"Romanticist Art" Is Not The Essence Of The Objectivist Esthetics

[Ellen Stuttle]

The sun is shinning; [...]

I hope not.

Dictionary.com link

shin1 [shin]

noun

1. the front part of the leg from the knee to the ankle.

2. the lower part of the foreleg in cattle.

3. the shinbone or tibia, especially its sharp edge or front portion.

4. Chiefly British . a cut of beef similar to the U.S. shank, usually cut into small pieces for stewing.

verb (used with object), verb (used without object), shinned, shin·ning.

5. to climb by holding fast with the hands or arms and legs and drawing oneself up.

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

The sun is shinning; [...]

I hope not.

Dictionary.com link

shin1 [shin]

noun

1. the front part of the leg from the knee to the ankle.

2. the lower part of the foreleg in cattle.

3. the shinbone or tibia, especially its sharp edge or front portion.

4. Chiefly British . a cut of beef similar to the U.S. shank, usually cut into small pieces for stewing.

verb (used with object), verb (used without object), shinned, shin·ning.

5. to climb by holding fast with the hands or arms and legs and drawing oneself up.

Ellen

Just trying to get some Side of Beef Rembrandt into it.

--Brant who so quickly admits he's wrong when he's wrong

penaltized for initiative

[anthony]

What is a "sense of life" and how can it objectively and accurately be determined by a second party?

One way to grasp it is to view it (roughly) as you would a person's personality. Something that's subconsciously pre-formed in his growth years, an aggregate of earliest experiences, views and responses to existence, and how effective he felt in dealing with it. Roughly, again, you'd estimate an individual as "pessimistic" or "optimistic", having a MUP or a BUP. As "personality", as with sense of life it is hard to change. "Character", by contrast, is more self-made than 'given' - depending on one's conscious convictions, (gained by a volitional consciousness, I must add) and therefore equates with one's metaphysical value-judgments.

The two aspects may often be at odds in a person and artist, but conscious judgments are of course the more critical, by far.

[Ellen Stuttle]

One way to grasp it is to view it (roughly) as you would a person's personality. Something that's subconsciously pre-formed in his growth years, an aggregate of earliest experiences, views and responses to existence, and how effective he felt in dealing with it.

So if a person feels personally ineffective, this necessitates that the person "subconsciously" believes that "man" is incapable of succeeding, of knowing, etc.? Might as well say that because I had childhood polio and knew, accurately, that I was bad at running and jumping, I therefore had to conclude that in the nature of "man" being good at jumping and running is impossible.

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

What is a "sense of life" and how can it objectively and accurately be determined by a second party?

One way to grasp it is to view it (roughly) as you would a person's personality. Something that's subconsciously pre-formed in his growth years, an aggregate of earliest experiences, views and responses to existence, and how effective he felt in dealing with it. Roughly, again, you'd estimate an individual as "pessimistic" or "optimistic", having a MUP or a BUP. As "personality", as with sense of life it is hard to change. "Character", by contrast, is more self-made than 'given' - depending on one's conscious convictions, (gained by a volitional consciousness, I must add) and therefore equates with one's metaphysical value-judgments.

The two aspects may often be at odds in a person and artist, but conscious judgments are of course the more critical, by far.

The way to knowledge through Rand's philosophy is to gain knowledge--of Rand's philosophy. Maybe. She posited some categories of knowledge that can be useful reference points, like esthetics, but what's inside them is another matter. "My philosophy holds that . . . " or "sees that . . . " are examples of such content. To say "Man is the rational animal [who needs a rational environment]" is not the same as "Man is a heroic being" with "reason as his only absolute [etc.]"--it lacks punch and Rand liked to punch.

I'm afraid you keep trying to tell us about things as might be seen through the eyes of Ayn Rand as seen by your eyes and you don't know what you do that way for you never even slightly allude to the possibility of that. In short, you avoid data like the plague, even the easiest like the anecdotal.

--Brant

[anthony]

One way to grasp it is to view it (roughly) as you would a person's personality. Something that's subconsciously pre-formed in his growth years, an aggregate of earliest experiences, views and responses to existence, and how effective he felt in dealing with it.

