A Matter of Taste
I want to set up a thread which explores the aesthetics of philosophy. What I mean by that is one's taste in philosophy. While this could include the prose -- is it elegant or turgid? -- what I want to focus on is the aesthetic judgment of the philosophy itself.
A central question might be "Why do I like the philosophy that I do?", but in the spirit of starting a discussion to think about taste in philosophy I will list some questions that might spur on discussion.
One of the things that cannot answer this question is "Because it's true" -- since they all claim that, at least, we can't judge the philosophy on aesthetic grounds. It's not like the philoisopher set out to say false things, we just disagree with what they say.
But that doesn't answer why we're attracted to what we're attracted to -- there are so many philosophical questions out there that you have to make choices about what to read or think about. I'm asking after philosophical justifications for this aesthetic choice.
Do you think that aesthetics in philosophy is a thing? Should it be?
Do you have a sense of your own taste?
Why are you more drawn to particular philosophers, schools, styles, or problems?
Is there such a thing as bad taste in philosophy? If so, what should one do if we encounter bad taste?
Likewise, is there such a thing as good taste in philosophy such that it differs from "the opposite of bad"?
How do you feel about your own personal aesthetic choices? Do you think about how to choose which philosopher to read? How do you think about others choosing different philosophers from you? Is that the sort of thing one you might be "more right about"?
A central question might be "Why do I like the philosophy that I do?", but in the spirit of starting a discussion to think about taste in philosophy I will list some questions that might spur on discussion.
One of the things that cannot answer this question is "Because it's true" -- since they all claim that, at least, we can't judge the philosophy on aesthetic grounds. It's not like the philoisopher set out to say false things, we just disagree with what they say.
But that doesn't answer why we're attracted to what we're attracted to -- there are so many philosophical questions out there that you have to make choices about what to read or think about. I'm asking after philosophical justifications for this aesthetic choice.
Do you think that aesthetics in philosophy is a thing? Should it be?
Do you have a sense of your own taste?
Why are you more drawn to particular philosophers, schools, styles, or problems?
Is there such a thing as bad taste in philosophy? If so, what should one do if we encounter bad taste?
Likewise, is there such a thing as good taste in philosophy such that it differs from "the opposite of bad"?
How do you feel about your own personal aesthetic choices? Do you think about how to choose which philosopher to read? How do you think about others choosing different philosophers from you? Is that the sort of thing one you might be "more right about"?
Comments (194)
Terrific questions, thank you. Also terrifying!
Just for a place to start: Yes, I have a sense of my own taste in philosophy, and I've noticed that it can change over the years.
Some things stay consistent, though. I appreciate good writing and have trouble with what I consider turgid prose, though this is not a very profound reason for choosing Philosopher X over Y. I also want the philosophy I read and practice to help me understand who I am. What that means continues to be an open question for me, but it unquestionably involves what you're calling aesthetics.
One more observation: I enjoy the philosophical activity of questioning, of finding good questions and understanding why they provoke me. I'm much less interested than I used to be in the possibility that true-or-false philosophical answers will turn up -- or perhaps I should say, T-or-F answers to good questions.
There's a ton more to say but I want to read what some others will respond.
My reaction to philosophy is not aesthetic at all. It might matter to me whether something is well written, but thats mostly just so its easier to understand. I do enjoy and appreciate good writing, but that wouldnt be enough to influence my choices. Bad writing might be enough to push me away from something that I might otherwise find useful.
Its the ideas that matter.
Quoting Moliere
Quoting Moliere
The ideas matter, of course -- not the expression so much.
But why these ideas and not those ideas?
Surely you see we gravitate towards different philosophers.
I tend to hold that our beliefs are shaped primarily through the affective and aesthetic dimensions of our engagement with the world and that these serve as the basis by which we choose our ideas and form our preferences.
Which is why I often say that belief in God (for instance) is more likely a preference for a particular type of meaning and value which attracts us, rather than the outcome of sustained reasoning. If reasoning is involved, it tends to be post hoc.
I suspect we make these judgments at lightning speed, with minimal awareness, because they become built into our sense-making processes.
I've noticed in conversations with people about big questions, like meaning and God, that there is often a clear aesthetic preference for a world with foundational guarantees of beauty and certainty. For some, this makes the world more pleasing, more explicable, more enchanting. An enchanted world is a more engaging, attractive world for many. A hatred of physicalism and 'scientism' often seems tied to a view that notions of intrinsic meaninglessness is ugly, stunted and base. And therefore, wrong.
Right!
I think that's a good insight into what I'll dare to call "layperson philosophy" -- not as a denigration, but a categorical distinction between people who are Picasso and people who take an art class and like painting.
What's up with that aesthetic preference? Is it possible to justify or ground it? And, in spite of it all, what do we do when we encounter someone with a different aesthetic preference, though we feel it ought be universal?
I suppose there are people who believe that truth, goodness, and beauty (the transcendentals) are intrinsically linked, all originating from the same foundation, such that these ideas are direct expressions of the One Truth, rather than contingent products of human culture and language.
I think my answer to that is pretty idiosyncratic. I've talked about it on the forum before. I carry a model of the world around inside me, in my mind - intellectual but also visceral. I visualize it as a cloud lit from within. I stand in front of it and I can see everything. Dogs and trees, but also love, ideas, and experiences. Myself and other people. Neutrinos and the Grand Canyon. Things I know well are more in focus while those I know less are foggier and vague. Then there are things not included at all - things I'm not aware of.
I judge the truth, value, or interest of something by how it fits in with my model. Things that fit well help bring things into more focus or might expand the cloud. Things that don't fit well might cause me to reexamine my ideas and might make things less in focus. Things that don't fit at all, and that includes much of philosophy, I'm not really interested in.
In my experience, this is where intuition comes from. If you want to simplify, I just you could just say I pick the ideas I'm interested in intuitively.
Sure. I suspect that what we call intuition is really a shorthand for unconscious processes shaped by underlying preferences. These preferences are often privilege (by you or anyone) because they carry a strong innate or aesthetic appeal. Of course, Im unsure if this can be definitively demonstrated, though I understand that current psychological theories, such as those proffered by Steven Pinker and Jonathan Haidt, support the idea that reasoning is grounded, at least in part, in affective processes and by extension, aesthetic sensibilities and preferences.
In my case, I am sure that the conceptual model of the world I carry around with me is based on experience, including formal learning, and innate factors. Aesthetic? It doesn't feel that way. I haven't thought about it before, but I think it's likelier things that are aesthetically pleasing to me also match something in the conceptual model. There, you see. You've just brought a part of my conceptual model more into focus, or at least you've helped me identify something I need to pay more attention to.
I had an interesting conversation with a mystic not long ago, and it seemed clear to me that he disliked science and empiricism, not because of any failings in reasoning, but because they made the world seem uglier to him than a boundless, fluid, and transcendent mystical model.
It doesn't seem to me there are that many philosophical questions. Or maybe it would be better to say that what appear to be many questions are all variations and/ or elaborations on a few basic questions. As Heidegger said, we are the beings whose very being is an issue for them.
The categories of philosophy seem to show the basic questions. Epistemology is concerned with the question what can we know and how can we know it. Semantics with the nature of meaning and reference. Logic with the nature of truth. Metaphysics and ontology with the nature of being?of what is. Aesthetics with the nature of beauty, harmony, unity and so on. Ethics and moral philosophy with how best to live. Phenomenology with the nature of experience.
We are probably each attracted to a different mix with different emphases on the main categories. I understand that there are people who want to believe this or that when it comes to metaphysics for example. As @Tom Storm noted some dislike science because they think it disenchants the world. Others like science because to them, on the contrary, understanding how things work makes the world more interesting and hence more not less enchanting.
I have always been constitutionally incapable of believing anything that does not seem sufficiently evidenced. I was once attracted to religious/ spiritual thought, and I tried hard to find various religious ideas believable, but I failed the task. So, you could say I would like to believe the world has some overarching meaning, but I just don't see the evidence. Probably a lot depends on what ideas and beliefs one is exposed to, perhaps inducted into, when growing up.
That's certainly true in some cases. This is a quote of Kepler by E.A. Burtt in "The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science." Burtt describes Kepler as a sun-worshiper.
I left out something I had planned to say.
In science at least, there's a difference between where an idea comes from and how it has to be presented and justified scientifically.
That seems a remarkably anthropomorphic "just so" kind of statement.
I'm currently reading David Bentley Hart's first book, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. There, he takes on post-modern theorists instead of secular empiricists (the focus of his critiques in later works).
It draws a lot on Hans Urs von Balthasar, who had a huge role for aesthetics and drama in philosophy and theology. It also reminds me of D.C. Schindler's work, which also engages a lot with post-modernism and also follows Von Balthasar and Ferdinand Ulrich a good deal (Ulrich himself largely being in dialogue with Aquinas, Hegel, and Heidegger). Hart is also drawing quite a bit on the Eastern Christian tradition, particularly Saint Maximus the Confessor and Saint Gregory of Nyssa. This makes sense, as their great spiritual text is the "Philokalia," "Love of Beauty."
If Beauty is taken as a transcendental (even as one parasitic in Goodness or Goodness and Truth), it applies properly to everything. Beauty is the going out of Being, and so of Goodness and Truth, in appearances, the meeting ground between us and the rest of being, the sight of nuptial union between knower and known. It is how we encounter the world, how we are drawn outside ourselves in a sort of erotic ecstasis, and yet it is also what we try to become in communicating goodness to others (eros ascending, agape pouring down).
But Hart is not universally critical of the post-moderns (nor are the other's mentioned). They think they hit on real limits that are met when finite human reason is absolutized, such that the whole of philosophy and possible knowledge becomes defined by our systems and what we already are. When this occurs, Beauty ceases to lead us beyond our own finitude in pursuit of the Good and the True.
Yet such a view cannot be demonstrated a priori. As you rightly ask, how does one "choose between camps?"
Charles Taylor makes this case through a deep study of cultural history re modern materialist secularism. One is not "forced to the facts" here, but it is in many ways and aesthetic judgement. The vastness of the cosmos is said to be decisive on absurdity, or the non-existence of God, and yet if the visible cosmos shrunk by half or even 90%, it's unclear what should change. Elder Ephraim of Arizona takes this vast scale to indicate the exact opposite, the obvious grandeur of God. This difference seems ultimately aesthetic, which is Taylor's point. A preference for the mechanistic, or against it, is ultimately a sort of taste. John Millbank makes a similar sort of historical argument in his influential Theology and Social Theory re the positive construction of the "secular."
As Russell allowed, empiricism does not seem to tell us if the world had just started to exist moments ago, with our memories fully in tact. Nor does it seem to rule out p zombies or eliminativism. Likewise, rationalism can only justify itself [I]given[/I] certain assumptions and shakey deductions. So too, the post-modern tendency to prize immediacy and difference is arguably itself and aesthetic presupposition. There is no "purely rational," as in a "deduction from set axioms," way to decide. It's a bit like Chesterton's madman, who is also "wholly rational:"
This is, of course, an aesthetic and rhetorical appeal. But crucially, it is not one that reduces philosophy to aesthetics [I]all the way down[/I]. It does not deny the truth of its own position above any other, but rather denies that wholly discursive, procedural reason, mixed with sense data or not, can decide the issue. If we take MacIntyre's position, that reason always occurs within a tradition, which can be more or less consistent with itself, this does not mean that reason is limited within that tradition, nor that we have a different reason for each tradition. All that is required is the notion that traditions, models, language, the senses, etc. are all [I]means[/I] of knowinghow we knowand not the sole or primary objects of our knowledge (i.e. what we know).
Any philosophy that appeals to praxis as a prerequisite for theoria, and so any contemplative philosophy at all it would seem, needs to make such appeals, since the whole idea is that advancement in praxis must come first, and so must be motivated by a sort of promise. And so the rhetorical and aesthetic shall loom large. But it is not as if austere empiricism or post-modernism don't rely on such appeals.
To bring up something I said earlier about the "limits of reason" in many contemporary philosophical campsI would point out that the claim that reason cannot adjudicate between paradigms or world-views is, of course, a gnostic claim. One presumably knows this if one claims it to be so. Yet, as Hegel says, to have recognized a boundary is to already have stepped over it.
Now, if we claim that reason is in a sense isolated within "world-views and paradigms," we face the odd situation where some world-views and paradigms resolutely deny our claim. They instead claim that knowing involves ecstasis, it is transcendent, and always related to the whole, and so without limitalready with the whole and beyond any limit. And such views have quite a long history.
Our difficulty is that, if reason just is "reason within a paradigm," then it seems that this view of reason cannot be so limited, for it denies this limit and it is an authority on itself. Our criticism that this other paradigm errs would seem to be limited to our own paradigm.
The positive gnostic claim, to have groked past the limits of intelligibility and seen the end of reason (or immanence or presence) from the other side faces an additional challenge here if we hold to the assumption that any such universal claim must be "from nowhere," and itself issued from "outside any paradigm, " since it is also generally being claimed that precisely this sort of "stepping outside" is impossible. But perhaps this is simply a misguided assumption. Afterall, one need not "step out of one's humanity" to know that "all men are mortal." One can know this about all men while still always being a particular man.
