a nutshell:  when we experience something with heightened aesthetic intensity we are experiencing the Being of beings, and conversely when we experience the Being of beings we experience with heightened aesthetic intensity.   The Being of a being is the dynamic essential nature of the thing under consideration.   But, as we shall see, my notion of "essence" is very unlike that of Plato or Aristotle. Philosophy and Art are concerned with the Being of beings.  Heidegger sensed this when he placed so much attention on the arts of poetry, architecture and painting in his quest for the Being of beings.  Yet Heidegger does not seem to be aware that Being is something fundamentally aesthetic.   

(Steiner indicates that Heidegger ultimately failed to answer the question "What is the Being of beings?"  I think that what I am providing here is an answer.)

I should also note that my view could be made consistent with a certain reading of Plato, a certain reading of Kant, and a certain reading of Nietzsche.  I am very unlike Heidegger in this respect:  whereas Heidegger sees his work as a radical rejection of previous philosophers, based usually on a rather willful misreading of these figures, I see continuities and deep affinities.  When Plato, for example, talks about grasping Beauty itself in the Symposium and also talks about grasping The Good in The Republic he is talking about the same thing as when Heidegger and I talk about grasping the Being of beings.  For Plato, grasping The Beautiful and The Good (the same thing, really) is the goal of philosophy:  and that is not a matter of coming up with a definition but a matter of being able to see essences in the world.  (It is more than that, but that's a start).  What Heidegger calls "the is of what is" is just the essentiality of what is:  but a lot depends here on how we take "essences."  We cannot take them to be entities, beings.  Rather, search for essences is searching for the Being of beings.  I agree with Heidegger that Being is not a being.  Heidegger’s attacks on Plato work only as attacks on the kind of characterization we get of Plato’s ideas in introductory classes.  To think Being for Plato is every bit as much an activity as it is for Heidegger.   The path up out of the cave is a path of activity, of dialectic.  Moreover, the path down from perception of the Good is also a path of activity.  

Heidegger’s own confusion about Being needs to be cleared up, however.  Heidegger confuses mere existence with heightened experience of Being, an experience which, in my view, is also, at the same time, an emergence.  That something exists or does not exist is of little interest to the philosophy of Being.  We concern ourselves with existence in cases like "does global warming exist?" and this is only a question of whether the term "global warming" with its implied definition accurately describes the state of the world.  Modern science confirms that global warming exists.  This has nothing to do with what we are discussing here.

The philosophy of Being is only mistakenly seen as a theory about the word “is.”  The question “why is there something rather than nothing?”  is a case in point.  Heidegger made a big deal about the importance of this question.  It seems at first to be simply a religious question, one that begs the question.  That is, it simply assumes that there is an explanation for why the universe (not only this universe, but any universe) exists.  God has been the traditional answer.  Or perhaps it is thought that the question is somehow important, even though clearly God is not the best answer.  I do not think that this question is very interesting, at least not when taken literally.  But I do not think Heidegger always took it literally.

The real question (the one the stated question was really trying to ask) is rather, “why is there creativity?”  That is, "why is it that sometimes we seem to get something from nothing?"  Why is there an emergence of Being?  Why do we experience certain things as more than the sum of their parts?  Why is there potentiality as well as actuality?   Why is there meaning at all?  The question "why is there something rather than nothing" directs us to these other questions, which, when taken together, much better represent what we are getting at.  Being, as Heidegger well saw, is the ontological question, and that is quite distinct from questions of ontics.

Except that we should be suspicious of the “why” word.   Philosophy cannot really provide explanations, and certainly not causal explanations.  The characteristic philosophical question is a what is x question, not a why question.  Perhaps to some extent these questions just intend to get us to pay attention to the emergence of Being.  

Another area in which Heidegger and I disagree is that I see Being as emergent from natural processes, from biological, cultural and personal evolution.  I agree that Being arises from the interaction of language (in the broadest sense of that term, including all symbol systems) and the world.   But this just means that the emergence of Being is phenomenological:  it happens in consciousness.  Being happens when truth emerges in experience.  "Truth" in this sense has an ineliminable personal dimension.  Being doesn’t just happen in the thing-in-itself.  Or if it does, this is not our concern.  But Being also emerges in shared experience:  it is not purely subjective. 

Investigation into the essences of things is investigation into the ways in which  Being emerges.  Plato saw this as investigation into Forms:  asking the "what is" question, for example "what is piety?" Whenever we ask the "what is?" question of philosophy in a deep way we are trying to get at Being.   Heidegger is right, however, to see this in a different way from Plato:  Plato asks us to leave the sensuous world to experience Being.  Nietzsche and Dewey taught us otherwise.  Being emerges only through our interaction with materials, with media:  it is when, for example, the architect allows Being to emerge through the materials of wood or stone.   

Again, Heidegger thinks that existence is the key, and to a certain extent he is right.  But, to put it better, that which gives rise to the experience of awe “exists” in the strong sense that Heidegger is indicating.  So when Heidegger says that hidden being gives the rock its dense thereness (a point made by Steiner on pg. 66), I think this is best understood in terms of what Yuriko Saito has said about the Japanese gardenist's way of experiencing a rock:  the rock has a dense thereness when we see it as manifesting Being, as manifesting essentiality.   The Japanese gardenist listens to the request of the rock in the way that Heidegger asks us to return to a point at which we listen to Being.

I think that we have always been listening to Being, but I agree that this is rare and made difficult by contemporary life.  To listen to Being is to open up to the way things in the world that speak to us about inner nature (not only their inner nature, but ours) through a medium, i.e. of language, paint, or the stone as used by the architect.

Interestingly, essentiality here is not just what it is defined as but rather the way in which it manifests reality itself.  I said earlier that even Kant is misinterpreted here.   A point at which Kant and Heidegger intersect is at the notion of “aesthetic ideas” developed in Kant’s Critique of Judgment.  The Being of beings is aesthetical.

This of course is all in tune what I have previously said in this blog on aesthetic atheism.  See also my posts on Kant on aesthetical ideas.

Nothingness.  Being does not emerge out of nothingness in a straightforward way.  We should beware of hypostatizing nothingness.  Being emerges by way of negation of that which is irrelevant in the construction of a perceived/conceived whole.  But Being can just as well be said to emerge from fullness, or rather from over-fullness.   It emerges from full engagement.  If one fully engages with one's craft then sometimes light shines forth:  Being emerges.  This is creative intuition.

Aztec Aesthetics and Nietzsche

My purpose in these notes will not be to give an accurate account of Aztec aesthetics but rather to see what can be said about aesthetics as a whole by way of looking carefully at Aztec aesthetics.  At the same time I am interested in what this exploration can contribute to the larger issues of philosophy and even those of the place of humans in the world.  This is not quite the same as Comparative Aesthetics:  the point at issue here is not to simply find similarities and differences between Western and Aztec aesthetics but to see what can come of a dialogue between us and the Aztecs by way of their most profound poetry.   