So if a person feels personally ineffective, this necessitates that the person "subconsciously" believes that "man" is incapable of succeeding, of knowing, etc.? Might as well say that because I had childhood polio and knew, accurately, that I was bad at running and jumping, I therefore had to conclude that in the nature of "man" being good at jumping and running is impossible.

Ellen

Not quite. From Rand's own definition it's clear that it is a PRE-cognitive view: "...a psychological phenomenon which we call a sense of life'...a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics,, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and existence".

The emphasis on emotional, subconscious. Little reliance on induction which you indicate by your argument 'from the one, to the all' - and certainly not involving the advanced concept of ""man"". A sense of life is a *feeling*, and a most intimately personal one, I think. Concepts don't enter in to it.

There's no rhyme or reason for why an individual who has lived with certain disadvantages since young may have an affirmative sense of life, while another who -apparently- 'has it all', might be generally negative. We only know it happens; Helen Keller is my immediate thought. In pre-teens my best friend who had been a polio sufferer, with one leg permanently in a brace, had a sunnier disposition than I did, pretty much.

[anthony]

What is a "sense of life" and how can it objectively and accurately be determined by a second party?

One way to grasp it is to view it (roughly) as you would a person's personality. Something that's subconsciously pre-formed in his growth years, an aggregate of earliest experiences, views and responses to existence, and how effective he felt in dealing with it. Roughly, again, you'd estimate an individual as "pessimistic" or "optimistic", having a MUP or a BUP. As "personality", as with sense of life it is hard to change. "Character", by contrast, is more self-made than 'given' - depending on one's conscious convictions, (gained by a volitional consciousness, I must add) and therefore equates with one's metaphysical value-judgments.

The two aspects may often be at odds in a person and artist, but conscious judgments are of course the more critical, by far.

The way to knowledge through Rand's philosophy is to gain knowledge--of Rand's philosophy. Maybe.

I'm afraid you keep trying to tell us about things as might be seen through the eyes of Ayn Rand as seen by your eyes and you don't know what you do that way for you never even slightly allude to the possibility of that. In short, you avoid data like the plague, even the easiest like the anecdotal.

--Brant

I hardly know what you mean. Or maybe I do. I am no armchair philosopher and theoretician. There comes a point when the study of a philosophy may very well be incomplete --but one knows enough (and enough gels with what one sees and thinks) to just take it and use it. I have mentioned that I have a varied and extensive life experience to look back on, and so plenty to compare with Objectivism. The philosophy passes the test, brilliantly, if not 'perfectly'. What I know is, nobody learns much without constant practical application and then reviewing the results, and more application. As it's always contextual, perfect knowledge/morality for an individual is a myth, and to chase that ideal, all or nothing, ends in disillusionment and skepticism. If my -practical- analogical advice above is useless to you, that's too bad. Everything I write is truthful to my experience, and perhaps it will benefit somebody.

[Brant Gaede]

Tony,

Try to imagine an area of professional expertise you are completely non-conversant with. Imagine becoming a professional therein, the work and study required but no Objectivism or knowledge of Objectivism allowed. There are many millions who are competent professionals of integrity who've never heard of Ayn Rand and Objectivism. Imagine becoming one of them in an area you have no real interest in or history with. Your goal is to be a true expert. The guy a James Bond would listen to simply because he was an expert. Now using this orientation we can say a Leonard Peikoff or Nathaniel Branden or Ayn Rand represent top-line expertise in the Objectivist philosophy. (I am not such an expert. In fact, I personally can't claim to be an expert about any particular area of knowledge.) To be blunt, you are not, but you keep running your knowledge of the philosophy, such as it is, as a filter for your declamations--or, alternatively, you posit broad abstractions you move around on a board as it they were the data themselves, but they aren't connected to much.

You are declining to tell us what you really know. You live in South Africa. I'd love to know more about you and South Africa, but you've told us little. I can tell there is something of a unique cultural flavor to where you are coming from which is not American and not European though influenced by both. As for the Objectivism you once embraced then dis-embraced then re-embraced, I'm sorry to inform you the re-embracement was the same as the original embracement--that is, you seem trapped inside the philosophy, like Peikoff and Rand, and can't or won't get out. I assume that that's what you want. If so, that's okay by me, but it leaves us with little of common interest or what to talk about.