So, that's my initial thoughts on the idea that reason cannot adjudicate between paradigms (which suggests an aesthetic answer perhaps). It seems this must remain true only for some paradigms, and one might suppose that being limited in this way is itself a deficiency (one that is both rational and aesthetic). After all, what is left once one gives up totally on reason as an adjudicator? It would seem to me that all that remains is power struggles (and indeed , some thinkers go explicitly in this direction). Further, the ability to selectively decide that reason ceases to apply in some cases seems obviously prone to abuse (real world examples abound)in a word, it's misology.
Eliminitive materialism or austere behaviorism might seem absurd, yet they are unassailable given their own presuppositions. Yet I'd maintain that it is ugly and small regardless of this consistency and closure. Nietzsche's thought has a certain beauty, Milton's Satan is inspiring, yet these also suffer from a certain smallness and ugliness. Absurdity is in the end, not glory. So too the idea of a maze of fly bottle like games that thought is forever trapped to buzz about in.
I don't want to oversimplify. In a way I think this is similar to saying "Because they're true" -- everyone can answer that, so it doesn't get at a philosophical explanation for why there's a difference in choices.
Definitely the same for me.
Quoting J
Yeah. I tend to believe that philosophy is always a work on the self, no matter how externalized it may look.
And the prose sometimes dissuades me. Spinoza's Ethics -- I tried a couple times and just decided to let others smarter than I on that subject to know what they know :D
Is "having an open question" an aesthetic choice, or more of an in media res whereby there's a landing?
Quoting J
Yeah.
The process of philosophy is more interesting to me than the results of philosophy. At least what we usually mean by "results" -- various theories which are true or whatever.
Good questions and observations that force us to look at the world differently -- that's the best philosophy to me.
That'd challenge an argument I'm making in favor of asking what aesthetics we utilize to make choices in philosophy: That because there are a lot of philosophical questions we must make choices on what to put effort into answering or wondering about. (even if that answer is "I don't know", though I'd say that's the same as "because it's true" or "intuitive")
I think that's a good first stab, though I'd take out "probably" and say "Here's a likely important explanation: Some of each of us are attracted to a different mix with different emphases...." etc.
As always, trying to shy away from universalization.
Definitely!
Partly this is a question meant to reflect on for ourselves: While it's probably because of how we grew up and various experiences and intuition and because it's true ---- everyone says that.
Is it possible to offer an aesthetic justification, rather than a causal-historical-preference justification, for what we read and say in philosophy?
I think I explained what I meant by intuition pretty clearly in my first post.
Yes.
Though I'm talking past, then.
It's the ideas that matter.
What I'm asking is if there's a reason you're attracted to this or that idea/author that doesn't have to deal with "it's just intuitive"
Or all the others I've listed.
Something I think about with respect to what I read is that I'm a naturally skeptical reader. So I'm attracted not just to skeptics, but everyone else too. Maybe the skeptics have it wrong, after all. :D
I have that skeptical inclination, and that's what has led me to where I am.
That's the kind of thing I have in mind. Why "intuition"?
I provided the previous explanation but I am thinking on the question still.
Did you read my first post in this thread? Maybe you dont want to call what Ive described intuition, although I think thats a good word for it. I talk a lot about intuition here on the forum and thats how I experience it.
Sorry, it was my second post on this thread.
My expectation is that all of our answers will be pretty idiosyncratic, at first -- but perhaps through that expression we can find paralleles and bridges.
Makes sense to me.
So this is the part that I want to probe -- and you need not have an answer that satisfies the aesthetic question -- why am I picking the ideas I'm interested in intuitively? Is there some further philosophical reason for it, or is it "Cuz it's pretty to me"?
I tend to think that we terminate our thoughts in aesthetics, so this question has wider implications than I've said up front. If they terminate there then we're pretty much in agreement.
Because its useful to me - intellectually or practically.
I saw a beautiful thing once.
Then I saw another, different thing, and I thought it was beautiful too.
Two different things. But I said the same thing about them, namely, beautiful.
Then someone else showed me a third thing saying if you like those first two things, you will think this third thing is beautiful too, and they were right, they did show me more beauty. How did they know what I might find beautiful?
Beauty itself, then, for me, becomes a philosophical idea.
I do philosophy to hear other people say something I might say myself but havent yet found the words (these are explanations), or to learn something new about the world (descriptions, theoretical experiences).
Quoting T Clark
Or, what he said.
Quoting Moliere
I wonder if anyone can really answer this. We all like to think we know what makes our gut our gut.
But a particular philosopher? I find them all partially satisfying and partially unsatisfactory - which cashes out to, meh, I better consider as many as I can.
When it comes to philosophy, and similarly straight science, when I see something true, something rings true, and is beautiful to me just as well. When Copernicus said so the sun is the center Im sure he would say he found something as beautiful as it was true.
I suppose there is a certain satisfaction with answering a question. Like finishing a puzzle, or completing a game (victorious or not). Any type of resolution, is actually pleasing to experience. I think philosophy shows promise as an avenue of bringing me satisfaction. Sort of all men by nature desire to know.
My current sense is that man is absurd, utterly adrift and blind in the chaos of life, paradoxes are the most viscerally real phenomena that I experience, and I dont know shit about the world, but nevertheless, philosophy brings me hope, for that satisfaction I lack.
Some of the posts around here are why I do this thing.
Its also practice for building and deconstructing arguments.
Not sure what you mean by this.
All of the aesthetic aspects to philosophy are by-products.
The ideas are the products.
Agreed.
I think aesthetics have an influence on the ideas that are produced, rather than being a byproduct.
It looks like a biproduct, but:
Quoting Fire Ologist
I don't think we can definitively answer it, but it is the sort of question we can share answers with one another, and thereby get a deeper understanding of one another's perspectives.
I agree. Although I hope it doesnt prejudice the way we view each other.
Just because someone is drawn to Nietzsche, but repulsed by Aristotle, might mean nothing more than they dont really understand one (or both) of them. It might not mean they are anti-essentialist.
Yes, but I would say, if the ideas are the focus, the ideas can reshape the aesthetics as much as the aesthetics might have pushed one towards a certain idea.
For instance, in On Prayer Origen writes:
[I]Good is one; many are the base. Truth is one; many are the false. True righteousness is one; many are the states
that act it as a part. Gods wisdom is one; many are the wisdoms of this age and of the rulers of this age which come to nought. The word of God is one, but many are the words alien to God.[/I]
The same idea can, and often was, delivered in much drier scholastic terms. This is pithy though.
It's not all high oratorical style either, they have a knack for slipping between this and the conversational, or even conspiratorial. Saint John Climacus is a master of passing between these modes. In Cicero, style arguably becomes a vice (as for Nietzsche).
They also tend to spice up their tractates with interesting appeals to literature, poetry, history, myth, and Scripture. Virgil's poetry, for instance, is liberally employed by Saint Augustine, who still considers him "Our Poet."
I don't know what happened as the centuries progressed. I suppose feudalism meant an end for the need for the sort of formal education that existed in antiquity and the heavy focus on public speaking as the key tool for public life. Or maybe it was that the audience narrowed, often to other experts. But it definitely led to a decline in style, one that humanism brought back with guys like Erasmus.
I'm not really sure what happened in between that "rebirth" and German idealism to make style what it was then...
So, I guess I like people who can write in this way, not so much inspiringly, although that helps, but interestingly. Charles Taylor is a good example. He doesn't strike any high oratorical notes, but despite having great density of ideas he nonetheless writes more like a great historian, the opposite of dry or abstruse. William Durant's philosophy stuff is like this too, and he is also pretty pithy.
This can make a big difference. I don't know if I'd ever recommend reading Gibbon to learn about Rome, but he's worth reading for the prose and Enlightenment era philosophy splashed liberally within his commentary. Whereas I sometimes struggle with works when reading them feels tedious.
That said, I don't really like polemical works, even when I agree with them. They certainly aren't the same thing, style (even oratorical) and polemic. Nagel, Lewis, and Frankfurt are good in this way, as recent examples. Augustine is a master. Chesterton is too good at it for his own good.
Yes I think as a atheïst I'm looking for a sort of non-religious theodicee, like the first philosophers, that is an 'arche' or way to envision the world as one continuous whole.
I find that I side mostly on the side of the tragic/sensual/empircal and dislike most spirituality, metaphysics or over/mis-use of dialectics or reason.
Philosophy at this point for me is mostly about doing away with bad ideas, which is most of philosophy.
And I feel pretty good about it actually, maybe wish I had come to this conclusion sooner. I certainly wouldn't want to waste any more time on bad philosophy.
I think other people have to go through the process they have to go through, and maybe that involves trying out bad ideas, but mostly I think they are just misguided.
Quoting Moliere
For some reason I keep reflecting back on this.
Partially it's because the concept of something "mattering" is nice and broad, and invites real reflection. It allows for the OP's questions about aesthetics to be introduced. It's also a reminder that what matters to me is probably not much constrained by "what ought to matter" -- if there is such a thing.
But I'm also thinking about an idea mattering. I take T Clark to mean, more or less, that they'll pursue a philosopher depending on whether the ideas are in some way intriguing or important. I certainly do the same. And yet . . . the ideas in almost any work of philosophy interest me, when viewed from the correct angle. If it's good philosophy, it's going to intrigue me, and most of my candidates for reading are good philosophers. So why this one rather than that one? Rorty used to say that he just didn't have an itch where some philosophers wanted to scratch. And vice versa, I suppose.
How this fits into an aesthetic appreciation, I'm not sure, but "an idea that matters to me" seems to be square in the middle of why I'll read the next book I'll read. Oh and I guess I should add: The more I'm familiar with some particular conversation around an issue, the more I'm likely to feel that the next contribution to that conversation will contain "ideas that matter."
Beyond that, what matters to me isnt necessarily the same thing that matters to you. I see this as a really personal question, at least for me.
Quoting J
Yes, intriguing or important to me, not necessarily anyone else. The way I feel seems a lot like what Rorty is describing.
Quoting J
Thinking more about this, I guess everything Ive said boils down to me being interested in what I find satisfying, not necessarily what I find beautiful. Is that an aesthetic judgment?
Good question. Pretty sure the OP wants to encourage an expanded use of "aesthetics," so I'd say yes. And it's interesting again because to really reflect on your question about "satisfying," we have to step away from received or common meanings, and ask what it means for me to be satisfied by an idea or its presentation. Is it like "feeling good"? Not exactly . . .
Good policy!
Quoting Moliere
What if the aesthetic justifications we offer are such as they are on account of our culturally/ historically conditioned intuitions and preferences? I suppose genetics may also be in play. Anything else?
Here's another element of taste ? doesn't apply to everyone.
Some people have a decided preference for the new. Sometimes this is argued for, as Dewey does: the old ideas are dead, no longer suited to our time, and we need new ideas that suit our needs. Sometimes this is argued for as "the philosophy of the future", leading the way, changing the world rather than meeting the present need.
As some people want to be in the vanguard or the avant garde, some people want to stand athwart history saying, stop. Or, if they're not interested in a fight, they want to ignore whatever foolishness people nowadays are getting up to, and stick by the tried-and-true ideas of their forefathers. Some people are naturally suspicious of the new.
As I say, not a motivator for everyone, but I think for some people very important.
Quoting Janus
:up: :up:
:fire:
Quoting Moliere
For some it's (almost) a reflex or bias. In so far as "aesthetics" is inherently philosophical, whether or not one makes aesthetic choices "in philosophy" seems to presuppose (an unconscious) metaphilosophy ...
Yes. I'm drawn to concise, clearly written, jargon-free texts on (suffering-based / agent-based) ethics and (naturalistic) ontology.
They tend to focus on aporia which align with my own speculations or reflectively throw me into question.
I find 'essentializing' any form of bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, pedophilia, superstitions, academic quarrels, etc to be in "bad taste" and I tend to name and shame the culprit.
As a rule, I don't 'essentialize' (i.e. reify the non-instantiated or un- contextualized) and avoid vague words or slogans as much as I can.
Well, they seem to work for me ...
Not consciously.
To each his own. No.
Quoting Tom Storm
:up: :up:
Quoting Moliere
:cool: :up:
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
:smirk: :up:
Yes. They're hardly ever otherwise. The OP question prompts us to ask, So what about that? Is this a mark against using our (conditioned) aesthetic criteria? Not universal enough? The discussion around that question might look very different from one that's similarly phrased, but concerns rational justifications that are called into doubt as culturally or historically relative. Here we're used to seeing an often acrimonious debate about whether "historical rational standards" is even coherent.
Yes, the theme of being drawn to inquiry or puzzlement as an aesthetic choice in phil. I resonate with that, especially if "aesthetic" is broad enough to include a desire to shape my own life through inquiry.
Yes :up:
Definitely.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
If it were possible to establish some way of making appeals appealing then this might be a way towards a paradigm which isn't local -- not a view from nowhere, but a view from anywhere as @Banno puts it. At least if my suspicions are correct.
That is -- whether reason can or cannot adjudicate between traditions, or paradigms, is sort of an open question still. I wouldn't go so far as to claim I know that it cannot be so. Only that it's not so right now.
Especially with a few topics whereby otherwise reasonable people with all the resources one could ask for -- professors, philosophers, academics, in a word "experts" -- that don't reach termination.