We know Aztec aesthetics mainly through the codices and in particular the poetry that now counts as the basis for an understanding of Aztec philosophy.  It is prominent that Aztec philosophy gives a much greater position to aesthetics than does Western philosophy.   

In looking at Aztec Thought and Culture by Miguel León-Portilla (1963), a major source for these comments, I first looked to the index under “aesthetics” and found no entries at all.  I then looked under "art" and found a few pages devoted to the concept of art, a few of those same pages to the artist, and a few to objects of art.  But this turns out to be the mere surface of Aztec aesthetics since there are multiple entries under the central concept of “Flower and Song” which itself refers to the arts very broadly speaking as well as to everything beautiful.

Very helpful in this regard is the discussion of Aztec aesthetics in a chapter of that name in Richard L. Anderson’s Calliope’s Sisters:  A Comparative Study of Philosophies of Art. (1990)  There, drawing mainly on later works by León-Portilla Anderson even describes a philosophical dialogue between several of the Aztec wise men, called thlamatinime (sing. thlamatini).  

Here, I am going to quote some lines from the poetry produced by the thlamatinime and make some comments.  The main tenor of my comments will be this;  that their general position, or the upshot of it in my view, is that there is an underlying divine or spiritual aspect to reality; that we must focus on the “now” of experience to make life meaningful in a world that is otherwise ephemeral; that whatever eternity is possible for humans is to be found not in an afterlife but in “flower and song,” which is to say in this dual-natured thing that combines natural beauty and the beauty of art; and that this view of human existence, which is deeply and fundamentally aesthetic, is not very far from the view offered by Nietzsche in the culminating moments of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, his greatest philosophical work, a work that, actually, goes beyond philosophy, and is, in an important sense, deeper than philosophy.  

So, what I look for, or seem to find (the extent to which I project this instead of finding it, or perhaps that León-Portilla  and/or Anderson do so first, and I just follow them in doing so, can never really be known by me) in Aztec philosophy is a deeply aesthetic philosophy that challenges not only Western aesthetics but also Western philosophy to the extent that it provides an aesthetic answer to the deepest skeptical questions we have.  Here are the passages in quote marks.

“Hence, I weep,

for you are weary,

oh God.

Jade shatters,

the quetzal feather tears apart.

Oh God, you mock us.

Perhaps we really do not exist.

Perchance we are nothing to you.”

This is followed in Anderson’s text by the idea that perhaps life :

“…is just a dream

And here no one speaks the truth.”

To this skepticism the answer is:

“Here man lives on earth!

Here there are lords, there is power

there is nobility….

There is ardor, there is life, there is struggle,

the search for a woman, the search for a man.”  (Anderson pp 148-9)

That is, our world might just be a dream, or our lives dreams in the eyes of God, or an illusion on some level, and yet we have our lives on this earth (even if I dream, my dream-world  is the world in which I live, i.e. as a live creature interacting with my environment), and we have the possibility of nobility and great accomplishment, and, probably more importantly, the chance of to love someone, a man or a woman, in the midst of all our struggle.  The things of beauty, jade and quetzal feather, fall apart and fade with time, and yet “flower and song” (which Anderson understands as art broadly speaking, all that is symbolic, and all that has meaningful beauty) remain and have a certain eternity, as can be seen in these passages:

“’Finally, my heart understands it:  I hear a song

I see a flower,

Behold, they will not wither!”

And

“They will not end, my flowers,

they will not cease, my songs…

Even when the flowers wither and grow yellow,

they will be carried thither,

to the interior of the house

of the bird with the golden plumes”

The house I take it is the house of Being, the essence of beauty, what Plato called Beauty itself.

And from the above-mentioned dialogue we get this clarification:

“From the interior of heaven come

the beautiful flower, the beautiful songs.

Our desire deforms them,

Our inventiveness mars them…

Must I depart like the flowers that perish?

Will nothing of my fame remain here on the earth?

At least my flowers, at least my songs.”  (181)

(Actually, this is also very close to what Diotima is saying in the Symposium…see my post on that.) 

We are inspired by the inner essence of things to express ourselves in flower and song, something that can be marred by merely human desire or inventiveness (e.g. by egoism), and yet if we create these works of art then something of our being, our essence, will remain, which is in the “as if” eternal nature of whatever about these works of art is truly deep. 

It is this commitment to depth that we have somehow lost sight of, at least in professional philosophy:  or perhaps it is just our secret story that many of us philosophers never tell others?  But it is the same story that Nietzsche tells when he speaks of his love of life, at the end of TSZ, where he says that we must be willing to say “yes” to life and be able to will our entire past lives again and again for eternity, as a love of eternity, the eternity he finds not in an afterlife but in “being true to the earth.”  Nietzsche’s new religion of the overman, then, correctly understood, is the same as the new religion of the thlamatinime, i.e. in response to the popular religion of the Aztecs. 

Another telling quote that shows the dynamic relationship between the aesthetics of nature, the aesthetics of art, and “religious” experience is:  [“religious is in quotes since, as an atheist, I reject theism, i.e. the belief in an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God who created the universe:  that’s a myth, and yet it is a myth that hides a meaning captured in part by Heidegger’s idea that we have stopped listening to Being….there is a dimension, to or aspect of, human existence/human experience which is essential and deep and which is only captured mythically by the concept of a God.  This is my view anyway.]

“The Flowers sprout, they are fresh, they grow;

   they open their blossoms, and from within emerge the

   flowers of songs; among men

You scatter them,

You send them.

You are the singer!”  (152)

Of course on a literal level, this tells a story more similar to the one Socrates tells in the Ion than the one I tell:  the idea being that there is a God and He/She (the Aztecs believed in a sexual duality in God) speaks through us in our greatest art.  But if Nature (I am suggesting a kind of Spinozistic position in which Nature has two aspects:  material and spiritual) replaces God (as in Deism or in Transcendentalism) then we have something a bit more plausible, i.e. the “You” just being an anthropomorphic projection of Nature itself and our interactions with it.  This can be consistently read into the poem, for example, “The Flowers sprout….and from within emerge the flowers of songs…” captures this nicely.

And, as Anderson also observes, this happens only for those who “converse with their hearts” i.e. for those who seek out their own innermost nature. 

“The artist:  discipline, abundant, multiple, restless.

The true artist, capable, practicing, skillful,

maintains dialogue with his heart, meets things with his

    mind.”  (153)

and

“The good painter is wise.

God is in his heart

He puts divinity into things;

he converses with his own heart.”  (154)

We can only talk about “God” as a symbol of the capacity of the insightful artist to put divinity into the things he or she creates. 