--Brant

[Francisco Ferrer]

Every choice and value-judgment implies some estimate of himself and of the world around him—most particularly, of his capacity to deal with the world. He may draw conscious conclusions, which may be true or false; or he may remain mentally passive and merely react to events (i.e., merely feel). Whatever the case may be, his subconscious mechanism sums up his psychological activities, integrating his conclusions, reactions or evasions into an emotional sum that establishes a habitual pattern and becomes his automatic response to the world around him.If one saw, in real life, a beautiful woman wearing an exquisite evening gown, with a cold sore on her lips, the blemish would mean nothing but a minor affliction, and one would ignore it.

* * *

If one saw, in real life, a beautiful woman wearing an exquisite evening gown, with a cold sore on her lips, the blemish would mean nothing but a minor affliction, and one would ignore it.

But a painting of such a woman would be a corrupt, obscenely vicious attack on man, on beauty, on all values—and one would experience a feeling of immense disgust and indignation at the artist. (There are also those who would feel something like approval and who would belong to the same moral category as the artist.)

The emotional response to that painting would be instantaneous, much faster than the viewer’s mind could identify all the reasons involved. The psychological mechanism which produces that response (and which produced the painting) is a man’s sense of life. --Ayn Rand, "Philosophy and Sense of Life"

Why is the inclusion of a blemish on a beautiful face necessarily "a corrupt, obscenely vicious attack on man, on beauty, on all values"? If I saw such a painting, I would probably draw the opposite conclusion: that minor imperfections are of no consequence; that true beauty is transcendent.

And why must the artist's inclusion of birthmarks or warts or sores denote a negative, man-hating sense of life? Is it not possible to be intensely happy with one's life and hopeful about mankind while observing (through art) particulars that ground a subject in the real as opposed to the ideal?

Why can't the grotesque be a subject for art without jumping to the conclusion that the artist hates life? The hunchback of Hugo's famous novel is both ugly and sympathetic.

[Brant Gaede]

It's all about liking or not liking a work of art and simply saying so and why or dressing it all up with some esthetic theory about what should be instead of what is. "Could be" is an in-betweener. A painting could be better if the artist had used a different shade of color here, here, and there is not the same as he should have. Could be is for the art critic. An art critic is a second-hand esthetician. When a famous movie critic saw the Peckinpah movie The Wild Bunch he proclaimed he saw a masterpiece. True; that's what he saw. When Pauline Kael (I Lost It At The Movies) saw Marlon Brando in Last Tango In Paris, her gushes all over it were an embarassment, but conguent with her other silly reviews which went on page after page after page (will this ever end?) in The New Yorker.

--Brant

[Francisco Ferrer]

An art critic is not necessarily a second-hand anything. Diderot's Salons, for example, is an achievement not only in the description of notable paintings of his time, but in helping the reader to understand the merit of those works.

As for Pauline Kael, I frequently disagreed with her, but invariably found her witty, observant and instructive.

[anthony]

Tony,

Try to imagine an area of professional expertise you are completely non-conversant with. Imagine becoming a professional therein, the work and study required but no Objectivism or knowledge of Objectivism allowed. There are many millions who are competent professionals of integrity who've never heard of Ayn Rand and Objectivism. Imagine becoming one of them in an area you have no real interest in or history with. Your goal is to be a true expert. The guy a James Bond would listen to simply because he was an expert. Now using this orientation we can say a Leonard Peikoff or Nathaniel Branden or Ayn Rand represent top-line expertise in the Objectivist philosophy. (I am not such an expert. In fact, I personally can't claim to be an expert about any particular area of knowledge.) To be blunt, you are not, but you keep running your knowledge of the philosophy, such as it is, as a filter for your declamations--or, alternatively, you posit broad abstractions you move around on a board as it they were the data themselves, but they aren't connected to much.

You are declining to tell us what you really know. You live in South Africa. I'd love to know more about you and South Africa, but you've told us little. I can tell there is something of a unique cultural flavor to where you are coming from which is not American and not European though influenced by both. As for the Objectivism you once embraced then dis-embraced then re-embraced, I'm sorry to inform you the re-embracement was the same as the original embracement--that is, you seem trapped inside the philosophy, like Peikoff and Rand, and can't or won't get out. I assume that that's what you want. If so, that's okay by me, but it leaves us with little of common interest or what to talk about.

