tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post2772139568720924724..comments2024-01-21T07:04:09.072-08:00Comments on Aesthetics Today: 50 Voices of Disbelief, and an argument for a Spinozistic universeTom Leddyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-15227995000681969212017-01-08T17:44:41.525-08:002017-01-08T17:44:41.525-08:00Hi Matthew.
I am not in a position to evaluate wh...Hi Matthew.<br /><br />I am not in a position to evaluate whether Spinoza is accurately described here since I am no Spinoza expert. I do not even like reading him. I will say however that Spinoza as described here seems remarkably similar to Descartes, who at least had some small interest in aesthetics, but whose philosophy is basically anti-aesthetic. See my posts on Descartes and aesthetics. Also Spinoza reminds me of the early Buddhists of the Pali Canon who were also deeply anti-art and anti-aesthetic (unlike Zen Buddhists). I discussed them a few days ago. <br /><br />What surprises me is that someone like Spinoza, who is a monist with a dual-aspect theory of reality and who therefore rejects dualism. could not take a great interest in aesthetics (and could not also free himself from Cartesian rationalism, which, I think, depends on dualism!). Naturalism in itself does not militate against aesthetics since Dewey was a naturalist and a great aesthetician. <br /><br />Matthew Stewart's “Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Revolution," is a great book that deals with the influence of Spinoza's deism on the founding fathers. Isn't it interesting that this deism fits in well with Emerson's transcendentalism, and that Emerson is really big on aesthetics? <br /><br />So, oddly, Spinoza is not barren ground for cultivating aesthetics: it is just that he did not know that, or he was hindered by his Plato-like obsession with the negatives of passion and imagination. <br /><br />Although Morrison is right that "Naturalism means that works of art have no special metaphysical status (i.e., are not irreducible to physical objects) and that beauty is not a real (objective and absolute) quality of things" he is wrong to think that physical objects are themselves reducible to something mechanistic and wrong that naturalism cannot ally itself with the deep interest in aesthetics: witness both Nietzsche and Dewey as well as Emerson again. It all depends on what you mean by "naturalism." <br /><br />Morrison may be on to something here though: perhaps it was Spinoza's Cartesian rationalism that got him into trouble, not his naturalism or his deism! <br /><br />I also want to clarify that although I have been thinking about a very thin form of deism along Spinozistic lines I am still very much an atheist: there is no god as agent in my universe, no afterlife. But there is the realm of non-reducible potentiality, of creativity and imagination: it is just another aspect of our natural world. Tom Leddyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13934376970865685864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119994678985722094.post-47011795572335860882016-12-31T11:53:35.380-08:002016-12-31T11:53:35.380-08:00Tom,
This is slightly off topic but I would like ...Tom,<br /><br />This is slightly off topic but I would like to hear your thoughts.<br /><br />Do these extracts from Morrison's paper 'Why Spinoza Had No Aesthetics' make sense to you? <br /><br />What do you make of Spinoza's indifference to art and beauty?<br /><br /><br />====Begin====<br /><br />The reasons for Spinoza's lack of interest in aesthetics are not solely or primarily due to a merely personal indifference to art and beauty. Nor does he openly express his reasons for his indifference or hostility to art and beauty. Rather, his reasons are philosophical and must be inferred from what he explicitly says. The general character of Spinoza's philosophy, as well as some of his central doctrines, not only provide no adequate philosophical basis for an aesthetics but lead to the neglect of aesthetics altogether. That is, I shall argue that Spinoza's philosophy represents a certain type of philosophy and "cast of mind" which is fundamentally alien to, even hostile towards, art and beauty. For Spinoza, works of art do not constitute a special domain of beings. He regards them merely as physical objects with physical predicates. Art and beauty belong to the life of imagination, sense, and passion. If the goal is to free ourselves from bondage and misery we must turn away from art and beauty, which are inseparable from them. Nevertheless, Spinoza allows that art and beauty do have a limited "medicinal" value.<br /><br />[....]<br /><br />The problem is not just that Spinoza's philosophy offers a "barren soil" for cultivating an aesthetics. Rather, the ground it supplies is too hard and intractable to motivate anyone from even attempting to sow it. In other words, Spinoza's basic philosophical position, especially what I have called his naturalism and rationalism, together with their reductionist implications, provide no motivation for taking art and beauty seriously as themes of philosophical aesthetics. Naturalism means that works of art have no special metaphysical status (i.e., are not irreducible to physical objects) and that beauty is not a real (objective and absolute) quality of things. Rationalism means that only by thought (not the imagination or senses) can we know the true nature of things. Now it can be objected that none of these doctrines logically implies that art and beauty cannot be the subject-matter of a philosophical aesthetics. I am willing to grant this. But I maintain that when these metaphysical and epistemological doctrines are combined with moral rationalism the implications for aesthetics become more evident. For, as we have seen above, Spinoza's moral rationalism means that the emotions, which are linked to the imagination and senses, are the source of unfreedom, vice, and unhappiness. This implies that the good life is possible only if the passions are mastered; and this, Spinoza holds, can only be done by reason and the intellect. Herein lies, I believe, the ultimate basis of Spinoza's philosophical neglect of aesthetics. For once the good life is identified with the life of reason, and reason is opposed to emotion, imagination, and sense..... art and beauty become suspect. They are regarded as either irrelevant or hostile to man's highest and deepest interests.<br /><br />RTWT here:<br /><br />https://www.jstor.org/stable/431135?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents<br /><br /><br />Thanks,<br /><br />MatthewAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com