There is, of course, also danger everywhere in philosophy, and not less when we try to seek out Being:  we have to always be aware of Heidegger’s self-seduction into Nazi ideology as well as the Aztec mass executions as evidenced by skulls in piles the Spanish found numbering in the 100,000s.  The search for “flower and song” is meaningless without an ethics based on empathy to shore up a social world in which it can authentically take place.

Nietzsche's attack on God and gods in "Upon the Blessed Isles"

This is part of an ongoing series of blog posts on what I call "aesthetic atheism."  You can see the other posts by using the index function on my blog site.  

In "Upon the Blessed Isles" Zarathustra begins by observing to his disciples that his teachings are like ripe figs that are falling to them and that, in this autumn period, it is "beautiful to look out upon distant seas" i.e. upon that which transcends ordinary experience. Before, people mentioned "God" when they looked out onto such seas, but now it is "overman."  So it is clear that "overman" is to replace "God."  This is followed by a series of aphorism that mainly begin with the line: "God is a conjecture."  This reminds us that God is a hypothesis, not an established reality, a hypothesis set up to serve a purpose.

In the first, Zarathustra encourages his disciples not to conjecture beyond their creative wills.  Since they could not create a god, they should not speak to him of any gods.  But they could create the overman, or recreate themselves as fathers or grandfathers of the overman.  

In the second, he encourages his disciples to limit their conjectures to the thinkable, and, he observes, they could not "think a god." What is "thinkable for man" really can be, from his materialist perspective, no other than what is visible to or even feelable by man.  Previous attempts to think God only seemed to be successful insofar as they denied that our cognitive faculties are faculties of our body.  Instead, "You should think through your own senses to their consequences."  The main consequence of the fact that we access the world through our senses is that immaterial entities make no sense (at least not as an explanation for creativity).  Since we cannot get beyond our bodies we cannot think a being without body, particularly one that has all of the other traditional attributes of God, i.e. all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good, creator of universe. Traditional believers also often say we cannot think God, since we are finite and God is infinite.  Nietzsche and they are in accord about this, except he would go further.  

The next paragraph seems to advocate a kind of idealism:  "And what you have called world, that shall be created only by you." However this is not a Berkeleyan idealism.  Rather, it is one that says:  the world we experience is the one we deal with and this world can be approached in different ways.  One way could be life- affirming, and this way would recognize that whatever we experience is based on our interpretations.  We may be unconscious of this, but when we become conscious of it we recognize that our reason, image, will and love is "realized."  It is so realized when and if we approach this process in an affirmative way. 

Nietzsche refers to the seeker here as a "lover of knowledge":  such a lover creates his/her world in the sense of constructing that world under his/her interpretation, and in a positive way for her "bliss."  It is only through having this hope, i.e. of an affirmative creation/interpretation of one's world, that the lover of knowledge (the philosopher) can "bear life."  The alternative would be a hopeless world that is "incomprehensible" or "irrational."  

The next passage is the most famous.  Zarathustra provides us with an argument against the existence of gods!  But he initiates this proof not by emphasizing its rationality but by insisting that he is revealing his heart entirely to his friends.  This is the argument. (Admittedly it will appear at first quite bizarre, but it needs to be understood in terms of the rest of the chapter!)  

"if there were gods, how could I endure not to be a god!  Hence there are no gods."  The premise indicates that Zarathustra (and presumably all "free spirits" and "noble" individuals) could not endure not being a god if there were indeed gods.  Why?  Because there would be a limit to his accomplishment, his creativity.  We will see from later passages that the problem with the existence of God or god is not envy so much as limitation of one's creative powers.  A god is someone who creates a world.  God even more so is the only creator, so the hypotheses goes, of our world. Remember that in the last paragraph we found that hope for a philosopher only exists in being able to create his/her own world through his/her body, will, and senses, and under his/her own interpretation.

But what about the inference:  "Hence there are no gods"?  The intervening premises must be something like:  (1) human creativity would be impossible if there were gods, and (2) it is obvious that human creativity exists, for example that Nietzsche is creating a book titled Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  So let us then consider the first premise.

In Plato's Ion creativity is understood as coming through divine inspiration of a dramatic sort.  When the poet is inspired, God is literally speaking through his or her mouth.  If God existed then this would be the only path for creativity:  so there would be no real human creativity. As Feuerbach and Marx observed, traditional believers project their human creativity onto God, and then worship something human in this imagined entity.  (Yes, Nietzsche and Marx are in the same boat on this one.)  It is better to recognize our own creativity in ourselves than in God.  The inference can be drawn that there are no gods from the very fact of human creativity; it is we who create worlds.  Of course we do not create the literal physical world but we do create the worlds we experience or the world as we experience it, not God or the gods. (The explanation of the origins of the physical world can be left to science.)  Moreover, when I draw this conclusion, the conclusion can "draw me":  i.e. I can now be shaped by this recognition.  Thus the God conjectured, once thoroughly understood, would entail either great agony or death, i.e. death as a creative individual.  And if you take faith in his own creative powers away from the creative individual then he might as well be dead.

The problem is elaborated in the next paragraph:  the idea of "God" makes everything crooked since it denies the reality of impermanence.  Nietzsche talks about this thought as sending him into a "dizzy whirl" and making him vomit. The idea is simply that any positing of the One (as in Parmenides and Plotinus) and the Permanent (as in traditional views of God) is sickening when not seen as a parable, and even then, it is not as good a parable for man as those that allow for time and becoming.  These later are denied by these thinkers of permanence. So the problem with the existence of God is that it fails to praise and justify the impermanence needed for creativity. But why is impermanence needed.  See below. 

The main reason for religion is redemption from suffering. Nietzsche is not opposed to redemption or even to religion. Zarathustra says, "Creation -  that is the great redemption of suffering."  But the mistake is to think that the creation in question is that of God or gods.  First and fundamentally creation needs not only change and becoming, which cannot come from an unchanging god, but also suffering.  You are not going to get any creation without suffering:  all creative artists, philosophers, scientists know that.  So why speak of God, who cannot suffer, as a creator?  "To be a child who is newly born, the creator must also want to be a mother who gives birth and the pans of the birth-giver."  If you want the birth you will the pains.

Nietzsche follows this with a passage that could easily be misunderstood as advocating a theory of reincarnation.  It does not, and it cannot.  Actually the paragraph is a preview of the doctrine of eternal recurrence and its fundamental connection with the doctrine of will to power.  Zarathustra says:  "Verily, through a hundred souls I have already passed on my way, and through a hundred cradles and birth pangs."  The idea connects with the previous paragraph:  the birth pangs in the creative process happen again and again with the writing of each book, the painting of each painting. We are not talking about afterlives but about this life.   "But thus my creative will, my destiny, wills it" says Zarathustra, which simply means that my will to power is my will to create even through the pangs that go with the creative process.  