I say "God, freedom, and immortality" as the obvious topics because Kant. And I disagree with Hegel where he speaks about having to be across a barrier to point to its limit. Like you note -- I know I'm mortal because I'm human. I don't have to know what it's like to be superhuman to know my limit.
Rather, we can point to a wall through the example of the interminable antinomies of philosophy -- realism/anti-realism in all topics.
****
What's interesting to ask here is -- why does this philosophy argue the universe is finite, and that one argue that the universe is infinite if there's no fact to the matter that could settle the dispute?
It looks to me that there's an aesthetic element here: somehow the finite or the infinite are perceived as more "beautiful", and so the arguments which a philosopher will deploy comes from this beginning attraction.
If so then being able to explicate these aesthetic choices would be a way to build bridges between traditions -- i.e. journey towards the view from anywhere, but together; even if our traditions cannot both be universally true.
So, no, I'm not trying to abandon reason or something along those lines. "the appeal to reason" is what structures philosophy.
It's just a little more complicated than we thought.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Nice. These are the sorts of judgments I'm thinking about here. What is it about eliminative materialism or austere behaviorism that makes them ugly?
Must glory be the result of philosophy, or could it just be an inspiration?
And if we hop out of one fly bottle and into another, no matter what, then wouldn't that be nice to know that there is no "outside the fly bottle"?
Sure. Though I'd more want to ask after what's attractive in each rather than the position of essentialism.
Rather than asking after the strict inference I'm noting that there's more to philosophical argument than deduction, argument, and inference. And it's not insignificant.
But it's hard to articulate, hence the questions.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Sure. If I'm correct then there's not really a separating one from the other -- we're attracted to an idea for a reason, itself an idea.
Reason, itself, is attractive. That's why philosophers pursue it.
Nice. That's the sort of reflection I'm thinking after.
Also, it'd be interesting -- upon identifying an aesthetic reason for such and such a philosopher -- to attempt to go from that aesthetic grounding to the ideas themselves.
How do you do away with bad ideas, and how do you identify them as bad? Is it just that they don't provide a non-religious theodicy?
I'm guessing not because you go on to say "tragic/sensual/empirical" as something good whereas "spirituality, metaphysics, over/mis-use of dialects or reason" is bad -- in the aesthetic sense.
If no further answer then cool. We've reached the aesthetic terminus.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I think that's a common experience for people who read philosophy. Eventually you start to focus in on the couple of things that really interest you because there's just too much out there to be able to read it all.
But I like to wander around, still. I'm uncertain that much philosophy is truly bad, but only appealing to some other aesthetic. Not quite -- there are times where I don't think this -- but it's the idea that I'm thinking towards.
Right! That's a great question.
I agree that I can usually find something attractive in a philosopher if I give it enough time.
The more general question might be interesting here too: "Why this philosopher and not that one, when both are good?" followed by "What is it about this group of philosophers/ies that includes them as the "good" ones? Just that I can find something interesting?"
Yes, that makes sense. And good point in bringing up "mattering" -- in a way that's the question. What is this "mattering"?
I think familiarity helps for generating interest. In part that's because philosophers are constantly referencing one another, so if you find one thing interesting you'll likely be easily able to find another reference on the same topic with a different perspective.
True, they're not necessarily disconnected. A person who likes French literature because their heritage is from France comes to mind here. Though then I'd put it that this isn't exactly an aesethetic justification -- it's why I like something like ice cream, but since not everyone has French heritage I wouldn't expect others to feel the same as me.
The aesthetic judgment is this universalizing of the subjective, in a way. I know that it's an affectivity and interpretation, but if only you'd watch this movie I'm sure you'd feel the same!
Yes, that's a good one. Nietzsche as the philosopher of the future and Burke as the lover of the tried-and-true.
That's an especially interesting category because I can see how it ties into the ideas of thinkers, too.
Yeah. Though I'm rather explicit about the importance of aesthetics in philosophy :)
Quoting 180 Proof
Excellent. Those are very clearly stated philosophical aesthetics.
Good philosophy is clear and explicit. The topic is chosen due to the reader's position towards the topic such that it will result in aporia.
Bad philosophy utilizes the notion of essence to justify bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, pedophilia, superstitions, or academic quarrels and other such things. The appropriate way to react to this bad taste is to shame the person.
And, as a rule, reifying the non-instantiated or un-contextualized and using vague words or slogans is to be avoided as much as you're able.
Also, yours is a more "subjectivist" bent on an aesthetics --i.e. these are rules and attractions that work for you, but to each their own.
That's clearer than I can answer these questions for myself. :D Thanks @180 Proof
Might this be a poor criteria though? Praxis is almost absent from the academy, it's been wholly privatized by the dominance of philosophies of secularism. But on the view that praxis is a necessary prerequisite for theoria, being a professional, reasonable, etc. isn't enough.
I certainly think the perennialists often distort the traditions they appeal to in trying to make them uniform. Nonetheless, their point is not entirely without merit, and the convergence seems to me to be a sign of robustness, whereas a process that leads to endless fractal divergence bespeaks a sort of arbitrariness (particularly when the divergence occurs due to competing bare, brute fact claims or "givens").
At least, from within the traditions of praxis themselves, this is exactly what is predicted, so in their own terms, this is not a great difficulty.
I am not sure if this is a good example for what Hegel is talking about though. Presumably, you know that which is not human, and that's "the other side." Hegel is also certainly not saying one must step on the other side of an issue to express uncertainty about it. He is in some ways a fallibilist after all. Hegel is speaking to gnostic pronouncements about the limits of knowledge. This is isn't to proclaim something undecided, but rather to claim that one has decisively decided it.
To borrow the quote I shared in the other thread from D.C. Schindler's the Catholicity of Reason that focuses on the major presumptions made by those who, out of "epistemic modesty" set hard limits on reason.
First, he responds to the idea that we never grasp the truth, the absolutization of Socratic irony as the claim that "all we know is that we don't know anything (absolutely)."
The second idea he addresses is a sort of "bracketing" out of "epistemic humility."
Or as Plato has the Stranger say in the Sophist: "the ultimate destruction of reason is the separation of one from all" (259e).
Well, ironically, on the relativistic view, one is only ever in a fly bottle if one has already placed themselves inside it.
I could opine at length about that one, but I'll suggest that one way to distinguish between paradigms is the extent to which they must reduce and demote aspects of human experience and being, as well as beauty, to illusion and error. "Two worlds Platonism" is rather famous for this. Yet radical empiricism might dismiss even more of experience. Post-modern theorists paint with their own monochrome brushes to dismiss quite a bit, to demote to "abstraction"abstraction, which comes to have the ring, not of "intellectual apprehension," the "possession of form/actuality," but rather of "illusion and error." Solipsism and solipsistic paranoia are of course, the extreme examples. Shankara and the Advaita Vedanta goes so far as to break out into the other side. Whereas, when reading some of the traditions that come out of phenomenology, I often think that it is a very different thing to recognize that "Atman is Brahman," as opposed to "Brahman is really just Atman."
And virtually the entire history of 20th century arts in the West! As I'm sure you know, the question of novelty or originality as an aesthetic value has been championed and then derided, back and forth. The debate in turn centers on whether self-expression is a key element of art; if so, then one ought to strive at least for a degree of originality. One wants to "sound like myself," and not some predecessor, however influential.
How far does this parallel philosophy? Great question. (My hesitant answer: Not very far. But that's my taste again.)
Yes.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
But not for this reason.
Really you can substitute anyone in there -- any old expert will do as long as they have all the resources one could ask for in answering the question.
So for something non-secular -- compare the Buddhist monk to the Christian monk. Sometimes entirely praxis based, which is something I tend to favor, but still engaging in an interminable affair.
Not that this is bad, mind.
Only an indication -- at least if antinomies are a way to point to a wall -- that we're dealing with the limits of reason here.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Fair.
I'm afraid I find antinomies persuasive, for whatever reason. It seems like you have to pick one side and defend it, but it won't matter how you defend it just that you defend it because the other side will do the same.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Fair. I do think "God, Freedom and Immortality" are the examples Hegel had in mind, given his critique of Kant.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think that setting a limit is strictly a priori. And I don't think setting limits requires a presumption -- it's not like I'm saying "Tim, I've seen the limits of reason and these are it. Heed my call, or suffer the consequences!"
I'm saying "Hey, look over at that God debate that's been happening for thousands of years. Notice how smart people, people we would not otherwise question, disagree? Maybe there's a limit here"
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
So it's not this. "allowing oneself judgment" isn't something we can do. We judge whether we like it or not.
But the process of philosophy sorts out the good from the bad judgments. Or attempts to.
Also, I ought note that just because God lies on "the other side" in terms of justificatory knowledge, that does not then mean I think or argue that God is insignifcant.
Indeed, lots of my thoughts deal with wondering why the false is significant, or something along those lines. And not for a priori reasons.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Only in the extreme version whereby whatever one person decides is right is what is right.
I think the notion of the fly-bottle is to say something like: the philosophy you espouse is clouding your judgment without you realizing it. You see the world and bounce against what you cannot see. But if you let go of your philosophical ideas, arguments, presuppositions, what-ifs, etc., and chase therapy you'll find that the world was always there all along, and it was the various ideas you had about it that stopped you from flying.
But then: Do we ever get out of the fly bottle? Was Wittgenstein outside it?
Naturally, my taste is to say the opposite:
Quoting J
Self-expression is a necessary element of philosophy.
Art might, at times, cross over into something more sublime.
But the philosopher is always speaking about themself, whether they like it or not. (At least, this is what I believe)
[quote=Every Philosopher Ever]But this time I'm going to manage not to bite my own tail.[/quote]
[quote= unenlightened's mother]Don't talk with your mouth full.[/quote]
Interesting. I guess you're using "self-expression" in a very general way. A technical discussion of some point in modal logic, for instance -- you could say that Prof X, who holds one view, is "expressing himself" by doing so. But then what are we comparing self-expression to? What is not self-expressive?
We know how this would go, in an artistic discussion, too. Artists like T.S. Eliot and Stravinsky claimed to be doing the very opposite of expressing themselves -- they wanted to escape from self, and focus on the work, appealing to the much older idea of art as involving making a good thing rather than expressing anything about the maker. But many have replied, "And yet something of yourself is surely being expressed, otherwise how is your work so immediately recognizable as yours?"
This probably hinges on exactly what we want the concept of "expression" to cover. In English, I think we tend to associate expressivity with the personal, the psychological.
Because you are a curious person.
Quoting Moliere
The philosophy of art is a branch of philosophy. The elegance in philosophy is in writing concisely.
Quoting Moliere
Almost everything. Questions in all fields of philosophy with the aim of finding an answer to them.
I may not follow you here.
Your OP places the aesthetic as the prior, and asks what is the aesthetic behind ones attraction to this or that particular idea or philosopher.
But if we are now saying that aesthetic and rational judgments are not really separable, cant we now equally say:
I see X ideas, because they follow the Y aesthetic
OR
I see the Y aesthetic because it follows X ideas?
What does that make of your OP placing the aesthetic as prior to the ideas one is attracted to?
This makes me think of the following question: when using aesthetics to shape ideas, arent you being an artist, but if using ideas to shape aesthetics, arent you being a philosopher/scientist?
So for the philosopher, doesnt that boil down to what are the ideas and not why do you like these ideas over those ideas? Philosophers only like truth.
And in the end, the philosopher need only care about the ideas and should never give in to any aesthetic temptation or prejudice. The aesthetics will fall into place based on the ideas, for the philosopher.
Unless one wants to be an artist, in which case, let the ideas fall where they may. Thats fine, but where aesthetics underpin, philosophy has not begun.
So, to me, the question of the OP has become, why do I like doing philosophy over doing art (and not why do I like this philosopher/idea over that philosopher/idea. The answer to this second question becomes easy: I like any philosopher that presents a clear enough idea that might one day inform my aesthetic.)
(Long form of - for the philosopher, aesthetics are a by-product, but ideas are the product.)
With respect to philosophy, at least, it'd be non-philosophical self-expression. But then that'd be decided by some set of understood conversational rules or standards of evaluation or relations of significance.
But yes I don't mean it in terms of just saying whatever it is one wants because that's who one wants to express. Rather, within the confines of what is persuasive one expresses themself. They're working on the problem they're working on for a reason, yes? I don't mean it in terms of expressing their personality, but there's a reason that thinker or researcher is there.
So supposing Locke, for instance, in his treatises on government. He's going about describing a philosophical theory in that appropriate manner that philosophers did then, and he chose this topic because he genuinely opposes Kings.
In order to persuade people the expression will have to fit the norms of persuasion in said discipline and utilize evidence which is deemed worthy of consideration. But that whole "deeming worthy" part looks a lot like aesthetic judgment to me. It may turn out to be false and so discarded, but that choice to pursue some line of thought or deeming some evidence as relevant to the topic at hand -- that takes interpretation, which in turn takes standards -- i.e. aesthetics.
Quoting J
Right, and that's not exactly what I'm meaning. Rather, there are subjective conditions of judgment which we then universalize -- expect others to hold a similar standard. Here meaning that there's someone that has to do the interpreting and thinking. It's a creative process, rather than something read off the evidence.