--Brant

No, not bad, but I don't recognize much of me there. You've missed the central point, that I don't need or desire to be an expert at anything, except life and my life. Objectivism is the main tool to accomplish that. I need -for understanding, and sometimes, simple survival- to find the basics of what makes people tick - and because it's philosophy, it all arrives at central principles. More fool me, for "dis-embracing" etc. I'd be much further along by now, and would have made many less mistakes in my life. South Africa? First, it's beyond the pale, second it would take explanations galore, third, it's hardly believable (to myself), fourth, I did indeed attempt early on to put over some local flavour, fifth, there was not much interest - which I understand to a degree. You have your own troubles, and it is painful to be reminded that wherever you go, timelessly, even Africa - certain principles (altruism-collectivism) hold sway. Only infinitely more blatantly, and without the political checks (or the sense of life) you have there.

[Brant Gaede]

An art critic is not necessarily a second-hand anything. Diderot's Salons, for example, is an achievement not only in the description of notable paintings of his time, but in helping the reader to understand the merit of those works.

As for Pauline Kael, I frequently disagreed with her, but invariably found her witty, observant and instructive.

I'll acept art critic as derivative of esthetician avoiding the more negative second-hander. This doesn't mean you need to be an esthetican first; they are two different professions, the former a lot less common, to say the least, than the latter.

As for Kael, she was a hell of a writer. But I think for her her essays were the thing, not so much the movies. Of course, for any words-smith one might say the same. There's always ego involvement just as my (gigantic[?]) ego is involved here. Also, that the magazine format she used demanded length. My English lit. Mother had a pile of her books. I sold them absent any desire to read them. I had read one of her early books, but the actual memory is weak. I have also read some of her reviews when they first appeared. I think that was when I visited my late sister, who had the requisite subscription to honor her quite liberal cultural biases.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Tony,

Try to imagine an area of professional expertise you are completely non-conversant with. Imagine becoming a professional therein, the work and study required but no Objectivism or knowledge of Objectivism allowed. There are many millions who are competent professionals of integrity who've never heard of Ayn Rand and Objectivism. Imagine becoming one of them in an area you have no real interest in or history with. Your goal is to be a true expert. The guy a James Bond would listen to simply because he was an expert. Now using this orientation we can say a Leonard Peikoff or Nathaniel Branden or Ayn Rand represent top-line expertise in the Objectivist philosophy. (I am not such an expert. In fact, I personally can't claim to be an expert about any particular area of knowledge.) To be blunt, you are not, but you keep running your knowledge of the philosophy, such as it is, as a filter for your declamations--or, alternatively, you posit broad abstractions you move around on a board as it they were the data themselves, but they aren't connected to much.

You are declining to tell us what you really know. You live in South Africa. I'd love to know more about you and South Africa, but you've told us little. I can tell there is something of a unique cultural flavor to where you are coming from which is not American and not European though influenced by both. As for the Objectivism you once embraced then dis-embraced then re-embraced, I'm sorry to inform you the re-embracement was the same as the original embracement--that is, you seem trapped inside the philosophy, like Peikoff and Rand, and can't or won't get out. I assume that that's what you want. If so, that's okay by me, but it leaves us with little of common interest or what to talk about.

--Brant

No, not bad, but I don't recognize much of me there. You've missed the central point, that I don't need or desire to be an expert at anything, except life and my life. Objectivism is the main tool to accomplish that. I need -for understanding, and sometimes, simple survival- to find the basics of what makes people tick - and because it's philosophy, it all arrives at central principles. More fool me, for "dis-embracing" etc. I'd be much further along by now, and would have made many less mistakes in my life. South Africa? First, it's beyond the pale, second it would take explanations galore, third, it's hardly believable (to myself), fourth, I did indeed attempt early on to put over some local flavour, fifth, there was not much interest - which I understand to a degree. You have your own troubles, and it is painful to be reminded that wherever you go, timelessly, even Africa - certain principles (altruism-collectivism) hold sway. Only infinitely more blatantly, and without the political checks (or the sense of life) you have there.