In the next paragraph Zarathustra insists that my will (when it wills in this creative way) liberates me from my suffering and, in doing so, brings joy.  To will in this instance simply means to create. Thus if we could neither will nor value nor create any more we could only feel "great weariness."  This is not only true in the arts but also in the pursuit of knowledge, as Nietzsche realizes.  There is innocence in my knowledge, says Zarathustra, because "the will to beget is in it":  i.e. my knowledge (the knowledge gained by the Nietzschean free spirit) is not knowledge if it is just a reflection, it is fresh and innocent only insofar as it creates:  it does not just discover, it also produces at the same time.  In conclusion then, Zarathustra asserts that his creative will lured him away from God and gods and asks rhetorically: "what could one create if gods existed?"  The answer is nothing.  This comment rounds out the argument.  Once I recognize that it is I and not God or gods that create then I need no longer believe in them:  moreover, I could not create anything if God was the creator.  Either God or me.  But my creativity is obvious to me, God's is a mere conjecture.

So my will to create is directed toward man as the sculptor's hammer to a stone, creating, like Michelangelo, the image that sleeps in the stone.  This image is "the image of my images" in that, in creating myself, I create myself as a creator.  And, as Nietzsche constantly reminds us, the images I create and also reveal sleep in the "hardest, the ugliest stone."  They come out of  passions and drives that "the good" cannot approve.  Damage may result from the creative process and yet in the effort to perfect man (or man in myself) the beauty of the overman is present as a shadow, and this, in all of its possibility and potential, replaces God and the gods.  

Aesthetic atheism does not reject religion but finds a successor concept to religion in the idea of man (man and woman, of course) as creator both of great works, of worlds, but also of him/herself.  It finds redemption in this.  

Table of Contents for Aesthetic Atheism posts in Aesthetics Today.

Aesthetics Today: Aesthetic Atheism Oct 10, 2013 ... In a recent post I proposed something that I will now call aesthetic atheism. Aesthetic atheism is not opposed to scientific or science-based ...

Aesthetics Today: Kitsch, Religion, and an Atheist Aesthetic by ... Jan 13, 2015 ... Kitsch, Religion, and an Atheist Aesthetic by Phillip Elliot, Oct. 31, 2014. [This is a guest blog by one of our graduate students at San Jose State, ...

Aesthetics Today: Augustine on God and Aesthetic Atheism Jul 7, 2015 ... Augustine on God and Aesthetic Atheism. Augustine has an interestingly ambiguous attitude towards aesthetics. At one point he writes: "But ..
Aesthetics Today: Aesthetic Atheism and Plato's Phaedo Sep 27, 2014 ... Aesthetic Atheism and Plato's Phaedo. Why do I love Plato even in reading the Phaedo, where there are so many things he has Socrates say ...
Aesthetics Today: Kant and Imagination and aesthetic atheism too Mar 5, 2014 ... Kant and Imagination and aesthetic atheism too. This is not going to be an effort to enter into any of the debates between Kant scholars over the ...

Aesthetics Today: Hegel's Aesthetics and Aesthetic Atheism Oct 14, 2013 ... Hegel's lectures on aesthetics can provide useful stimulus and some intellectual support for aesthetic atheism. What I will have to say about ...
Aesthetics Today: Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy and Aesthetic Atheism Oct 16, 2013 ... Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy is an excellent starting point and stimulus for aesthetic atheism. Rather than simply go for the Socratic/scientific ...
Aesthetics Today: On Terry Eagleton talk at Santa Clara and Kant's ... Oct 8, 2013 ... The blurb for the talk said "Atheists tend to claim that God is entirely pointless, and so does the doctrine of Creation. Here, at least, is some ...
Aesthetics Today: Plato's Apology from an Aesthetic Point of View Aug 23, 2014 ... In earlier posts I have advocated something I have called aesthetic atheism. Let's say, as a kind of hypothesis, that Plato's Socrates (that is, the ...
Aesthetics Today: Kant's Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment and a ... Oct 9, 2014 ... Kant's Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment and a Prelude to Aesthetic Atheism. Students in my aesthetics classes usually balk at the idea that when ...

Aesthetics Today: Plato's Phaedo and Beauty seen from the ... Sep 23, 2014 ... Plato's Phaedo and Beauty seen from the Perspective of Aesthetic Atheism. Most aestheticians ignore Plato's Phaedo. It does mention the ...

Scruton on poetry, truth, Heidegger and everyday aesthetics

Roger Scruton's "Poetry and Truth," in The Philosophy of Poetry (Oxford, 2015) ed. John Gibson (149-161) is one of the more interesting discussions of the topic, especially given that Scruton begins with a discussion of Heidegger's concept of poetry as "the founding of truth" which Scruton takes to be true! Scruton rightly takes "truth" to refer here not to evaluation of sentences in terms of truth value, so loved by Frege and friends, but in the sense of revelation, or as Heidegger would put it, unconcealment.  Poetry, according to Heidegger, is a bringing forth which is also a bestowing.  Scruton says that Heidegger is "attempting to gives a secular version of [a religious idea of revelation].  And by attributing the process of revelation to poetry - in other words, to a human product, in which meaning is both created by human beings and also 'bestowed' by them  he can be understood as advocating revelation without God."  (150)   In relation to my posts on aesthetic atheism, I like Scruton's idea, taken from Wagner's essay "Religion and Art," that "religions have all misunderstood their mission, wishing to propose as true stories what are in fact myths...that cannot be spelled out in literal language."  (150) and that "the meanings of the myths must be grasped through art, which shows us the concealed deep truth of our conditions, in dramatized and symbolic form."  He also mentions (as a more bleak view) Nietzsche's similar idea that we need art "so that we will not perish of the truth" i.e. that God is dead.  

For Scruton, "the heart of poetry is the poetic use of language" i.e. as distinct from everyday and scientific uses, a use that involves figures of speech that do not describe connections but make them in the mind of the reader.  He makes a strong distinction between the poetic and the prosaic use of language, the later being instrumental, having the property of aboutness, having an interest in truth as correspondence, and having substitutivity of equivalent terms. 

Scruton says that Keats in his "Ode to the Nightingale" "does not describe the bird and its song only:  he endows it with value. The nightingale shares in the beauty of its description, and is lifted out of the ordinary run of events, to appear as a small part of the meaning of the world."  I have argued elsewhere that Scruton originated the idea of the aesthetics of everyday life back in the 1970s, although, of course, the true grandfather of the movement was John Dewey.  Scruton has continued to make major contributions to the field, most notably in his book Beauty.  I have also argued that everyday aesthetics happens when the ordinary becomes extraordinary, and that that often happens when everyday phenomena are seen with the eyes of the artist.  Scruton shows, through the Keats example, how poetry can make this happen.  As he puts it "poetry transfigures what it touches, so that it is revealed in another way" and the test is "truth" in something like Heidegger's sense.  Scruton understands the idea of poetry bestowing truth partly in this way: Eliot in Four Quartets "is looking for the sincere expression of a new experience, one that will remain true to its inner dynamic, and how what it is to live that experience in the self-awareness of a modern person.  He is looking for words that both capture the experience and lend themselves to sincere and committed use." (159)  Yet Eliot's idea may seem overly subjective. By contrast, Heidegger insists on an objective dimension in the grounding that poetry bestows. 