What T.S.l Elliot and Stravinsky claim I'd grant as within the area of aesthetics. Indeed, "reaching beyond" has often been something which inspires artists and attracts thought! What's important to reject is the notion that just because I say so so it makes it so, except fo the cases where this is not so :D
I think agreement does the work here. If people agree on a particular mode of judgment then people understand that there are some shared standards which guide the discussion.
I think this is a misunderstanding of philosophers that can be remedied by looking at Plato. Truth is important, but the triumvirate between the good, the beautiful, and the true is important to Plato -- he likes all three.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Hrrm, not prior. Only in the frame of. My suspicion is that there's more significance, but ultimately I don't think that insisting on truth is a very tractable solution to comparison since all philosophers claim truth. They all care about it so this doesn't serve to differentiate the reason for emphases.
I think the examples that are particularly interesting here are one's that aren't necessarily talking about the same thing. Sure, all philosophers are interested in truth and being. So why do some talk about epistemology, some talk about metaphysics, some talk about ethics, and so forth?
Or is it just willy nilly?
I only like philosophies of the real.
Yes, that makes sense to me.
Quoting Moliere
I was with you till the final word. Sometimes the standards purport to be more than, or different from, aesthetics, no? Plain old pragmatics, for instance. To say that all standards come down to aesthetics requires some justification.
They do, and mayhaps my recent reply to Srap in the Williamson thread goes some way to bridge a gap here.
Yes, classically aesthetics is about the beautiful and the sublime, works of art and their judgment and so forth. But in the broader sense aesethetics is about value judgments which are non-moral, and yet still binding on others in some sense -- i.e. not strictly personal preference in the manner we say "I like vanilla ice cream, but you don't have to"
Basically,yes it's an extension of the category -- but it's reasonable on the basis that we make value judgments which, while there's no fact to the matter, and it's not really something that reflects on one's character or actions, we still hold it to be valuable for others in some sense, or choose to be binding to it.
I guess it's about the basic assumptions a philosopher makes and the way they use langauge because of those assumptions. Certain ideas and ways of thinking hang together more or less coherently and give rise to distinct worldviews depending on the basic assumptions one makes.
If for instance one doesn't view the Forms, Ideas or the Logos as the fundamental underlying reality, one would have to view reason, and the use of the dialectical method for instance, with a lot more scepsis.
I think the way one leans vis-à-vis those basic assumptions typically colours the rest of ones philosophy.
Quoting Moliere
For me it's not so much that there is too much out there, but that I have decided on some basic assumptions and want to progress in a certain direction from there. Coherence is typically also one of the goals of philosophy, and I feel like you can't progress if you leave everything open. These assumptions have consequences.... and so that means you try to do away with ideas that don't work with them.
Thinking about this OP again, I realized something about myself that might speak to an aesthetic analysis between philosophers.
What questions intrigue you, first? What is your gut instinct when making inquiry of something? How do you carve things up when wondering how things are carved up? Why do I notice something to question?
When I confront a mystery, I ask what first.
I seek a sense of what there is first. Not exactly what, or entirely what, but I have to see some distinction there, something that purports to declare itself, something to ask what of, what of it, before, in my view, the more painstaking how and other questions, become valued and needed. I just, do.
What instinctually piques my interest and is the basic tool I use to carve things up, to dig into things.
Someone else might be more moved when first seeing the question how before any what is worth entertaining.
But this is not to say what first thinkers and how first thinkers dont need to ask all of the questions. Its just what or how sort of sets their initial tables, to ask anything at all, to start the effort and struggle for any knowledge.
We all ask three questions at least. And we give any one of them top priority at any given moment. All of them are necessary tools to carve up and refashion experience into knowledge of experience. But we all ask:
what it is,
And how it is,
And seek whether it even is.
We all have to ask all three questions. To even conceive of and conceptualize what youve already decided and now assume whether it is; and if it is moving at all you must immediately wonder how what it is changes and came to be what it might be. And it is the same no matter how you start or with whatever you start - we ask all of them.
What lends itself most easily to metaphysics. How is epistemology, and whether is ontology. But again we need all three questions in all areas.
So Im wondering if there might be a sort aesthetic difference carved into ones thinking based on what strikes you as the first question, or what strikes as the starting point, or goal - the sort of shape your question makes of your answer to come.
What first thinkers, like me, end up fixing things still against the motion. The what as in, the what it is to be. Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Socrates, Plato. Systematizers or categorizers. Truthseekers. Certainty fashioners. What is there to know, and what are we to think about. I see change, defeating whatever was, but I already saw whatever was, now changed, and I look for what again.
How thinkers notice the movement itself, the process, with initial intrigue. How is that even possible, before I care more about whatever it might be. These are as diverse as Heraclitus, Democritus and Lucretius, to the Existentialists, and the Analytics and Logicians. They become mathematicians and physicists (biologists, neuroscience-scientists, etc.) as well. These folks take whatever is done and first ask how it is done.
Those who ask whether it is first are just people living their lives. We all need to answer whether that car is going off the road and about to hit us here on the sidewalk. But thinkers who focus first on whether it is end up sounding more like mystics. When you ask whether and answer it, the answer is a belief, an opinion you hold in your heart that even if you dont know what, and you dont know how, you know more deeply because you know whether. Just like when you cross the street and avoid being killed.
What is a cat, and what is a mat, and what is a cat on the mat? What is the meaning of on in this sentence?
How is there a cat independently of the mat when there is a cat on a mat? On is a process and relationship - but how is that?
Is that a cat there? Whether or not the cat is there, there is a mat there with what could be a cat but we dont know whether it is or is not.
Quoting Moliere
Maybe because of your initial question, the way in that we choose, our sort of favorite or most comfortable tool we grab first.
So now the aesthetic question just becomes, why do I ask what as if I dont need to ask how first? Or I could ask whether there is anything to this notion of an aesthetic difference forged by the form of our first instinct. I could ask how is an answer to this going to work? But for me, for some reason, I get started wondering what is this notion of the aesthetics of philosophy?
I skipped the question why but it must have its own aesthetic, its own flavor. I would assume some philosophers ask why first. I think why can actually mask what (as in why, what is the purpose, and why, what is its function?). Or why can mask how (as in why - what causes that or why - how does that come to be?). So why might not be a precise enough tool for the philosopher; although they may ask it first, I think they immediately break it down into what, how, or whether, and use these questions to inform why.
Maybe?
This question of the aesthetics distinguishing philosophers might beg for a more psychological analysis than it does philosophical. Because if you really want to do philosophy, you ask all the questions, and you need to like or at least respect, all of the philosophers. I think. And the end result of doing philosophy should not look so vastly different as we take Thales to be different from Russell. If they are both philosophers at all, they are both saying the same thing in some respects. Although I may just be sliding into my what box again
At least, legitimate enough to think through.
Upon doing so my thought was to try and introduce aesthetic attitudes as a means for distinguishing ways of doing philosophy.
And you went right out and gave a full fledged theory with that thought all on your own, saving me all the work. Thanks! I enjoyed reading through your reflection!
I think it could do work with respect to distinguishing between when a layperson does philosophy and when a trained philosopher does philosophy -- i.e. @Srap Tasmaner what you call the real work of philosophy.
Yes. All people ask what, how, whether, and why, but the way a philosopher asks them might have something to do with disinterested interest. (You raise a how question about the philosophic.)
This is related to (but not the same as) why I tried to emphasize that all philosophers should strive to ask all questions in all areas. We may start with a particular instinct and particular question (first asking what or how), and feel we cover more ground in a particular area (metaphysics, epistemology, mysticism, or even physics), but, as a good philosopher, we need to ignore our own gut from time to time. We must allow things to come to us and try not to bring anything to the table so to speak. Our own aesthetic pleasures should be held out as repulsive at least once in a while, if the metaphysician is to truly appreciate the physicist, and the physicist is to truly discover what the mystic is saying.
It'd take the attitude of disinterested interest to be able to judge that way, I think?
But I'm specifically asking after if you or everyone else reading along have heard that term in the philosophical sense. By "that term" I mean "Disinterested Interest"
It has a specific meaning in aesthetics due to -- you may be shocked here ;) -- Immanuel Kant.
Isnt that in Kierkegaard too?
Ultimately it wouldn't matter who where what when as long as we understand one another.
Another way to put it might be a trained interest. So dis-interested in the sense of "I hopped off the left side of the bed today rather than the right side" as not being relevant at all, amongst other more controversial claims, and interested in the sense of "I know this or that is what they are looking for and in that interest I shall apply my talents in this or that way"
"Applying my talents" it's a bit of a stretch with respect to aesthetic attitudes, but I just mean that the judger of art applies their knowledge in judging the art-work. So it goes with any profession -- you wouldn't believe how much shit I've heard talked by one tradesman on another, whereas most of the world wouldn't care at all if the blahpideebip was bent krongy or left-Burly.
In my understanding of the idea of disinterested interest it has something to do with:
- letting the muse inspire the art, where heart drives the interest but mind does not judge, disinterested in itself and only interested in staying absorbed in the passion.
- like improv, where there is no time to deliberate,
- like not letting yourself get in your own way,
- an earnest openness.
Seems like a meditative, more eastern way of approaching activity.
Interesting Kant developed this a bit. He wasnt much of a mystic or an artist. Was this where he talked about beauty and the sublime?
This is what I have in mind: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aesthetic-judgment/#Disi
The "interest" is "beautiful" or "sublime" -- but the judgment is somehow disinterested, which as I understand it means we hold the judgment to hold for others.
Though.... I can see a place for untheorized interest using the same locution, now that I think of it. The first time I watch a movie because a friend recommended it is untheorized interest: let's see what this is about, then.
The notion I have in mind, in order to keep with the idea that professions do in fact learn something, is the interest a person learns over time in order to help others' problems. I know this, that, and the other thing about (whatever), and so can say "if you want this then you might want to..." with reasonable confidence.
Disinterested interest is the sort of thing where I'm interested in the outcome, but I've learned a thing or two about how others judge and can see what they're getting at. Or something like that in trying to make a distinction.
I think I have the concept wrong.
It seems Kant was trying to get at critiquing art, and not generating art. Does that sound right?
It takes a certain disinterest to be able to compare and universally judge art, while the art itself remains of interest. Like the critic is only interested in sculpture and not painting (the interest part that makes things specific and particular), but when discussing various sculptures, the critic is best when being disinterested in what the criticisms (more universal judgments) may be.
Maybe? I read the SEP stuff and got lost (lost interest :razz:).
The critic isn't just saying "My name is Moliere, and thereby this statue is beautiful!"
They have reasons and such they're referring to.
It does seem to have a lot of similarities with the ideal of wisdom put forward in the east, but also with for instance Heraclitus.
What I think they are pointing to is yes, a letting go of fixed ideas of what you want to world to be, so that you can see it like it is and be inspired by it... becoming like a mirror of the world, or letting the world flow through you.
Nietzsche would see something problematic in this process of 'objectification' or 'disïntrestedness', I'm not entirely sure, but I guess because he just saw the perspectival (which is necessarily interested?) as essential for art and life.
Most of my interests are untheorised. This is simply a personal disposition. :wink:
So if you had to summarise what disinterest is in relation to art, can you do it in two simple sentences? I am assuming you have an openness and no commitments to influence your appreciation?
Disinterested-interest (I feel the need to combine the terms for emphasis) is the attitude one takes towards a particular work of art such as the Mona Lisa. The judgment is meant to apply to more than your individual reaction to the Mona Lisa.
Does that work?
Sure.
If so then I'd say it's the same as random creative impulse, whim, and "I like vanilla, but you don't need to"
I.e. not subject to philosophical thought at all.
I tend to believe it's possible to reason about these matters of taste, rather than say "Well, I like Mozart, and you like Beethoven, and that's all there is to it"
That is -- there is a "why"; or if you just do, then you don't bother to say "just do" -- just go ahead and do.
But even the "why" doesn't help. Take Bach. I love counterpoint. I love how he weaved the voices in and around each other, yet the harmonies were always beautiful.
Why does that resonate so strongly in me? No idea. I didn't choose to like it. Piano teachers gave me Mozart all the time. As far as classical goes, I didn't know anything else. But then one day I heard Bach, and my world changed.
Why doesn't it resonate in everyone else? Lots of people don't want to hear Bach.
Does it have to do with how my neurons are set up?
It could.
But that would not be the sort of "why?" I'm asking for. I'm asking for an aesthetic justification -- which would basically be a way of answering your question "Why doesn't it resonate in everyone else?" -- or at least a way to answer it.
Rather than saying "My mother played Bach and so I like Bach", in the causal sense this is a question asking after a rational reason for the preference.
Some sort of "This is what art ought be and so I like this" or something else -- something other than a causal explanation ,or whim.
Well then -- there it is.
Perhaps what's most contentious in my claim here is that aesthetics are more than either a whim or a brain-event.
Something that helped me understand what I think Moliere is getting at is thinking about discussing something aesthetic for someone else. Not just saying that you like X but giving the reasons. They can be any reasons at all - like the counterpoint harmonies versus more linear Mozart - just something translatable into critique besides just listening to the music. The translation has a sort of disinterest in itself for sake of what it might enlighten in the other person who is hearing the critique.