I didn't say you needed to "be an expert." My suggestion was a thought experiment. I knew you wouldn't likely recognize yourself much there without it. You did decline to do it, didn't you? Like I said, that'd be "okay by me." If my explanation of that or whatever is right or wrong, it is secondary. Maybe someone else might recognize something applicable to themselves in my remarks.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

Why is the inclusion of a blemish on a beautiful face necessarily "a corrupt, obscenely vicious attack on man, on beauty, on all values"? If I saw such a painting, I would probably draw the opposite conclusion: that minor imperfections are of no consequence; that true beauty is transcendent.

How could you guess how you'd respond to "such a painting" unless you saw the painting?

And why must the artist's inclusion of birthmarks or warts or sores denote a negative, man-hating sense of life? Is it not possible to be intensely happy with one's life and hopeful about mankind while observing (through art) particulars that ground a subject in the real as opposed to the ideal?

How about Rand's projection of Kira's dying, grounding the subject in Rand's view of what a particular societal situation would factually produce?

Why can't the grotesque be a subject for art without jumping to the conclusion that the artist hates life? The hunchback of Hugo's famous novel is both ugly and sympathetic.

And Hugo's sense of life was exalted, said Rand.

Ellen

Btw, the "cold sore" example is from "Art and Sense of Life" - the start of that article.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Not quite. From Rand's own definition it's clear that it is a PRE-cognitive view: "...a psychological phenomenon which we call a sense of life'...a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics,, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and existence".

The emphasis on emotional, subconscious. Little reliance on induction which you indicate by your argument 'from the one, to the all' - and certainly not involving the advanced concept of ""man"". A sense of life is a *feeling*, and a most intimately personal one, I think. Concepts don't enter in to it.

Again, I recommend re-reading Rand. What she says is that one forms an implicit metaphysics on the basis of one's own can/can't-do evaluations.

There's no rhyme or reason for why an individual who has lived with certain disadvantages since young may have an affirmative sense of life, while another who -apparently- 'has it all', might be generally negative. We only know it happens; Helen Keller is my immediate thought. In pre-teens my best friend who had been a polio sufferer, with one leg permanently in a brace, had a sunnier disposition than I did, pretty much.

"There's no rhyme or reason [...]." Again, indicative of your departing from Rand while claiming to be supporting her views.

Ellen

[anthony]

Not quite. From Rand's own definition it's clear that it is a PRE-cognitive view: "...a psychological phenomenon which we call a sense of life'...a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics,, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and existence".

The emphasis on emotional, subconscious. Little reliance on induction which you indicate by your argument 'from the one, to the all' - and certainly not involving the advanced concept of ""man"". A sense of life is a *feeling*, and a most intimately personal one, I think. Concepts don't enter in to it.

Again, I recommend re-reading Rand. What she says is that one forms an implicit metaphysics on the basis of one's own can/can't-do evaluations.

There's no rhyme or reason for why an individual who has lived with certain disadvantages since young may have an affirmative sense of life, while another who -apparently- 'has it all', might be generally negative. We only know it happens; Helen Keller is my immediate thought. In pre-teens my best friend who had been a polio sufferer, with one leg permanently in a brace, had a sunnier disposition than I did, pretty much.

"There's no rhyme or reason [...]." Again, indicative of your departing from Rand while claiming to be supporting her views.

Ellen

And why should my divergences bother you? Seeing as you completely dismiss any of Rand's theory. I find this strangely purist.

Yes, I "claim" to support her views. This does not presume that I believe in her every last word as Gospel. On art, it's her conceptualization and methodology that is of major importance - and only at the levels of application and implementation do I differ slightly. If that hierarchy of value isn't perceived and understood, the rest falls apart (as these art debates go to show).

Rand didn't write every last word on sense of life, leaving room for academic expansion. Particularly in the sphere of a youngster's sense of life, which I thought was clear, was what I was referencing. Obviously, one's sense of life is already forming while a very young child. For that time, it cannot be the child's responsibility for his/her subconscious and emotional responses to his/her mixed experiences. So I believe there is a breach here.

For the rest, as adults, I think Rand had it exactly correct.

[Jonathan]

"There's no rhyme or reason [...]." Again, indicative of your departing from Rand while claiming to be supporting her views.

Ellen

And why should my divergences bother you? Seeing as you completely dismiss any of Rand's theory.

I think that what Ellen is saying is that you don't recognize when you're diverging from Rand. You take a position that Rand did not, and you falsely claim that it is Rand's position. It's actually just your position, not hers. You get confused about what you believe versus what Rand believed.