Scruton finds in Rilke's "Ninth Elegy" the source of Heidegger's thought, where the truth of the thing, e.g. the house, "is a truth bestowed in the experience." Further "Its measure is the depth with which these things can be taken into consciousness and made part of a life fully lived."  (160) So Scruton concludes that there is an inner truth to things, one bestowed by poetry, and that this inwardness is of our experience: "the fusing of a thing with its associations and life-significances in the poetic moment" (161) i.e. achievements that are "fruit of a life lived in full awareness."  

Over time, I have become a bigger and bigger fan of Scruton (don't like his politics):  he has the broad vision one might call wisdom and stands far above the usual in the realm of analytic aesthetics. Here is one final quote:   we question what is the meaning of a world that has come to this:  "The right answer is that answer that enables us to incorporate the things of this world into a fulfilled life.  For each individual object, each house, bridge, fountain, gate, or jug, there is such an answer.  And the poet is the one who provides it....His answer is true when it shows how just such a thing might be part of a fulfilled human life..."   

Kitsch, Religion, and an Atheist Aesthetic by Phillip Elliot, Oct. 31, 2014.

[This is a guest blog by one of our graduate students at San Jose State, Phillip Elliot.]

The overall goal of this project will be to explore a question in regards to kitsch and religious art, namely “is religious art kitsch?”  I will begin by defining what ‘kitsch’ is. Once the definition is constructed I will pull examples from different religious institutions beginning with the small over- produced items such as prayer candles, tiny Buddha sculptures, and symbolic jewelry and end with larger objects such as mosques, churches, synagogues and temples (including the artwork within and the architecture throughout).I will then claim that religion is a lens for aesthetic experiences, which furthers artwork such as temples, paintings, and small mass-produced art works, and that all having the ability to become kitsch through this lens. I will be exploring this topic through a filter of what Tom Leddy has called “aesthetic atheism.”[1]

Kitsch:

Kitsch is a term commonly used to describe cheap (often more in relation to the creator or typical purchaser of the work than the actual price tag) works of art. I will define kitsch as something far more. A descriptive definition of kitsch will also be normative. Kitsch is mass-produced art set to impress the viewer emotionally. Kitsch in itself is a valuable mode of art that communicates to a massive amount of people and should be regarded as acceptable for this reason.  Thomas Kinkade and Norman Rockwell can be described as kitsch artists. That their art portrays an almost dream state while actively selling the viewer a way of life characterized by nostalgic feeling defines them as such. Monet painted beautiful settings of flowers and landscapes but is considered a great master painter while Rockwell is described by his detractors as a common kitsch illustrator. I argue that the mastery of Kinkade and Rockwell should not be cheapened by a name that has a negative connotation, that name being kitsch.

One of the main factors when discussing kitsch is the sentimentality of the art work. Kitsch is a term so loaded with meaning that at times it may be hard to untangle it from great works of art.  Great works of art may evoke a sentimental feeling, and this causes confusion when trying to pinpoint which sentimental feelings make artwork kitsch. If we see kitsch art as merely art that holds a nostalgic sentiment for the viewer of the object, we are not defining it fully. Defending kitsch as art falls outside the scope of this project. Defining the uses and the meaning of kitsch is a firm basis from which to start. Kitsch is described by Robert Solomon  as follows: “whatever the cause or the context, it is sentimentality of kitsch that makes kitsch, kitsch and sentimentality that makes kitsch morally suspect if not immoral” (Solomon 341).  Although Solomon  does not consider it immoral, it is easy to see from an atheist point of view how a cheap sentimental feeling evoked by an artwork can be so considered. For example, a painting of Jesus  holding hands with children  hung in a nursery school could be considered  indoctrination.  The derogatory form of kitsch is brought through such seemingly placid sentimental emotions

Now that I have established in what regard I am addressing kitsch, I will say why I think it not detrimental to say that an art object is kitsch. It is easy to point at a Kinkade or Rockwell and claim that that art is kitsch. For example, Rockwell often depicted  boy scouts. These paintings were manufactured and used as magazine covers for Boy’s Life, a monthly magazine for the Boy Scouts of America. This widespread use of images of wholesome-looking young people doing things like running with a dog through a small town sold the American way of life. Rockwell’s work is considered kitsch because of the nostalgic sense you feel when seeing his pictures. But, most would agree that even if these works are properly seen as kitsch they are still valuable as works of art.   The interesting question for an atheist is how does this differ from mass-produced paintings of Jesus Christ, or statuettes of Buddha? Do these produce the same valuable nostalgic sentiments that a Rockwell painting delivers?  Are they kitsch in the same sense.

The negative use of “kitsch” is what Solomon refers to when he says that “Kitsch and sentimentality provoke excessive or immature expressions of emotion.”  (Solomon 318)  He goes on: “It is true that kitsch is calculated to evoke our emotions, especially those emotions that are best expressed by the limp vocabulary that seems embarrassingly restricted to such adjectives as ‘cute’ and ‘pretty’ or that even more humiliating, drawn out downward intoned ‘Aaaah’ that seems inappropriate even in Stuckeys” (Solomon 342) [Stuckey’s is a mainly Eastern U.S. convenience store chain that sells novelty items along with food]. 

Aesthetic Atheism:

            Aesthetic Atheism is a relatively new view on atheism. Originally defined by Thomas Leddy, aesthetic atheism does not rely on lack of evidence in the belief that there is no God, although that is a major tenet of atheism: an aesthetic atheism is a positive function focusing on the possibility of self-transcendence without positing any gods. As  Leddy states in his blog Aesthetics Today, “Aesthetic atheism denies the existence of God (based on the failure of proofs of God's existence and also based on the ways in which religious belief leads to various distortions, as Nietzsche saw) but at the same time affirms experiences of transcendence” (Leddy, Aesthetics Today 2013) That is to say that atheists can attain a feeling of the sublime or, dare I say, of the spiritual[2], without giving alms to the “spirit”. Whether through a Zen-like understanding of their surroundings, or by being moved to tears by a painting of Christ, an aesthetic atheist can be spiritual. It is not necessary to believe in religion to have a “spiritual” feeling or response to any object.  Nor is it required that objects that generate these feelings be religious art objects.  This leads us into what Kant called “aesthetic ideas.” Leddy also discusses this topic in a different blog post, stating: “The existence of experiences of pure beauty itself is training however for something higher, which is the development of what Kant calls aesthetic ideas…"Aesthetic ideas" are products of the imagination at even a higher level in which the artist genius creates his/her own world, a world which follows its own rules.”  (Leddy, 2014).  Perhaps religious art can give rise to aesthetic ideas in this sense.  This would be contrary to the intent of the artist, although it is also hard to say to what extent many religious artists of the past accepted religious orthodoxy.  Let us at least consider the possibility that the intent of the artist was not to infect the viewer with sentimental emotions but rather to present an idealized world.  If so, the audience that allows such great works to become kitsch (in the sense that it is treated as such) misses the best intentions of such artists. The intent of the artist may not be, for example, to infect the viewer with overtly sentimental emotions.  Although the Medieval artists’  world in which they created their work (one in which God’s existence is not questioned) may be lost today, and hence widely misinterpreted, such works of art can still become both kitsch (in the positive sense) and valuable in the eyes of nonreligious individuals.    