Another thing that helped is the difference between critiquing genres, and critiquing individual pieces within the genre you like. So if I say I like rock music and I dont like country music, that isnt really a critique or useful to anyone else. That doesnt mean to anyone, no matter how much you know me or have agreed with me, that rock is better than country. But, since I like rock music, I should be able to tell you about a new rock song, and describe some good things and bad things about it that might have some meaning. This critique can be meaningful.
And only after listening and learning to much more country music and hearing others critiques and listening to more to understand something of what those critiques meant, then I might be able to take a disinterested look at some country music and offer a meaningful, useful to others, critique (please dont make me listen to country music - Im a musician and have come to appreciate many, many styles and instruments, and there are some great country songs but only some and they arent that great - sorry!). So I am too interested in my dislike of country music to be able to offer a critique.
Even ice cream. Unless there is a flavor that makes you gag, you should be able to tell something useful about a good vanilla versus a bad vanilla even though you like chocolate better.
I dont like country music.
I am certain I have not been introduced to it properly. There is no way a 100 year old genre of music enjoyed by hundreds of of millions of people with ears and brains like mine are all liking the badness I hear - they are hearing something I dont hear. I could be shown how to listen, what to listen for, and who does it well and who does not do it well (if I had patience) and I believe one day, just enjoy a country song, and identify things in a new song as good and bad, and predict ones that would be loved by many or hated by many. (Right now I think most of them would be hated.) But thats because there are some rational-izable aspects to country songs that I just havent been taught to recognize.
Like coming to like jazz or fine wine - you need to practice and learn some things before you are even doing what needs to be done to enjoy the nuances and things that make something interesting and engaging and make to be critiqued.
Like rock music - the best stuff has a raw edge to it that is there, but tamed, into something delicate, on the edge of collapse but over-confident in its precariousness. It has to convey a sense of not giving a crap what anyone thinks, because it already knows the right people love it.
So cleaned up pop music about rainbows and vanilla ice cream, unless ironic and subversive, is likely boring and shallow and just bad music. It could show you what makes the guitar sound bad, the arrangement bad, the production bad, etc. lots to talk about as if these were brute facts.
It is a matter of taste, but not only a matter a taste, and taste itself can change and you can actively cultivate a new taste. I mean, if someone told you Bach like all classical music, is boring and weak, I think you could show them how they just havent heard, just havent listened, and in time would see that classical music is boring is simply not meaningful to anyone but the bored person.
You're certainly right that we can give more detail about what we like and don't like. But it seems to me it just moves the question down a level. Why do we like or dislike the details?
It's strange sometimes. I like bread. But I like both a soft, fresh loaf, and a multi-grain like Arnold's or Killer Dave.
I love just a lone guy playing the guitar and singing, like James Taylor. The clarity, the simplicity. Odd that if that guy with a guitar a country singer, and I almost certainly won't be able to listen to the whole song. Also odd that I love Steely Dan, which is very far removed from JT in instrumentation and chord progressions, yet those are the things I love.
Two days ago I literally met the only other person I know who can't stand watermelon! Thought I was the only one. AND she ALSO can't stand cucumbers! Funny that she specifically said the texture of the cucumbers is her objection, while the flavor is mine
Interesting. I avoid bread, rock music, Russian novels, and sport. I've never been able to engage with them, despite valiant experimentation. It's dispositional, no doubt rooted in some kind of affective relationship with culture and value. The truth is, I find rock music and sport ugly, and bread and Russian novels boring. But asking why quickly drags us into an infinite regress, each reason presupposes another, and eventually were probably left circling back to temperament and taste.
I think Kant means responding to X "as an end-in-itself" (analogous to a moral subject), but I prefer your formulation.
Quoting Tom StormYup. I can't even imagine what other kind of scenario there could be.
New idea: Perhaps there's the highly theorized and the un-theorized as a sort of spectrum of aesthetic judgment: They're both judgments that are meant to apply more widely than just what I think, though they sit on a spectrum of some kind. (I had some ideas for that spectrum, but decided to leave it undefined to see if others have thoughts)
?
You're certainly heading in the right direction @Tom Storm -- insofar that I persuade some people that aesthetics is a philosophical endeavor, and perhaps that that endeavor is the judgment of non-moral norms which apply to more than myself I'd be content.
I thikn this is a really interesting point.
I enjoy all genres of music i've come across. However, there are only a few where I like the genre. Generally, I like certain artists. For Country, I am also a 'non-fan'. However, Dolly Parton, Evan Bartells, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and a handful of others have blown my arse out. Generally, if I hear that jingle jangle, I'm actively turning it off though.
People like different genres - but people also like different sounds. It's totally possible that someone who entirely rejects, say, metal, would hear like Planet Caravan and change their mind. Or Kingdom by Devin Townsend. Or H. by Tool - or whatever - sometimes its something particular that grabs people rather than the genre. My wife couldn't get on with Choral music until I introduced her to Miserere and Deo Gratias. I think aesthetics are far more nuanced that the sort of crayon/duplo style of lumping things into broad aesthetic categories.
P.S: I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend Evan Bartell's newest lil Ep called To Make You Cry. Particularly the first two tracks, Death of A Good Man and Lulu. Absolutely devastating. That's what country is about to me. Alternately, 'Country Song' by Bo Burnham is hilarious enough that I'm sure you'll get through it.
I always liked Dolly Parton (she wrote hundreds of songs including some hits - a real artist) and Johnny Cash was always more than country - another true artist - his take on nine-inch-nails hurt shows how good art transcends any categorization - I mean what genre is that music?
Wouldnt deny Loretta Lynn made some good music either, and there are some really impressive instrumentalists (fiddle, slide, banjo) that could keep me listening.
I really want to like country more.
Will check out the others you mention. :up:
Yes, I think these are artists who transcend the genre. Most music lovers seem to like them, even if they dislike Country. I certainly enjoy some Johnny Cash and Hank Williams on occasion. I think one's commitment to music may change for some of us with age. I listen to far less music now I am older. I used to spend a couple of hours a day listening to classical music. I sometimes think our desire for music is connected to other appetites, emotions and energies which subdue, divert or dissipate over time. One thing I have noticed is that music has a greater emotional impact on me with age.
Music has always moved me pretty intensely. I have seen much of a change, just an expansion of what can do it.
For philosophy to progress, aesthetics must be a thing, as there is a natural limit to reason and logic. Aesthetics is able to transcend both reason and the logic reason depends on.
I guess each person has their favourite philosophers, and their choice is probably more intuitive than logical.
In understanding the world, there is a limit to reason and logic, in that we cannot appreciate the beauty of a rose using either reason or logic.
There are however notable differences between reason and logic. Reason is a broader term than logic, and is about understanding and making judgments using logic in order to arrive at sound conclusions . Logic uses a sequential process, using formal rules and principles in order to ensure the validity and coherence of an argument. As logic is limited as a sequential process, good reasoning, which is based on logic, must also be limited by such a sequential process. (https://thisvsthat.io/logic-vs-reason)
We cannot fully understand the world using reason and logic, as reason and logic only allows us a sequential understanding of the relation between the parts. Reason and logic are sequential, as in the syllogism. Starting with A is leads into B and concludes with C.
In order to appreciate beauty we need to be aware of the whole at one moment in time. In Kant's' terms, we need an instantaneous unity of apperception. In other words, we need intuition and the aesthetic.
The beauty of a rose cannot be proved using the sequential argument of reason or logic, but only shown using a momentary unity of apperception, a momentary intuition or momentary aesthetic.
Therefore if philosophy is to understand the world in a deeper sense, reason and logic, as temporally sequential, are insufficient and need to be transcended by the instantaneous and momentary, such as intuition and the aesthetic.
That is great. :fire:
Linear thinkers versus wholistic thinkers.
Thats another aesthetic theory of philosophizing.
According to Copilot (which seems correct), Descartes is a linear thinker, using deductive step-by-step reasoning. Heidegger, however, is a wholistic thinker, using recursion and evocation, employing a language that often resists reduction to simple logic.
Descartes is said to be one of the founders of modern philosophy. He was a Rationalist, using reason to gain knowledge. Heidegger broke with traditional philosophy. He contributed to phenomenology, existentialism and hermeneutics, which led to postmodernism.
Logical objective facts against intuitive subjective feelings.
Absolutism versus relativism.
The truth against my truth.
The problem with relativism is that Derain's "Drying the Sails 1905 has an aesthetic value equal to that of Banksy's "Girl with Balloon", which is clearly nonsense.
Good stuff. Curious what Moliere will say.
I offered an aesthetic theory of philosophizing that referenced the different questions or angles of approach different philosophers took. I think this jibes with your theory. And Ill explain why below. First, you mentioned how your theory raises the specter of relativism. But I think there is a solution to that, and that is, we need to think linearly AND holistically; we all takes wholes and reason linearly about them. (Just like we all ask all the questions - what, how, whether is, why )
So in my theory this would translate to we all ask what? as we behold the whole. And we all ask how? as we seek the lines of reasoning surrounding that whole.
Maybe?
I think Im seeing the same sort of aesthetic differences between what-first or whole-first thinkers, and how-first or rational-linear-working-of-parts-first thinkers.
I don't get that. Are you saying that a relativist is committed to claiming that all aesthetic judgments are equally valid? I don't think that's how the argument usually goes. Rather, the idea would be that, within a tradition or a practice, we can unrelativistically distinguish better and worse examples, while remaining skeptical about any overarching, tradition-independent standards about "beauty," for instance.
So the interesting question would be, are Derain and Banksy creating within the same tradition? If not, does "clearly nonsense" mean that you do see a tradition-independent criterion for aesthetic value?
I agree.
I know intuitively and aesthetically that Derain's "Drying the Sails" is an important piece of art and I also know intuitively and aesthetically that Banksy's "Girl with Balloon" is an unimportant piece of art.
But this is philosophically insufficient, in that I must also argue my case using reason and logic why this is the case.
I must apply reason and logic to intuitive and aesthetic beliefs.
If you would keep the linear constructions of reason and logic, along with the wholistic constructions of intuitive and aesthetic beliefs, all under the purview of philosophy, I think we are both walking a straight line onto the same whole page. :grin:
Within the tradition that agrees paintings such as Banksy's "Girl with Balloon" has aesthetic value as works of art, then Banksy's "Girl with Balloon" has aesthetic value as a work of art.
Within the tradition that agrees paintings such as Derain's "Drying the sales" have aesthetic value as works of art, then Derain's "Drying the Sails" has aesthetic value as a work of art.
This is Relativism. The Derain and Banksy have an aesthetic value as a work of art within their own traditions.
The question is, is there such a thing as aesthetic value over and above each tradition.
The more fundamental question is does "aesthetic value" have the same meaning in all language games.
Does "aesthetic value" in the Bansky language game mean the same thing as "aesthetic value" in the Derain language game?
Or is it the case that "aesthetic value" in the Banksy language game is defined as "something like Banksy's "Girl with Balloon" and "aesthetic value" in the Derain language game is defined as "something like Derain's "Drying the Sails".
Another question is, does aesthetic value exist outside the words "aesthetic value"?
:up:
I would say there's no Bansky or Derain language game. An artist is more like a farmer than an interlocutor. Her art is like seeds that sprout in the souls of the observers. Each sprout is unique because each person in the audience is. So if you aren't fond of Bansky, it's not as if there's a language game you're not participating in properly. It's that you're rocky terrain for that particular seed.
The way a piece of art gains value in our world is a reflection of the capitalism that pervades it. If I were to put jargon to it, it's that value is associated with the rumor that a work is an investment opportunity.
Aside from the peculiarities of our world, aesthetic value is related to a number of things, both physical and psychological. Grace and force are at the crossroads of physicality and psychology, and they've been around since people started enhancing themselves and their environment with decoration.
Seed planting and seed sprouting or not sprouting is an analysis of all art. You set up a language game.
Quoting frank
Thats another game - a lousy one (to the true art lover) that would be ill-advised to play if you didnt know how to play the seed sprouting game (because new seeds can sprout for hundreds of years where art is really art, but investment values change for the worse all of the time).
It's a metaphor. Explaining art is philosophy, which I think is an activity that stands apart from language games. With the idea of language games in mind, all philosophy is on the verge of being useless, but we do it anyway.
Which isn't to say that our beginnings have to make sense -- they often don't. We generally don't reason about our actions in a deductive manner, and doing philosophy is an activity.
But there is still this area of reason which does not deal with logic or the relations between things. I'd say that this way of thinking is rightly classed as epistemology. Or, as @Fire Ologist put it, those who ask how it is we know. Closely related is metaphysics, of course. Those who like to first ask "What is it?".
I think the notion of ways of thinking works particularly well there because there are a lot of philosophers that try to start on one side to answer the other due to the relationship between metaphysics and epistemology.
But then I wouldn't think that these ways are exactly ways of aesthetic judgment -- rather they are dealing with the usual problems of knowledge: What do we know, and how do we know it, and is there something we cannot know, and if so how do we know that?