I find this strangely purist.

Um, yeah, I think you're misinterpreting Ellen. She's not demanding purity. She's not complaining that you're not dedicated enough to Rand, or that you should not diverge from Rand. She's saying that you don't realize when you're diverging from her.

Rand didn't write every last word on sense of life, leaving room for academic expansion. Particularly in the sphere of a youngster's sense of life, which I thought was clear, was what I was referencing. Obviously, one's sense of life is already forming while a very young child. For that time, it cannot be the child's responsibility for his/her subconscious and emotional responses to his/her mixed experiences. So I believe there is a breach here.
For the rest, as adults, I think Rand had it exactly correct.

You got that right: Rand didn't write every last word on the subject. In fact, she barely began to objectively investigate it. Her notion of "sense of life" is a vague hunch, and it smacks of determinism, or at least partial determinism. It's an inadvertent problem for Objectivism.

But I like it. It's Rand truthfully identifying something that she believed without recognizing the potential consequences.

J

[anthony]

"There's no rhyme or reason [...]." Again, indicative of your departing from Rand while claiming to be supporting her views.

Ellen

And why should my divergences bother you? Seeing as you completely dismiss any of Rand's theory.

I think that what Ellen is saying is that you don't recognize when you're diverging from Rand. You take a position that Rand did not, and you falsely claim that it is Rand's position. It's actually just your position, not hers. You get confused about what you believe versus what Rand believed.

I find this strangely purist.

Um, yeah, I think you're misinterpreting Ellen. She's not demanding purity. She's not complaining that you're not dedicated enough to Rand, or that you should not diverge from Rand. She's saying that you don't realize when you're diverging from her.

Rand didn't write every last word on sense of life, leaving room for academic expansion. Particularly in the sphere of a youngster's sense of life, which I thought was clear, was what I was referencing. Obviously, one's sense of life is already forming while a very young child. For that time, it cannot be the child's responsibility for his/her subconscious and emotional responses to his/her mixed experiences. So I believe there is a breach here.

For the rest, as adults, I think Rand had it exactly correct.

You got that right: Rand didn't write every last word on the subject. In fact, she barely began to objectively investigate it. Her notion of "sense of life" is a vague hunch, and it smacks of determinism, or at least partial determinism. It's an inadvertent problem for Objectivism.

But I like it. It's Rand truthfully identifying something that she believed without recognizing the potential consequences.

J

To the last part. Can you think of any who have a greater need for an objective philosophy and Romanticist art, than those whose sense of life is flawed from childhood?

These people: "Others, whose subconscious premises are irrational, may find themselves torn by the conflict between their ideas and their sense of life".[AR]

For Rand to have investigated the development of a young mind fully would have taken her outside the preserve of philosophy, I think. Nobody can expect her to have done everything. There's stuff to work out for oneselves.

But how do you arrive at the conclusion of "determinism", partial or not? If all of life were easily evident as 'good', and every person automatically rational, man's volitional faculty would become less essential, and wither away over time. Therefore the "breach" between early experience and later-developed principles (etc.) is most certainly surmountable - given deliberate effort and enough introspection. That is, by free will. A fair chunk of Objectivism is all about making the subconscious, conscious, I think. ("Check your [subconscious] premises.") One's subconscious got there by conscious means, after all.

[Brant Gaede]

If I talk about one thing and you another then . . .

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

I'm with Tony on early childhood, sense of life, and the proposition that Objectivism is for adults.

Personality is given at conception. It can be nurtured, crushed, acknowledged, ignored -- but the die is cast before birth.

I think it is inevitable that writing fiction strips the author spiritually naked and reveals every detail of one’s character – that is: everything voluntarily constructed by conscious choice, plus quite a few unchosen racial and historical characteristics that datestamp all creative work. Literature is a library of snapshots, every title a portrait of somebody’s heart and mind. [Preface, Mars Shall Thunder]

Libraries are filled with thousands of authors — Tolstoy, Fitzgerald, Clancy, Kipling — who are never confused one with another. Human life and its myriad expressions on stage, screen and the written page is absolutely personal and unrepeatable. There was not and could never be two Humphrey Bogarts, two Winston Churchills, two Ayn Rands. [COGIGG, p.44]

There are few examples of beauty in Western history. For instance, Annie Lennox used 11 separately sung notes and about a hundred glisses to sing the word 'why' in one, long, beautiful, necessary 3-measure caress ... Science is inert by comparison. I’ve read Einstein and Oppenheimer, Heisenberg, Hawking, Sagan and Goethe, about as vital as a box of Kleenex, the whole crew. Tina Turner could kick their microscopic balls into a jar if she felt like it. ["Human Goodness Proved Beyond Doubt", LFC Times, 1998]

[Selene]

Marlon Brando in Last Tango In Paris,

Gave me a whole different perspective on butter...