The Religious Lens:

            Those who believe in a higher power are ultimately using a lens to filter their perceptions of objects. For example, if a Christian sees a remarkable act such as a car flipping over and everyone inside escaping injury, he or she could happily exclaim “T’was a miracle, this was God’s work!”   However a non-believer can say, with the same certainty, that this act was one of chance and that the makers of the vehicle should be thanked for designing such a safe car.  When  individuals view the world they use their belief systems to categorize and associate the objects around them through their perception.  When viewing art, these lenses of belief are no different.  However, when viewing religious art, it seems simple to say that an atheist may have no emotional response to  its religious content.  Yet it is far too easy to accuse the atheist of this insensitivity.  The atheist may of course view religious art as something other than kitsch in the positive sense, for example a painting by Rembrandt of a biblical scene as high art. That is not to say that they cannot also see the most ornate religious artifacts as being kitsch and value them exactly as they might a Rockwell.

            Sentimentality of religious art is what makes certain pieces of art kitsch for an atheist. However this same maneuver can be followed by the religious. Those disposed to a certain faith can, and often will, view works of other faiths and religions as kitsch. For example an ardent Christian may view statuettes of Buddha in a friend’s home as eastern kitsch. The Buddhist, however, may view the small statues  as strong symbols of their faith rather than as a work of poorly made art  as examples of kitsch.  Similarly, their Christian friend’s crucifix, hanging over their dining room, may be seen by them as a cheaply made carving, in other words, kitschy in a negative sense, or in a positive way, as like a Rockwell.

            Since all experiences are viewed through some perceptual lens there can be different degrees of lensing that occur within most individuals  For example, if an individual has a weak belief in a higher power he or she might find religious art such as prayer candles found 

at a pharmacy as pretty tacky and kitschy, whereas Michelangelo’s painting of God touching man in the Sistine chapel might be extremely moving in that its religious content is. However, an atheist could consider that same painting as negative kitsch due to its sentimental value for Christians. 

Religious Art, is it Kitsch?          

Religious art ranges from monstrous architectural wonders to tacky jewelry and kitschy everyday fads; from cathedrals, temples, and mosques, to Star of David necklaces, small crucifixes, and Buddha statuettes. These objects and buildings can be viewed from the atheist perspective as nothing more than kitsch, yet there is  a resolution for the atheist’s dilemma to be found in viewing these symbolic objects as having meaning for someone else. Using the loose definition of kitsch discussed earlier, from the atheist perspective it would seem that all art that gives nostalgic, sentimental, or “warm and fuzzy” feelings would be considered kitsch.  Depending on the person of faith’s description of the previously mentioned works of art, from the atheist perspective, all could be considered kitsch. This statement implies that religious views themselves are the cause of these objects being kitsch, and it is also understandable for those who have religion to believe that there feelings towards the object allow for religious experience, but not kitsch.

Betty Spackman, a theist artist, discusses at great length the usefulness of religious kitsch (Christian) and its effect on the purchaser. She writes, “there are a lot of evangelicals involved in creating crafts that are meant as either ‘witnessing tools’ or personal devotional aids. Despite their (usually) amateur quality these handmade, homemade articles have a great deal of impact on people. Someone has invested time and energy, and so no matter what their quality they are imbued with a certain authenticity and value because they have a known ‘author.’” (Spackman 411) This “certain authenticity and value” can be viewed as what Solomon described earlier as kitsch deceiving our emotional reactions to art work. Christian kitsch Spackman believes is quite necessary and in fact deeply enriching for the Christian who purchases the object.  However, if we consider Solomon’s final description of kitsch in which “Kitsch is art (whether or not it is good art) that is deliberately designed to so move us, by presenting a well selected and perhaps much edited version of some particularly and predictably moving aspect of our shared experience, including, plausibly enough, innocent scenes of small children and our favorite pets playing and religious and other sacred icons.” (Solomon 345)  Spackman’s position is somewhat shaky. Kitsch may cheapen the effect of these religious articles, not for the purchaser, but for the non-believer.  It may become clear that kitsch and sentimentality manipulates our emotions, forcing the individual to have a cheesy, aaaah moment (Solomon 343). 

So, is religious art kitsch? Well surely, prayer candles may be viewed as kitsch but it is certainly a functioning tool for the Christian.  Similarly, the Star of David pendant strapped around one’s neck may be viewed as kitsch from an atheist perspective but for the individual who adorns their body with this jewelry it is more of a reminder to “hold faith.” So where does the separation of kitsch and functional tools of faith happen when viewing these art objects? The difference is the perspective of the viewer, as relativistic as this sounds: the religious art object is only kitsch when in relation to the viewer of the art object as something that gives a deeply sentimental emotion. Religious kitsch such as the “buddy Christ” statuettes, which is an almost comic-bookesque representation of Jesus Christ holding two thumbs up and an impressive wink, may be considered kitsch in the sense that it is mass produced and supposed to evoke some religious comedic relief to the viewer, whereas the Star of David pendant may be seen as kitsch by non-Jewish peoples. 

Conclusion:

            In this essay I have defined kitsch as a type of art object that plays off of emotional sentiments. These sentiments are supposed to give the individual a sense of deeper meaning, comfort, emotional catharsis, and also a warm and fuzzy feeling. Given that most if not all religious art is meant to give the viewer some sort of spiritual emotion, it is safe to say that for the atheist all religious art can be considered kitsch. When an atheist views a statue of “Buddy Christ” the object is meant to be a humorous attempt at religious kitsch as opposed to a small figurine of Buddha which is meant as a sort of spiritual reminder.  The intended meanings are completely different.  However, that does not make the categorical claim that these are both works of kitsch any less true. On the flipside, it is almost too simple to state that atheists would consider all works of religious art as kitsch. As argued by Leddy, it is possible for an atheist to feel a spiritually moving emotion while viewing any art object, without belief in a spirit or higher being. That said, when a religious art object is viewed by an atheist and the atheist feels a deep emotional response to the work, it is possible that that particular art work is not kitsch but rather an art object that can move an atheist past the sentimental objective of the art object.  In short, the religious context of an art object does not necessarily categorize a work of art as kitsch; it is only when that object is viewed through the religious lens that it may become kitsch to some. For example, the Sistine Chapel has vast murals of religious art from one of the most impressive, talented, ingenious artists of all time. Rarely would we hear the utterance “this is kitsch” in the presence of such monumental religious art, although for some atheists the mere having a religious subject matter would make these great works of art kitsch if the intention of these paintings is to move an individual into a kitsch like emotional state, full of manipulative sentiments. Not all religious art is kitsch in the eyes of the atheist, and on the same token not all religious art is considered meaningful to the religious. 