For Kant the beautiful is closely linked to nature's purposiveness. He gives what he thinks the criterion for judgments of the beautiful are through this concept of purposiveness (as he does for sublimity through the mathematical and dynamical sublime). What's fascinating to me here is Kant is the sort of philosopher you'd think wouldn't put much stock into aesthetics. My understanding is that the CoJ wasn't pre-planned, whereas the CPR and the CPrR were -- Kant wanted, up front, to separate theoretical from practical reason so that we could pursue science without worrying about it undermining our faith.
Then comes along the CoJ that serves either as a contradiction to the original project, or the unifier of the original project such that there's a sort of foundation between three powers of reason: The theoretical, the practical, and the aesthetic.
I've pretty much lifted what I understand of his theory of the aesthetic to point out the category, but rephrased it without the jargon. This third "power", I think we'd prefer to say "capacity" today, is the universal appeal of things due to the structure of our mind.
Though today I'd prefer to not use "structure of our mind" and say something like "due to the tradition we were brought up within" -- thereby opening the door to more aesthetic categories than the traditional Beautiful or Sublime, insofar that we can proffer a sort of theory as to why something which is "subjective" holds for all subjectivities in the same manner (in a tradition this will the various reasons given for why such and such is being pursued or is attractive or interesting).
Such as the elegant, the rational, the clear, and other such adjectives often applied to philosophical arguments and thoughts.
As you say, the physical works of Banksy and Derain stand independently of how they are either priced in the art market or described by art critics. For example, an original Braque valued by the art market at £100,000 would probably not sell for £20 on Bayswater Road.
You describe Banksy as an artist, and it may be that his style does happen to appeal to me
But then again, it may be the case that Banksy is a cartoonist whose jokes don't happen to appeal to me.
It is difficult to escape the language game when describing Banksy as an artist.
I agree with that.
Sure, but my point was that, within each respective tradition, non-relative aesthetic judgments can be, and are, made. The reason you've heard of Banksy and not "Jimmy Wannabe" (I'm making him up, since no one's heard of him!) is because there is widespread agreement within this tradition that Banksy is better. If it was "relativism all the way down," the relativist art critic would compare Banksy and Jimmy and say, "Whatever. There's no aesthetic distinction to be made." But we know that's not what happens -- and the same for Derain's tradition, of course.
Quoting RussellA
Yes, that's what I was trying to get to. If someone denies this, would you say they are a relativist about aesthetic value tout court?
Also interesting: Suppose we agree that Derain and Banksy can share a tradition. After all, they're both European painters, very broadly. How could a tradition develop its aesthetic criteria in such a way that D and B can both be given a fair look? I'm not saying this can't be done; the "how" is what interests me.
And I think its a good one - experiencing art as art is an active participation and a sort of dialogue with the art, where something is planted and something can grow as one continues to experience the art. This metaphor, if more analytically rendered, would be a good part of a methodological critique of art. Can we measure how much does the artwork plant a growing seed? And maybe the seed planting/growing is the interested part, and the explaining art measurement aspect is where the disinterest comes in.
So though I might sound like I am agreeing with you by liking your metaphor, we may actually still be disagreeing a bit here? Im not sure what to make of this:
Quoting frank
I dont think gaming as I understand Witt or others might mean it (that is, the language game is meaningless without a use) is essential to all language, so I could agree with this quote. There is rational activity that stands apart from Wittgensteinian type language games. (There is a language that would survive Witts whole system - the one that gives meaning to throw away the ladder.)
But I also think, in another sense, all language always plays with the world as opposed to language being made of or part of the world, and as a separate thing from the world, could be called the play or game of knowing/speaking; from this view, there is no spoken activity, ie philosophy, that is apart from language games. In this view, words do a good job of referencing things in themselves or essences (occasionally).
(In other words, I think, Witt saw language as a game with all its moving parts internal to itself, and the world was more simply certain words inside the game and need not have anything to do with the world - from this view, I disagree with Witt and so could agree with you that philosophy stands apart from language games because philosophy really is about the real world distinct from its language. However, philosophy and language are not themselves walking around the world to be discovered. We must use language to build a philosophy of the world. In this sense language is a gay science (gay recalling the playfulness of gaming) - language is always the game. Its just that the game is about living in the world even a world in itself, absent language.)
The artwork is just sitting there. Whether it becomes part of a living person depends on the person. Adorno's form/content distinction makes sense here. If you look at the average Andy Warhol work, you'll notice that it has the same composition as a religious icon, except what's being held up as sacred is not a saint, but something mundane, that you might throw out with the trash. You can make your own pop-art by just taking the label off a jar and putting it on a shelf, raising up the invisible, seeing the sacred in the tiny. The form in this case is the actual physical screen print. The content is your living experience, unfolding in time.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I think philosophy stands apart from language games because it doesn't emerge from group dynamics per se. The original Sophia myth was about an entity in heaven who simply asked the first question: what's happening? Philosophy breaks a kind of silence by exiting normal life to reflect. Wittgenstein pointed out, I think correctly, that language is going to be all stretched out of frame when it's used in this way, often into the realm of nonsense.
Sure there is. Let's say that a composer which is lively is a composer which is good. We'll have some identifying criteria for what we mean by "lively", and thereby come to judge a composer as good.
One way to think on this with your examples -- perhaps there's a way of understanding why someone would say "Vivaldi wrote the most beautiful Baroque music" and why someone would say "Bach wrote the most beautiful Baroque music". I may have a preference for one or the other, but there's an attitude I can adopt to both in seeing why they're the ones we are considering in the first place: they're both good! And what is this goodness? Why these people, and not the butchers of the same time period?
I'm not trying to crap on your admittedly semi-glib notions. I'm trying to understand how we could have a standard, rather than an amorphous, temporal agreement about what's good without naming it... So, the standard would just be the actual reactions, in aggregate, of listeners.
That said, I see all the problems with this when it comes to modern music and how it's sold.
There's at least two ways I can think of making a standard. One is some formal prescription which holds for all practitioners of some craft. So something like the 7 principles of art.
The other is ostensively -- to use Shakespeare as the standard of greatness in English poetry, for instance.
What makes it a standard is intersubjective agreement. Insofar that you and I agree that such and such holds for all practitioners -- in this case, judgers of visual art and poetry, respective to the examples of standards -- we'll be bound by the standard.
It's just a temporal agreement, but in order for a standard to function we'd both have to understand and agree to it.
Also, interesting thought with respect to standards in art -- the standards are sort of the "starting place" for what counts as "good art". Sometimes, though, breaking the standards is what produces the best art.
Quoting Moliere
Ok, so a formalizing of what I had i suggested. Interesting. That seems an institutional type argument. I'm unsure where the agreements would lie otherwise..
This is key, I think. Trying to compare the relative beauty of Bach and Vivaldi may not get us very far, since "beauty" is notoriously hard to pin down. But my local classical station has an unfortunate penchant for playing all the latest "early-music discoveries" and I promise you, I can explain why both Bach and Vivaldi were better composers! Within this tradition, to be sure.
Quoting Moliere
Indeed, the more you know about a given musical heritage, the better you can make aesthetic discriminations within that practice. And in doing so, you can name the criteria that count.
Quoting AmadeusD
That's a good question. I don't know what @Moliere would reply, but I would call it more an appeal to expertise and scholarship. That doesn't always overlap with the "institution"!
Quoting AmadeusD
I'd be interested to hear more about this.
Another is the obvious daylight between critic and audience scores for films (generally).
This all to say that things like marketing (propaganda), access, appearance, in-group considerations and many other things contribute to what seems like an objective standard of "This many people enjoy this artist".
I think I'd say, using that notion, there's more than one artworld by which things are included or judged by. Popular music is an artworld unto itself where sales are a dominant metric of worth. Not usually for "the best" stuff, but it's an undeniable standard in the sense that it's sought after approvingly.
But then there's this notion of having a refined taste which is practiced by exposure towards the finer objects of aesthetic appreciation that seems to make sense to me. And, given our post modern world, it's fairly easy to see how there could be different sorts of tastes that apply different sorts of standards of inclusion and evaluation -- i.e. different artworlds.
Quoting MoliereYour preference is all it is. I can understand that you like music with certain characteristics, and possibly predict which compositions you will like. But that's not the same as saying those compositional are "good," or that I like them.
Quoting MoliereI'm a baroque fan in general, and Bach in particular. Vivaldi was one of his influences, so we can compare them easily enough.
I think this is right. It's also worth noting that preferences change. I disliked Mozart and Beethoven when younger (I was a Mahler and Bruckner guy). Found the music ugly and cumbersome. Now I like some Mozart and most Beethoven. We change and the art changes with us.
You probably know that Danto, in addition to promulgating his theories about the artworld, offered a frankly Hegelian picture of what art is. It involves a move which is philosophical -- a process by which art comes to understand itself, to eliminate all the things that art is not. He showed, I think convincingly, that we can no longer equate art with any physical substrate, any thing which art must be in order to qualify. Art is a way of seeing; we declare what is art, we don't discover it. The "we" here is the subject of much debate, naturally.
(This applies to all the arts, not just visual arts, so substitute "way of hearing" for music.)
https://youtu.be/tpeLSMKNFO4
Actually, nope! I know precious little of him, and it's third-hand hearsay through George Dickie, basically. Ad it's not like I read everything of his, he just had some really cool ideas that I found useful in thinking through art.
Quoting J
I agree that we declare what is art, in a sense -- though the "we" is pretty dang communal from my perspective, involving audiences, critics, artists, historians, and even casual appreciators of some art.
I should hope so!
I'm not sure I understand the showing you describe, though: That we can no longer equate art with any physical substrate, any thing which art must be in order to qualify. The latter part makes sense to me, it's the "any physical substrate" that has me wondering what that means, or if it's not that special and just a turn of phrase.
There needs to be some general discussion of aesthetics, and how it fits with ethics and other explanations. Here's a case for your consideration - my usual spiel, of course.
Aesthetics and ethics involve a direction of fit such that we change the world to match how we want things to be. This should be read as the reverse of what we do when talking about how things are, when we change the words we use to match how things are.
So an aesthetic opinion. will amount to a choice we make in our actions. Vanilla over chocolate. The preference is individual - we do not expect others to agree, and are happy for her to have chocolate rather than vanilla.
Ethics differs from this in that we do expect others to comply. Not kicking puppies is not just a preference - not just my choice, but a choice I expect others to make, too.
Given this framing, we can address the place of aesthetics in philosophy,
Some bits of philosophy are about how things are. On these, we should expect some general agreement. Other bits of philosophy may be how we chose things to be. And we might variously expect that others will agree, an ethics of philosophy; or we might simply be expressing our own preference: an aesthetics of philosophy.
There's a start.
You make the case that the problem of epistemology, what we know and how we know it, derives from reason rather than any aesthetic.
You make the case that reason is not essential to doing philosophy, as philosophy is an action, and we generally don't reason about our activities.
You make the case that philosophical argument does involve aesthetic thought, in the use of adjectives such as elegant, the rational and the clear
But is it the case that in epistemology, what we know and how we know it is wholly founded on reason and the aesthetic plays no part?
For example, we observe that the sun has risen in the east for the past 100 days and we make the logical deduction that this is because the sun rises in the east. That the sun rises in the east becomes part of our knowledge, and we know this because of our observations.
But what accounts for the leap from the particular, that the sun has risen in the east for the past 100 days, to the general, that the sun rises in the east. What has accounted from particular observations to general knowledge.
It cannot just be reason, as there is no reason why a limited number of observations should of necessity give a general rule.
And yet the idea that the sun rises in the east is a general rule, a law of nature, is so elegant, rational and clear that we easily accept it as part of our knowledge
But these terms elegant, rational and clear are aesthetic terms, in that there is no logic that can prove that something is elegant rather than inelegant, rational rather than irrational or clear rather than unclear..
Even our reasoned deductions are based on aesthetic preferences.
Yes, within the aesthetic tradition that Banksy is a great artist, then the non-relative judgment may be made that Banksy is a great artist.
But within the aesthetic tradition that Banksy is not a great artist, then the non-relative judgment may be made that Banksy is not a great artist.
===============================================================================
Quoting J
The problem is, who within a tradition actually decides what "aesthetic " means?
No-one would want the government to specify the meaning of aesthetic. The art critics depend on their livelihood on the art market. The art market is in sway to the big auction houses. The big auction houses depend on their income from the mega-rich. The mega-rich are part of the capitalist system.
I don't see how a tradition can develop an aesthetic criteria that is able to transcend the tradition that developed it.
OK, I see. I hope not too many philosophers are fooled by the equation of "popular" and "aesthetically valuable." We have to seek objective standards, if there be any, elsewhere.
Quoting Moliere
Right, more a turn of phrase (mine, not Danto's). It's meant to suggest the usual circumstances under which someone will point and say, "That can't be art because it isn't made of the right stuff, or made correctly." Danto argues that Duchamp and his ready-mades began the demonstration against this view, and Warhol put it permanently to bed. Conceptual art, too.
This conclusion deeply annoys people who equate art with a craft or skill. And it leaves a serious question -- what is techne, in the arts, if it can't be equated with art itself? I've written about this in various posts, relating to my practice as a musician. I think Danto is right and I'm upset that I can now make music without mastering skills that used to be de rigueur. My "art object" is not "made of the right stuff," according to the old view. It may be indiscernible nonetheless, compared to something that is made of the right stuff, and isn't that enough? But the difference in process, in the act of creating, is damn well discernible to the artist, and I don't like it.