[Francisco Ferrer]

Why is the inclusion of a blemish on a beautiful face necessarily "a corrupt, obscenely vicious attack on man, on beauty, on all values"? If I saw such a painting, I would probably draw the opposite conclusion: that minor imperfections are of no consequence; that true beauty is transcendent.

How could you guess how you'd respond to "such a painting" unless you saw the painting?

Then I'll ask, how does Rand expect us to respond her argument unless we see exactly what she has in mind? Show me what's she's referring to, and I'll respond to it. But if all we are dealing with a hypothetical work of art, Rand has given us no reason to reject it "instantaneous[ly], much faster than the viewer’s mind could identify all the reasons involved." I cannot imagine how a painting of a woman with a cold sore could be interpreted as an "obscenely vicious attack on man, on beauty, on all values."

Francisco Ferrer, on 26 Jul 2014 - 11:22 AM, said:

And why must the artist's inclusion of birthmarks or warts or sores denote a negative, man-hating sense of life? Is it not possible to be intensely happy with one's life and hopeful about mankind while observing (through art) particulars that ground a subject in the real as opposed to the ideal?

How about Rand's projection of Kira's dying, grounding the subject in Rand's view of what a particular societal situation would factually produce?

Sounds a lot like kitchen sink naturalism to me.

[Jonathan]

To the last part. Can you think of any who have a greater need for an objective philosophy and Romanticist art, than those whose sense of life is flawed from childhood? These people: "Others, whose subconscious premises are irrational, may find themselves torn by the conflict between their ideas and their sense of life".[AR]

By what objective standard do you propose that we measure and evaluate a person's sense of life so as to determine that it is "flawed"? In your opinion, is there one proper sense of life for all people in all contexts, and there's a single, one-size-fits-all cure for all "flawed" senses of life, which is Objectivism and heavy doses of "Romanticist art" (which, by your standards, seems to mean only Rand's art)?

What are some examples of "flawed" senses of life? Would an inmate born and raised in a concentration camp who is cheerfully skipping and singing Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah while those around him are dying be an example of a "flawed" sense of life (after all, Objectivism values adhering to reality, and displaying blind optimism should be judged to be just as "flawed" as blind pessimism, no?)? How would "Romanticist art" fix such a person's sense of life? Wouldn't it be like giving more alcohol to an alcoholic, and otherwise encouraging and enabling his addiction?

Have you heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? It is when "Unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude."

Please give some real life examples of such people having had their "flawed" senses of life fixed by Objectivism and Romanticist art.

For Rand to have investigated the development of a young mind fully would have taken her outside the preserve of philosophy, I think.

Ah, so only introspection and hunches are "philosophy," where actually proving one's assertions is "outside the preserve." Does the same apply to all other philosophers, or just to Rand?

Nobody can expect her to have done everything. There's stuff to work out for oneselves.

Heh. Surrogate Doubly Irrational Genius Pose!!! That's a new one!

"Don't be lazy! Rand didn't have to prove her assertions! Think for yourself by proving her assertions for her!"

Therefore the "breach" between early experience and later-developed principles (etc.) is most certainly surmountable - given deliberate effort and enough introspection.

Such assertions would require proof. Not flawed introspection or wild hunches, but proof.

J

[anthony]

J. Implicit in everything is "Know thyself". If one can't perceive that one's earliest development of sense of life (of no conscious doing by oneself)is out of whack with reality and one's adult convictions - and that it can be consciously turned around with time - then you'd have it that such a person is doomed for life, by something they were not responsible for, in childhood. This contradicts self-awareness...and a volitional consciousness. "Measure and evaluate a person's sense of life"? Nope, it can only be accomplished for oneself and by oneself.