Bibliography

ebay.uk. n.d. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BUDDY-CHRIST-DOGMA-STATUE-JAY-AND-SILENT-BOB-VIEW-ASKEW-KEVIN-SMITH-STATUETTE-/281134413569.

Heidicries.com. n.d. http://www.heidicries.com/ProductList.php?id=351.

Leddy, Tom. Aesthetics Today. march 2014. 26 march 2014 http://aestheticstoday.blogspot.com/2014/03/kant-and-imagination-and-aesthetic.html.

—. Aesthetics Today. October 2013. 26 March 2014 http://aestheticstoday.blogspot.com/2013/10/aesthetic-atheism.html.

Solomon, Robert. "Kitsch." Goldblatt, David and Lee Brown. Aesthetics: A Reader in Philosophy of the Arts. Boston: Pearson, 2011. 342-345.

Spackman, Betty. "Reconsidering "Kitsch." Material Religion (2005): 405-416.

www.flickr.com. n.d. https://www.flickr.com/photos/jenx5/3672823120/.

           

           

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[1] Thomas Leddy, Aesthetics Today —. Aesthetics Today. October 2013. 26 March 2014 http://aestheticstoday.blogspot.com/2013/10/aesthetic-atheism.html

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[2] I use the word spiritual in sense that is non-religious. Spirituality as it is used here is referring to an extra empirical sensation, though it may be caused by sense experience. It is not being used, in any fashion alluding to extraterrestrial or supernatural levels of elation or faith.

Kant's Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment and a Prelude to Aesthetic Atheism

Students in my aesthetics classes usually balk at the idea that when we set up something as beautiful we demand that others see it as beautiful as well.  I usually try to explain this by softening the word or suggesting that Kant should not have said "demand" and that "expect" would have perhaps been better.  Also, Kant does insist that we can make a mistake in our judgments of beauty, so it is not as though he is setting up anyone as a dictator of taste.  One can say that if two parties disagree then one of them must not be sufficiently disinterested, or perhaps there is a failure of choice of object:  a focus on something that is more properly the object of the pleasant or agreeable than of beauty, for example a simple tone or color, or some other thing that does not have the look of design characteristic of that which has the form of purpose (without our thinking about its actual purpose.)  Or perhaps one just is thinking of the actual purpose without letting the mind go into a free play of the imagination and understanding requisite for the experience of beauty.  Still the question remains:  Why does Kant believe we have a "right to the necessary agreement of others" with respect to taste?  He addresses this issue in his "Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgement" where he finally seeks to address Hume's original problem as set forth in Hume's juxtaposition of two species of common sense, one claiming that there is no disputing about taste, and another asserting that there is, since the lover of Ogilby clearly has no taste from the perspective of the good judge.  I do not intend to provide a commentary on Kant here and will avoid worrying about current interpretations by Guyer and others.  I am, rather, mainly interested in a puzzle:  why does Kant believe that appeal to the supersensible substratum actually solves the antinomy of taste?  The end result of his discussion, I believe, lends support to what I have called in previous posts "aesthetic atheism."

So Kant starts out in #56 talking about different commonplaces of taste.  One of these says that every one has his own taste.  He rejects this since he thinks that a judgment of taste does involve a demand that others agree.  The second is that there is no disputing about taste:  that is, no decision in taste can be based on a proof, although we are still able to have a "contention" about taste, i.e. a disagreement that is not resolvable by logical application of a concept.  However, the notion that there may be contention without proof seems to deny the idea that it is impossible to resolve such a debate, and hence the grounds of judgment must not just be "private validity." They are not "merely subjective."  The antinomy is that that the thesis, i.e. the judgment of taste is not based on concepts, is opposed by the antithesis, that the judgment of taste is based on concepts, for otherwise there would be no room for contention.  The resolution to this is fairly obvious, that two different senses of "concept" are being used, and that the reason why contention is possible is because the judgment of taste is based on indeterminate (or, as he puts it sometimes, undetermined or indeterminable) concepts.  Now in section #49 we had been introduced to something very much like indeterminate concepts, namely the aesthetic (or aesthetical) ideas.  So one would think that Kant would now refer to these as the basis in some way for the demand that others see the object as beautiful.  Instead, however, he refers to just once such concept, i.e. "the transcendental rational concept of the supersensible, which lies at the basis of ...sensible intuition..."  (Meredith tr., 207)  So what we are talking about, at least on first sight, is the idea of the world of things-in-themselves, a world that is beyond our senses. (We will see how this "at first sight" is partly wrong later.)  More specifically we are talking about the concept of such a world.  This world is also sometimes identified (whether by Kant himself, or just by some readers is not clear) with the noumenal realm, which contains God, immortality and the soul, and maybe also the essence of things (something like the Platonic Forms).  How this seemingly confused thing (although, perhaps, the noumenal realm does not come in here at all) can provide the basis for our demand that others see an object as beautiful is the question at issue.  The judgment of taste is not merely personal or private, it is not just "for me," because of an "enlarged reference."  But what is that?  It should be mentioned here that the indeterminate concept of the supersensible, which is supposed to do this job, is not only at the basis of the object but also of the judging subject. (Is this a reference to the transcendent soul, or is it rather a reference to the transcendental ego or the transcendental unity of apprehension...I suspect that one of the latter two is more at issue.)  We learn further that this "ground" is "of the subjective finality of nature for the power of judgment" which seems to be saying that the reason we can demand a judgment of beauty from others is that nature has a certain purposiveness of look, an idea already introduced in the Analytic of the Beautiful.  Another hint for explaining the demand of validity for everyone is in the phrase Kant uses: "because its determining ground lies, perhaps, in the concept of what may be regarded as the supersensible substrate of humanity."  The "perhaps" is noteworthy of an unusual caution.  But more important, the "substrate of humanity" indicates that we are not talking about something like a collection of things in the supersensible realm that stand behind the things of experience, as when a chair as the thing-in-itself is behind the chair as experienced.  Rather, we are mainly interested here in something shared by humans.  (Now why this must be in the supersensible realm, i.e. as transcendent, rather than simply being a transcendental principle like the a priori concept of causality, is not clear, at least to me.)  Kant himself seems to throw up his arms in despair of really explaining any of this at this point, when he says, "The subjective principle - that is to say, the indeterminate idea of the supersensible within us - can only be indicated as the unique key to the riddle of this faculty, itself concealed from us in its sources; and there is no means of making it any more intelligible."  (208-9)  However he does not give us, as he continues to give us hints.  For example, he hints that the strategy here, which he also uses in the Critique of Practical Reason, involves compelling us to "look beyond the horizon of the sensible, and to seek in the supersensible the point of union of all our faculties a priori" which, only then, brings "reason into harmony with itself."  (209)  So, something about the union of our faculties (for example, perhaps, when they are in harmony) is the basis for the legitimate demand that others see the object as beautiful.  Perhaps what is being said is something like this:  you have to see it as beautiful because, underneath it all, you are the same as me insofar as your faculties should respond to this thing in a unified way just as mine do.  