Quoting RussellA
This unfairly makes it sound as if the judgment is just redundant. Let's instead say, "Within the aesthetic tradition that Banksy is a great artist, then the non-relative judgment may be made that Jimmy Wannabe is not a great artist."
In any case, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the tradition simply names Banksy as an artist working in that tradition, with the "great artist" judgment as a second consideration? I don't think any tradition automatically lays out who must be the best.
Consider Derain's tradition. Do you want to say that to understand that tradition is to understand that Derain is a great artist? Does the tradition also generate rankings of artists both better and worse than Derain? I'm not convinced, though you're getting at something important, which is that a description of a tradition or a practice is incomplete without an explanation of how to make value judgments within that tradition. But that's different, I think.
It may well be the case that it is logically impossible for any tradition or practice to be complete. By their very nature, any tradition or practice must be incomplete.
Consider the statement "Within the tradition of painting, Derain is a great artist and Banksy is a mediocre artist"
This is a value judgement that I know to be true.
But there are no words that can justify this value judgment, as there are no words that can explain the value judgment that a rose is beautiful or a thunderstorm is sublime.
That I cannot describe my subjective experience when seeing a red postbox does not mean I don't have a subjective experience when seeing a red postbox.
In this sense, it is true that such traditions are of necessity incomplete..
As Godel showed, there are some truths within a system that cannot be proved within that system.
In maths, being an axiomatic system, the axioms cannot be proved true.
In language, Wittgenstein argued that language was built on hinge propositions, which cannot be proved true.
In the 1920's, Alfred Tarski argued that the definition of a true sentence cannot be given in the language itself, but can only be given in another language, a metalanguage.
Similarly, within any tradition, value judgements cannot be proven true within that tradition, but only outside that tradition, within a meta-tradition.
I think there's still one thing that needs answered here, still. Even if ice cream is an aesthetic judgment in the manner you propose we would not say that our judgment of ice cream is a philosophical judgment.
The descriptive category still needs something of an answer just to be able to say which of all the possible referents are the relevant ones when speaking an aesthetic opinion in philosophy?
I don't need strict conditions -- I imagine, if there is some statable principle that approximates our past judgments, it will likely involve some vague predicates. So "The sorts of writers one finds being talked about in a history of philosophy" is more than adequate for the categorical question.
But I'm wondering how you'd answer that part of the aesthetic question: Good, bad, indifferent, what is it we are judging when judging a philosophy on aesthetic grounds (as you put it, a preference where I don't hold others to have to share it with me)?
Suppose you are stung by a wasp and say that you feel pain, but I don't believe that you actually feel pain. Is it possible that you can prove to me that you do in fact feel pain?
Are subjective feelings, such as pain, and subjective value judgements, such as beauty, expressible by either demonstration or argument?
Cool.
Conceptual art is something I don't really understand, but Warhol makes sense enough that I'm understanding. Perhaps the following might be conducive to this way of thinking?
I might turn to the "What makes a great work of art a great work of art?" for this one -- at some point it's because it was painted by Van Gogh, or whomever, that ended up defining beauty in their own particular way.
Likewise if we say there's more to the art-object than the product, but includes the process as well, you could tie that to the similar sentiment people have with respect to great works of art: At some point it's the particular history of the art-object that's part of the art-object. And just as we think replicas of great works of art aren't the "real deal", and there's no property of the object that differentiates them (let's say it's a very good forgist who uses chemical techniques to replicate the exact places of the atoms in a painting) we still differentiate them on the basis of the art-objects process of production.
Yes. Or, what I'd rather say, is there's a difference between one's preference and one's aesthetic taste. The latter can be "trained" such that preference becomes something which can be judged from a distance: Rather than saying "I like this" I can say "if you like such and such or this and that then you may find something enjoyable in this other thing"
Think of a sommelier here. Though there's this "subjective" side of preference the trained sommelier can describe a wine from the perspective of anyone who might enjoy that kind of wine.
Broadly speaking I agree that passion is what starts us -- but I imagine it's possible to still end up in a place where we can partake in the giving and hearing of reasons about art, given enough training. And, obviously, I'd like to ply that -- if given enough agreement on the general idea -- with respect to understanding taste in philosophy.
There is knowledge "about" something and there is knowledge "of" something.
A sommelier can teach a Mormon "about" Merlot, such that Merlot is a dark blue wine grape variety that is used as both a blending grape and for varietal wines, and the Mormon can learn about Merlot.
But a sommelier cannot teach a Mormon "of" Merlot, the taste of Merlot.
An art teacher can teach an art student "about" Derain's aesthetic, such that until his passing in 1954, André Derain's aesthetic was constant, and along with his investigations into primal art and symbolism, his contributions to Fauvism and Cubism were notable in the formation of early Modern Art.
But an art teacher cannot teach an art student "of" Derain's aesthetic, the visceral beauty of particular shapes and colours.
When stung by a wasp, I feel pain. I don't learn how to feel the pain.
When "stung" by a Derain, I feel an aesthetic, I don't learn how to feel the aesthetic.
Why not?
It'd be cruel to do intentionally but a teacher can teach knowledge of a wasp sting by having a wasp sting the student.
More acceptably we might subject a student to difficult circumstances in order for them to grow and learn how to cope with failure and pain.
Art students will frequently study "the masters" and emulate them as part of their training. They can never be Derain, but they can learn his aesthetic through this process of emulation along with a technical enough vocabulary to describe the techniques by which the artwork was produced.
You learn in the process of the doing -- but having a teacher generally helps to accelerate that process rather than doing it all on your own, so there is something being taught from art teacher to art student, at least. Something quantifiable, even (number of weeks until able to emulate so and so or such and such)
What exactly is teaching knowledge of a wasp sting, the teacher or the wasp sting?
The person learns the feel of a wasp sting from the wasp sting itself, not from anything that preceded the wasp sting, such as a teacher.
If the person has congenital analgesia, no amount of teaching by the teacher will teach the person what a wasp sting feels like (Wikipedia - Congenital insensitivity to pain).
But look at the artist example instead of that one -- it's different enough.
One thing that comes to mind is that electronic music has its own technique. It could include trying to emulate the most "dirty and real" sounding recording out there, but it would not, for all that, be a recording of that.
Looking at the particular history here again.
But that does not then mean that the electronic musician doesn't have some sense of technique -- it's just a different set of techniques from the not-electronic (whatever happens to get to count there -- acoustic guitars on a mic not fit because there's an electronic amplifier? If so, then it may be the case that all rock and roll is not music, since that slam-in-your-face wow factor I think is largley tied to the technical ability to make it obscenely loud in concert)
I'm calling it art. And it has nothing to do with the medium. Looking at the dots on paper might make some think of some modern artist. I don't know. But that's obviously not why I think it's art. For me, it represents the experience I had of watching this happen. It was breathtaking watching this 2yo go at it.
I don't have a video link to this. It's from the best tv show of all time: Northern Exposure. In an episode called "Fish Story", Holling is upset because Maurice made fun of his paint-by-numbers. Here's Chris explaining things to Holling.
Edit: Why would it be a singular thing? Why should it have an essence accross obvious different disciplines? Because essences is what philosophy is supposed to reveal?
Does it have to be one thing? Does it even have to be specified?
what is it we are judging when judging a flavour on aesthetic grounds?
I think a little bit it does. Even ostensively.
Quoting Banno
From the way I'm thinking about it right now I'd say it's me trying to judge whether someone else will like that flavor, given what they've said about what they like about flavor.
It's very clear so I'm fine with proceeding with that idea, given you're distaste for the categorical question.
It is true that if a person is put into a situation new to them, then they will probably gain new knowledge from it. For example, if in holiday in Marrakesh for the first time, the holidaymaker will learn things new things about the food, architecture and culture that they would not have learned if they had stayed at home. As you say "You learn", meaning that although it may be the environment that is doing the teaching, it is "You" that is doing the actual learning.
The corollary is that if someone is unwilling or incapable of learning, then no matter how supportive the environment is to teaching, the individual will never learn. As you say "You learn".
A teacher may present a course in the philosophy of art, which may include aesthetics, but no matter how much information the teacher may present about the aesthetics of art, it remains a logical impossibility for the teacher to be able to explain or describe the subjective aesthetic experience.
Knowing the following tells us nothing about the subjective aesthetic experience. It tells us things "about" aesthetics, but it tells us nothing "of" aesthetics.
In the philosophy of art, the aesthetics of art is definitely a thing, as it is included in most courses on the philosophy of art. But if the student has no intrinsic inherent aesthetic appreciation then the word aesthetic will remain a just a word, as the word "colour" remains just a word to Mary in her black and white room.
There is a difference between knowledge "about" the word "aesthetic", in that Clive Bell was a prominent proponent of the formalist approach to aesthetics, and knowledge "of" aesthetics, in the same way that Mary has no knowledge "of" "colour".
There is a difference between knowledge about the context of a word and knowledge of the word independent of any context.
Quoting RussellA
You can certainly make that analogy to the wasp sting, and claim that aesthetic appreciation can't be either taught or debated. But which of these positions would you say that commits you to?:
A). Aesthetic judgments are strictly subjective -- not only felt subjectively, like a sting, but also comprising personal preferences solely (unlike a sting).
B) Aesthetic judgments are partially subjective -- they are known subjectively or intuitively, like a sting, but what is known is objective, hence everyone will have more or less the same reaction (again like a sting).
I don't mean to limit it to these two, but just to highlight the difference in terms of why someone might not be stung by Derain in the way that you are. Is it because they're "missing" what is aesthetically valuable, or because they just don't share your taste?
I agree that there are two considerations, the subjective and the objective.
The subjective is about what exists in the mind and the objective is about what exists in the world outside the mind.
As regards the subjective, the expression "aesthetic judgment" is a contradiction in terms.
The word "judgement" implies an intellectual thought process. The Merriam Webster defines judgement as "the process of forming an opinion or evaluation by discerning and comparing".
When we see the colour red, we don't judge that we have seen the colour red, we see the colour red. Similarly, when we experience an aesthetic, we don't judge that we have experienced an aesthetic, we have an aesthetic experience.
As regards the objective, the object in the world that causes an aesthetic experience in a person is not in itself aesthetic.
Going back to the wasp sting analogy, it would be like saying that within the wasp's stinger there exists pain which is then transferred from the wasp's stinger into the person being stung.
There is no aesthetic within an object in the world that is then transferred from the object to the person having the aesthetic experience.
:100: Understanding something is not the same as liking it.
In @Moliere's terms, understanding a philosopher's point of view does not mean liking it.
Quoting Moliere
Right, that is one promising way to challenge Danto's conception: We have to include some kind of origin story as part of the work of art. This leads to a lot of questions, especially whether it's possible to properly appreciate a work without the origin story. And, of course, whether such a story can be perceived at all, in the same way that the artwork is. It's a rich, ongoing discussion, especially around conceptual art.
Quoting Moliere
This is the very example Danto uses. He calls them "indiscernibles." What he says about the masterpiece and the perfect forgery, however, doesn't involve the process (or story) of production. He says that we decide which counts as art. Our hand isn't forced. Some traditions place a very high value on the concept of an "original art work." Others do not. Again, Warhol's work forces us to look at our own traditions and institutions: Are these "originals"? Or Sol LeWitt -- is it a LeWitt original if the whole point is that he gives you instructions and you make it?
Quoting Moliere
Yes, and that's how many of us working in digital music-making try to think of it. Who says we don't have technique?! :grin: It's a specialized technique called "writing, performing, recording, and editing using MIDI keyboards and digital samples." (Of course some of us can actually play an old-fashioned instrument pretty well too.) Yeah, but . . . . if what I'm recording is meant to sound like a superb bass guitar, and I achieve this using my dozen post-production devices, the fact remains that I'm representing myself as having the technique of Paul McCartney when I really don't. That's uncomfortable. It's also uncomfortable because it makes me lazy. Rather than practice the damn part till I get it right, I know I can fix it in post.
One consolation is that, in a certain sense, McCartney's technique is a "representation" too. Recorded music has been edited and improved via production techniques long before there was digital tech. A good player sounds good on record in part because it's a collaboration with a guy with my kind of technique -- knob-twirling, etc. But still . . . no amount of edits will make you Coltrane. It's almost embarrassing to use the same word, "technique", to describe what an excellent producer does, and what a genius musician does.
The opposite is true often enough, too, though. If we stay with the Beatles, take Strawberry Fields Forever, whose original recording sees two versions in different keys spliced together to end up with the weird effect. So if that weird microtonality is part of the appeal, it's the production that should get the credit, not John Lennon (if I don't misremember the story, or fell for a biased one).
I think one of the major questions here is what role spontaneity plays in art. Technique as a tool, vs. technique as a yardstick: this is what I want to achieve, vs. this is how it's done. Singing slightly off-key: do I like the effect or do I automatically assume a skill malus? Current production techniques seem to have made snapping things to pitch and beat via software routine: it's not bad that you can do it. Correcting a "mistake" to save an otherwise greate take isn't so bad. But a routine rule-setting can get rid of a lot of expression. It's not rare that I was surprised how good a singer an artist was during an interview, when I was always sort of bored of their songs on the radio.
