It's hard for me to decide whether or not I believe in some sort of ultimate beauty, something that is independent and has value of its own. There is evidence supporting it. I suppose this idea is mostly based in the belief that Truth exists as something elegant and magnetic, that we encounter the least resistance when we're doing what we're supposed to. The Transcendentalists were fans of this particular view. "That Beauty is the normal state, is shown by the perpetual effort of Nature to attain it." (Emerson, Nature)
On the contrary, Elaine Scarry (On Beauty and Being Just) talks about beauty as being more like a subjective psychological state that occurs because of feelings of certainly. Attraction to any particular attribute has only to do with cultural, circumstantial influence, and changes from one person to another.
The consequence of maintaining either one of these views is that they each affect art-making and art-viewing (and life in general) in a very profound way. To say that that there in an idealized Beauty which has value in and of itself is to say that beauty is worth seriously seeking out in more than a hedonistic, self-serving way. That is to say that art is about beauty. The other view, that beauty is entirely subjective, causes us to view it as more of an accessory quality -- a device to direct attention, a means to an end rather than an end in itself.
What can I say?!
Kierstin
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Haha, sounds like you should be reading Nietzsche and Thomas Aquinas rather than Hegel and Kant.
ReplyDeleteit's possible.. you're a philosophy major, yeah? could you recommend a few essays?
ReplyDeleteI side more with the transcendentalist view in that we as humans ultimately move towards resolve however, the resolve is not the same for each human, nor is the method of the resolve shared between individuals. We all have our own conflicts, we struggle to find the best solution to our problems. When we have aligned ourselves to 'purity' we stop creating conflicts because we stop putting ourselves in those conflict creating situations. Take for instance, a partier chooses they don't want to get sick and be imbalanced anymore, so they stop partying and align themselves with something more 'pure'. The same can be said for smokers and alcoholics, for some it takes more of a duality to influence a change in their life. Ultimately life is trial and error, we are making small compromises all the time fixing situations for the moment until another one creeps up. Over time we revise all our little governing philosophies until it becomes one universal philosophy, and there are small changes to that universal philosophy, and then we re-package it again. Kind of like government changes over the years.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the second perspective "On Beauty and Being Just", which I haven't read, so please forgive me if I'm completely wrong on this whole comment. It could be looked at that certain people are pulled downwards because of a force that is easy to get taken by, when one is evil, they feel good in that state because it is what's easy, any other direction requires 'resolve' which requires positive attributes. In my opinion there are only two ways someone can ultimately align themselves, one being up (purity) and the other being down (collapse) so I do not think it is relative. If you've ever heard of David. R. Hawkins, I feel like his way of explaining things is very interesting, he has a chart on consciousness that looks something like the following.
http://weblogs.hianoto.net/wp-content/map-of-consciousness2.gif
There are a lot of other variables to explore but I could write way too much given the opportunity :P
It's nice to actually see something that you've written, it's been a long time.
P.S. Goodnight