In the "Remark 1" that follows we get another hint to the solution in that Kant refers again to aesthetic ideas, which are "referred to an intuition, in accordance with a merely subjective principle of the harmony of the cognitive faculties (imagination and understanding)" (210)  Perhaps the reference to the supersensible in the Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment is entirely or at least mainly a reference to aesthetic ideas, or the faculty of producing and/or appreciation aesthetic ideas, as the ground of the validity of taste and of the concept of beauty (as opposed to the merely agreeable.)  As we already know, an aesthetic idea is "an intuition (of the imagination) for which an adequate concept can never be found." (210)  Unlike a rational idea the aesthetic idea is not transcendent.  Now, rational ideas "involve a concept (of the supersensible), for which the commensurate intuition can never be given."  Aesthetic ideas, however, involve no concept of the supersensible:  they are, rather, intuitions or products of imagination in which the supersensible is, rather, intimated.  

Further, by connecting the notion of aesthetic ideas to that of genius, which is the "faculty of aesthetic ideas," Kant argues that nature in the genius "gives the rule to art" in producing beauty, for, he says, "the beautiful must not be estimated according to concepts, but by the final mode in which the imagination is attuned so as to accord with the faculty of concepts generally..."  It follows from this that "rule and precept are incapable of serving as the requisite subjective standard for that aesthetic and unconditioned finality in fine art which has to make a warranted claim to being bound to please every one." (212)  The claim is based rather on the atunement of the imagination with faculty of concepts.  So the standard (the standard of taste?) is "sought in the element of mere nature in the Subject....the supersensible substrate of all the Subject's faculties...and consequently in that which forms the point of reference for the harmonious accord of all our faculties of cognition..."  He even further sates that the production of this accord is "the ultimate end set by the intelligible basis of our nature." (212)   

Remark 2 takes me to a place that I never expected, and shows that I had mainly misunderstood Kant previously.  He tells us that the three antinomies of pure reason all lead us to "abandon the otherwise very natural assumption which takes the objects of sense for thing-in-themselves, and to regard them, instead merely as phenomena, and to lay at their basis an intelligible substrate (something supersensible, the concept of which is only an idea and affords no proper knowledge.)"  That is, the supersensible has nothing to do with things-in-themselves (which are now abandoned?) and everything to do with the transcendental ground of our experience in the harmony of the cognitive faculties.  Again, the sensible, "instead of being regarded as inherently appurtenant to things-in-themselves, is treated as a mere phenomenon, and, as such, being made to rest upon something supersensible (the intelligible substrate of external and internal nature) as the thing-in-itself." (213)  That is, the things-in-themselves are replaced by the thing-in-itself, which is the supersensible.  This leads me to think, more and more, that the main strategy here is to replace the transcendent realm with the transcendental, which itself is the true supersensible.  The result, in Kant's thinking, is that the same supersensible that is "substrate of nature" is also "principle of the subjective finality of nature for our cognitive faculties" and also the principle of the "ends of freedom...and...freedom in the moral sphere" which ties the three critiques and the entire system together, rather too neatly.

But what leaves me completely puzzled, and also fascinated at the same time, is the relation between the supersensible (now seen more as the ground of a harmony of faculties perhaps also harmoniously responding to the phenomenal objects insofar as they has purposiveness of look) and the aesthetic ideas, which, as we know from #49, cause our thoughts to go on unendingly, acting as ineffable symbols.  If the supersensible just is the aesthetic ideas (or whatever is their ground) then the ground of taste is not just a matter of the kind of free play that gives us beauty but rather of the kind of super free play (of the imagination and the understanding, and, contra Kant, of the sensuous as well) that gives us the sublime, for example in the works of genius, i.e. in fine art.  The result of this pretty hypothetical thinking would be that the demand that others see something beautiful/sublime (as the two concepts seem to fuse at this point!) is based on something transcendental and a priori (like causality, and I think, contra Kant, God), basically the possibility to experience something as an aesthetic idea.  Since the supersensible is invisible, and yet is perceived in particular phenomena, i.e. through intuition, what we get is the idea that there is some nimbus of heightened significance, what I called in my book, aura, that makes objects aesthetic.  It is still hard to see however how I can demand that others join in my auratic perception.  I can only say here that since the assumption of the supersensible is transcendental like the assumption of causality then it is not empirical but part of the transcendental ground of experience, something even the atheist cannot avoid, a kind of necessary illusion.  So aesthetic contest is based on a necessary illusion but one that is fruitful because it gives rise to richer and deeper experience, as dialogue and dialectic do generally.  

Kant gives one final hint concerning the basis of universal validity of judgments of taste in #58:  "the judgment is not directed theoretically, nor, therefore, logically, either...to the perfection of the object, but only aesthetically to the harmonizing of its representation in the imagination with the essential principles of judgment generally in the Subject."  (216)   I will perhaps save for another time a discussion of the truly bizarre continuation of #58 in its discussion of "free formations of nature" and "crystalline figures" although I think that this is an intimation of a Darwinian materialist approach to life and an attempt to provide what Kant ironically and confusingly calls a form of "idealism" but which in fact is the basis for an aesthetic form of atheism.  Instead of having an "objective finality" on the part of nature (which would indicate a creator God) we have "subjective finality resting on the play of imagination in its freedom, where it is we who receive nature with favor, and not nature that does us a favor."  (220)  This seems to me a kind of secular humanism where the noumenal realm recedes and is replaced by the ideal of human freedom.  When we consider nature, what is important is "how we receive it." (220)  "That nature affords us an opportunity for perceiving the inner finality as arising from a supersensible basis is to be pronounced necessary and of universal validity, is a property of nature which cannot belong to it as its end, or rather, cannot be estimated by us to be such an end"  -- for, otherwise. the end would be founded on heteronomy rather than on our own autonomy.  Similarly the delight in aesthetic ideas in fine art "must not be made dependent upon the successful attainment of determinate ends" thus indicating that the ends should be ideal in the sense that fine art must derive its rules from aesthetic ideas, these created by the genius artist using his/her productive imagination in the constitution of a second world out of the material of our world (referring once again to the all-important #49).