But then again, taste in music, at least, seems to be something you acquire early in life: and if a singer's slightly off-key, whether you hear expression at all, or just a mistake might be at least in part influenced by your listenting history early in life, when you absorbed what music is.
Recording technology has, I think, muddled the earlier difference between composition and performance. What we tend to have from classical composers, for example, are scores. There's a piece written by Chopin, or Liszt, or Bach... We all know the composer. And then there are the performances: who do we know? Usually, it's going to be famous singers or soloists. Or orchestras. But the music of the recording age, the difference seems to get less important. We know the recording and associate it with an artist. With Jazz, and I'm no expert, you seem to have standards that everyone plays in addition to their own compositions. There's a lot of emphasis on improvisation, I think because of all the standards? Because of recordings, you no longer needed to rely on live performances. When did we get the concept of a recording artist? I'm not entirely sure. We've had it by the fifties, certainly. It goes hand in hand with concepts like "live performance" or "cover version".
What you as a listener pay attention will have to change with how you relate to the piece of the music, and that's different if you think of what you're hearing as an instantiation of a score, or as a variation from a score which you think of as the default. And that in turn is often also influenced by stuff like technology, or distribution. For example, in an age where scores dominate, and the performances also have an influence the reputation of the composer (who is the "star"), accuracy will be important. But if what you judge is a reproducable recording, individual expression might grow more important than accuracy.
But then if technology allows for routinisation of accuracy, and software is routinely used to snap music to pitch and beat, then maybe expression takes the backseat again? Time will tell; I don't think the routine use of the technology is old enough yet to judge the effect.
In short, it's probably best to see art as a social institution, within which individual taste has a role to play, as has percieved "good taste", which isn't so much an experience as an expectation. Basically, there's the aesthetic experience you have, the aesthetic expierence you feel you should have, and the myriad minuscle ways in which you rebel against this internalised expectation, or lie to yourself about your experience to be the cool kid, or, or, or... Basically, I think even the aesthetic experience you're aware of is already a complex composite and not independent of the way the social institution you might title "music" propagates. Your aesthetic experience is part of and permeated by the flux.
OK, I don't mean to be imposing a terminology on you. I'm trying to circle back to your example of knowing without question that the Derain is great art:
Quoting RussellA
I'm not disputing it, or your experience. (I love Derain.) I'm just trying to understand what it commits you to. Let me try to ask my questions a different way:
If I have the reverse experience, is that because I am having a different "sting" experience than you? Or are we both experiencing Derain and Banksy the same way -- you say it's not a matter of judgment at all, and the "sting" is not in itself aesthetic -- but for some reason coming to different aesthetic judgments?
I think you must mean the latter.
So then I want to know, Is an aesthetic judgment objective in the same way that the sting is? Can one of us be right, the other wrong? Or does it simply cash out to "what I like" and "what you like"?
I believe the story's true. But I think Lennon was the one who realized he wanted to splice them. As you say, technique-wise, he didn't know how, but George Martin did. Collaboration again.
Quoting Dawnstorm
Yeah, welcome to (a big part of) my world. The praxis question, if I can dignify it with that word, is what counts as a mistake. Making all the pitches and beats perfect is, for many kinds of music, including the kinds I mostly like, quite deadly to the musical effect. Being "a little off" is not a mistake, unless you're a robot. (Ah, but how much is "a little"? Taste, again.) If I record drum samples, using a quantizer to keep them precise, I generally then have to go back and fuck them up a little, in the way a real drummer with feel and style would. (Unless I'm doing a Steely Dan cover! :wink: ).
In contrast, sometimes a mistake is just . . . a clam, as jazzers say. And those you want to fix if you can. I personally think it's fine to do this; Jimi Hendrix did it frequently, back in the day. But if I'm doing it all the time, every time I play a guitar solo (which given my skills on that instrument is quite likely), you gotta wonder just how great the great take really is. Time to bring in the guitar genius who lives up the road?
Quoting Dawnstorm
Absolutely. Technology will change, artistic practice follows.
Quoting Dawnstorm
Great book to read on this subject: Greg Milner, Perfecting Sound Forever.
Quoting Dawnstorm
This is a huge topic, and one I enjoy nattering on about, but I'll just say that I don't believe there's such a thing as an "innocent ear," a way of listening to music that can separate it from your culture and your own individual experience. And this leads us back to the idea of traditions, styles, and practices as the guidelines for understanding how to appreciate music, or any art.
Thanks for the recommendation. This looks very interesting.
But then again you might. Would the tutoring have had a bearing, do you think?
Sorry, just saw this. I love that story. Do you mean that the physical thing, the paper and crayon, just happened to be the vehicle chosen to deliver the "origin story" which is one of sentiment, innocence, and personal connection? (or something like that, pardon me if my words are clumsy)
Quoting JYes, that's the idea. It didn't have to be paper and crayons. I guess a 2 year old is limited in what she can work with. But if she had made a pile of pebbles, with the same patience and focus, complete unto herself, the resulting pile would be the vehicle, and I would feel the same looking at it as I do the crayon spots on paper.
Yes. So we only need to ask whether your experience falls under the aesthetic, or something closer to the heart. I'm happy seeing it either way.
There's the obvious point that we do compare aesthetic judgements. They are not private.
There's the further point that our discussions of aesthetic judgements change those very judgements. Out aesthetics are not fixed in stone.
Calling an aesthetic judgement subjective often serves to stymie the discussion. Worth avoiding.
So back to the account I gave previously, and how it goes astray:Quoting Banno
I'll maintain that our aesthetic is shown in our choices. But we do expect others to agree with our aesthetic choices, and are surprised at the choices others make...
Much to do here.
I'd say the historical approach makes sense of the difference here -- you can make the same "product" (I wanted to use scare quotes for "the same", but thought it excessive). But the only reason you're representing yourself in that manner is that we're in a time when post-production hasn't become part of the way people hear music, yet.
I can't think of any other reason why Kanye West is so well loved :D
Post production has a magic to it because we live in a time when you can replicate what was once thought of as "the real deal"
In a way, though I may be wrong about this, post-production is a bit like Warhol? Though I'm leaping there and wondering if you see it or think it different.
Yes, much to do here, I agree.
Somehow we expect others to agree, and are surprised by the choices others make.
Is there a way of talking about that [s]in[/s]* in the space of reasons?
*EDIT: I had a notion of "in", but then upon rereading I thought not to emphasize it because it looked confusing.
When we look at the entire tree of life then it gets a bit uglier.
Let there be an object in the world. Suppose this object has been named "Derain's Drying the Sails 1905".
There are different styles of painting, including the Classical, Baroque, Rococo, Neo-Classicism, Pre-Modern, Romanticism, etc.
As regards this object, as an example of Post-modernism I don't like it, but as an example of Fauvism I do like it.
Post-modernism is a style associated with scepticism, irony and philosophical critiques of the concepts of universal truths and objective reality and Fauvism is a style associated with strong colours and fierce brushwork (www.tate.org.uk)
So I may like and dislike the same object at the same time, meaning that the liking and disliking is not an objective thing within the object but is a subjective thing within my mind.
I may like this object as an example of Fauvism and you may dislike the same object as an example of Post-modernism. Alternatively, I may dislike this object as an example of Post-modernism and you may like the same object as an example of Fauvism.
IE, our liking our disliking an object is independent of the object itself but is dependent on what happens to be in our particular minds. Objects don't have any intrinsic art value, the mind imposes an art value on the objects in the world.
As regards what is in the mind, I like this particular object as an example of Fauvism, where Fauvism is a style having strong colours and fierce brushwork. In other words, I like this object for its strong colours and fierce brushwork.
But what explains my likes?
I like the colour red, I like Merlot, I like meat and potato pies, I like Sade, I like Mediterranean weather. I also like the elegant, the rational and the clear, as @Moliere said about adjectives often applied to philosophical arguments and thoughts.
When I see the colour red, for example, I don't consciously think "do I like this colour or not". I know instantly without conscious thought that I like it. No judgment is involved. I may judge that my seeing the colour red was caused by a postbox rather than a sunset, but I don't judge whether I like this colour or not.
What I like aesthetically does not depend on any judgment. I make no subjective aesthetic judgements.
As objects don't have any intrinsic art value, my aesthetic likes cannot be objective but only subjective.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I am sure beautiful to another proboscis monkey.
Scientists say that visible features are usually the result of sexual selection. So if that nose was a result of natural selection (as opposed to genetic drift), it exists because the opposite sex is attracted to it.
I think that indicates that aesthetics is part of evolution.
:100: If Frances Hutcheson is correct, and the appreciation of beauty is innate within humans, and described as "uniformity amidst variety", this clearly shows an evolutionary advantage. Specifically in the human ability to find patterns within the chaos they perceive of the world .
But how does this fit with "Derain is a great artist and Banksy is not"? That's what I meant about an aesthetic judgment "cashing out" as merely a matter of likes and dislikes. So I guess that is what you mean? "Great artist" = "someone I like a lot".
Or, perhaps, the bolded phrase above is the way out? Derain's painting doesn't have any intrinsic art value, but somehow acquires it? How might that happen?
Apologies if I'm still not getting it.
Both Derain and Banksy are artists. But are they equally great?
If greatness is determined by monetary value, they are probably equally great as a Banksy original more than likely sells for as much as a Derain original.
If greatness is determined by popularity amongst the public, then Banksy is probably greater than Derain.
If greatness is determined by the humour in their works, then Banksy is clearly greater than Derain.
If greatness is determined by an aesthetic of form and shape, what Frances Hutcheson called "uniformity amidst variety", then Derain is clearly greater than Banksy.
You are right that my equating greatness as an artist with an aesthetic of form and shape is personal to me. Others may well equate greatness as an artist with monetary value, popularity or being humorous.
OK, that's how it seemed to me, thanks.
Right, but research indicates that visible features of an organism tend to be sexually selected. So it wouldn't be about patterns in chaos, it would be about sex.
It doesn't seem random that animals are often aesthetically pleasing. Evolution seems to favour aesthetic solutions.
There appears to be a direct analogy between Frances Hutcheson's explanation of aesthetics as "uniformity amidst variety" and life's dependence on an ability to discover patterns in chaos.
It would follow that if life is fundamentally aesthetic, and if philosophy is trying to understand life, then aesthetics in philosophy must be a "thing".
Ok. Maybe aesthetics comes from a fundamental attunement to the universe that consciousness arises from. It's the universe's awareness of itself. Where something seems afflicted aesthetically, consciousness has a bad connection.
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,
that is all ye know on earth,
and all ye need to know."
I guess we are all drawn more or less towards one area for numerous reasons. This will hopefully change for most people throughout their lives; which brings us to the additional question of 'good' or 'bad' choices.
I think anyone unwilling to look seriously at opposing arguments is making a mistake. I think anyone unable to see a flaw in their own interpretation of the world is making an even greater mistake.
As for styles, I think it is incumbent on the reader to understand the historical and relational contexts of a piece of writing. For the historical context, when reading Hobbes, Rousseau or Machiavelli, there are occasions when the spirit of the time these people lived in needs to be understood so we can sift out the relevance for our current circumstances. It is absurd to critique any of their thoughts and positions as if they had written their work for the world we find ourselves in. For the relational context, reading a modern philosophical text that attempts to replicate the style of Hegel, Nietzsche or Kant is deeply misguided as they were written for people in well-established circles not for mass consumption.
There are faulty approaches. Individually we must aim to be honest with ourselves as much as possible.
Personally, I opt for a Fox approach above the Hedgehog one (Berlin). Meaning, I am a Fox looking for connections rather than myopic specialisations of the Hedgehog - not to say these people are not needed!
Quoting Moliere
I have a distaste for philosophy as a be all and end all. I have the same distaste for holding rigidly to any particular field of study or interest. I appreciate that those who have amore rigid grip on certain areas at the cost of others are invaluable, but that just isn't for me. An example of this can be seen in the inability for people like Dawkins and Peterson to understand where each other is coming from. Both provide perspectives that are worthy of consideration, yet both (maybe not equally) all bound within their own interests.
I always look to figures like Richard Feynman who, whilst being a brilliant physicist, went out of his way to take an interest in other people's passions such as kite making or drawing.
Quoting Moliere
I do not believe I am. What I read is usually determined by seeking out oppositional views or areas I know little about. Quality/Content overrides style. This goes for science, art, history, etc.,.
Quoting Moliere
If I am looking into something particular I think very carefully about who to read and try to find extreme ends of the argument and also someone in the middle ground (philosophy or otherwise). When looking into anthropology I chose Geertz, Eliade and Levi-Strauss specifically because they wrote in different styles, possessed different approaches, and were able to give me a broad perspective of what I was interested in learning more about.
Quoting Moliere
In short, I think anyone looking at philosophical choices as 'aesthetic' is more focused on political philosophy. If we asked the same question about a scientist choosing a field of study I think you would find the answer being more or less about intrigue. Only some of the Hedgehog scientists would call their choice of field 'more worthy' and then we are effectively back into social politics and weighing ourselves against others rather than against the nature of being.