Michelle Marder Kamhi's "Who Says That's Art?"

[Newberry]

Doc: Then, seeing "the whole of it" disqualifies a work from eliciting the experience of the Sublime? Nonsense. That would disqualify anything man made, even the evil POMO works you accuse Kant of inspiring. And the Sistine Chapel?? The Last Judgement???? That's as Sublime as it gets.

You are almost on my side. ; )

Christo's Umbrellas fit the K's concept of the mathematically Sublime. If you don't recall them, they were industrial umbrellas spread over hillsides in California and Japan, and they went on so far as to disappear beyond hills - they never gave us a sense of a finite object but one that goes on forever.

Anyway the key to all this Kant stuff in the arts is that K's Concepts of the Sublime = Postmodern Art foundations. But the discussion does require that others that know the difference between, facts, proofs, and opinions - and art.

I've enjoyed leaving a few details of my background, a new work on another thread, calling into question J's background (never wise to take a person's word as gospel without 3rd party corroborative info, but you all knew that, right?), and I am disappointed in most the posters on this thread for their lack of vision, and lack of values and what they are for. This site is feeling lifeless.

And I enjoyed my little experiment here – just call a con a con. And if you decide to join authentic humanity – growing, evolving, and being more passionate you might then find more meaning in my work, www.michaelnewberry.com

Cheers,

Michael

[9thdoctor]

I've enjoyed leaving a few details of my background, a new work on another thread, calling into question J's background (never wise to take a person's word as gospel without 3rd party corroborative info, but you all knew that, right?), and I am disappointed in most the posters on this thread for their lack of vision, and lack of values and what they are for. This site is feeling lifeless.

And I enjoyed my little experiment here just call a con a con. And if you decide to join authentic humanity growing, evolving, and being more passionate you might then find more meaning in my work, www.michaelnewberry.com

Cheers,

Michael

Look at that, a switch to the past tense! He's flounced! Now let's hope he stays away. I'm going to refrain from a parting shot, however good the setup is (the first part of his post), on the off chance it might draw him back. Maybe it'll help if we all say Betelgeuse 3 times, or better yet, Phil-Phil-Phil! That Kant Quotes thread is positively infested with Phil (in classic form), I could hardly stand it.

[Brant Gaede]

Mr. Sanctimonious has departed.

--Brant

the birds are singing; the sun is shining

[Brant Gaede]

If someone is a diehard Objectivist even if it's confined to one area--like esthetics--you are automatically a troll wherever you go except to a diehard Objectivsit site. One then isn't a willful troll, only willfully a diehard. MN went aboveboard vicious--at least on me--then he was finished for that was all he had left. We were supposed to have a tea and crumpets discussion in NM's parlor but this isn't his parlor. The arguments haven't been about esthetics so much--going deeper--as the Objectivism-reality divide. It's hard to beat reality for it's reality all the way down.

Now it's possible MN has been a willful troll; just here to stir up the natives and demonstrate his superiority through a sheen of good manners and when the sheen came off he was off. It might have worked if it had only been Jonathan he had run into. Instead he got out-Kanted by two and decided I was "disgusting," meaning I was no good for him any longer in any way, like I was a piece of watermelon and he threw away the rind.

That said, briefly visiting his site there seems to be a lot of good and competent art. Most the stuff I don't like seems to be the full human figures. The portraits are very good too. So in honesty I don't see any skill regression at all except in some of the full figures. I find that to be a relief. There is a fine portrait entitled "Joseph," but I don't get the title even if the model was so named. I don't know who would want to buy it particularly named. It's only one work, however. If anyone wants quality artwork, Newberry's worth investigating. I'd suggest trying to get an appointment to try and go and see it so you'll be sure of what you'll be getting and for the chance of finding something else that you missed just by visiting his Internet site.

Newberry's relationship to Objectivism has not resulted in Objectivist-kitsch as descriptive of the overall body of his work. That's a fact. An art expert might be of another opinion about that body of work but would be mistaken to say it's mostly Objectivist kitsch, but the only art expert I think well of is the one that shows up on Pawn Stars. He's good. It's not that there aren't a lot of very good art experts out there, only that so many "experts" tout garbage for extremely wealthy ignorant patrons--they are not Gail Wynands--resulting in mega prices of really unfungible assets. Buy what you like. Maybe in ten or twenty years some of it will be worth a fortune. It's happened before. What you don't want is to be the buyer then, just the seller.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

Christo's Umbrellas fit the K's concept of the mathematically Sublime.

To whom? To you? To others?

I'm sure that some of Christo & Jeanne-Claude's work would be experienced by some people as the Sublime. The question, though, in the context of your accusation that Kant is the cause of postmodernism in art, is did Christo & Jeanne-Claude intend their works to be Sublime. My understanding, from having read their own words on the subject, is that they were driven by the aesthetic experience of BEAUTY, and not by the Sublime.

There are some works in almost all genres and periods of art which some people would experience as Sublime. Does that make Kant the father of all art?

And, again, why Kant? Why not his predecessors who also addressed the concept of the Sublime?

Anyway the key to all this Kant stuff in the arts is that K's Concepts of the Sublime = Postmodern Art foundations. But the discussion does require that others that know the difference between, facts, proofs, and opinions - and art.

We do know the difference between facts, proofs and opinions, which is why no one is buying the bullshit con job that you're trying to sell. The facts and proofs are not on your side.

I've enjoyed leaving a few details of my background, a new work on another thread, calling into question J's background (never wise to take a person's word as gospel without 3rd party corroborative info, but you all knew that, right?), and I am disappointed in most the posters on this thread for their lack of vision, and lack of values and what they are for.

I value reality. Reality is what I'm for. That's why I'm opposing your hatred of reality. That's why I'm presenting proof and reminding you that you haven't addressed it. It's why I'm not being affected by your distractions.

And I enjoyed my little experiment here just call a con a con.

That's what I've been doing: calling a con a con. The con man can't answer my proof of his falsehoods.

And if you decide to join authentic humanity growing, evolving, and being more passionate...

Okay, thanks Mr. Pretend Guru! If I ever need guidance on those things, I'll be sure and look you up to discover how being obedient to Rand and how vilifying the concept of the Sublime will make my life better.

J

[Selene]

Mr. Sanctimonious has departed.

--Brant

the birds are singing; the sun is shining

Seems quite sublime to me...

[anthony]

Quite commonly, there are aspects of magnitude in Nature which will cause a temporary sensory overload in a consciousness. Like a sudden clap of thunder, or viewing a night sky or being confronted by a vast mountain range.

(If one called that mental phenomenon 'Shock and Awe' instead of The Sublime, around the same thing I reckon).

You reckon wrong. That's not what the Sublime is. Heh. It's not as hard as you're making it. You need to slow down, pay attention, and set aside your emotions. Understand the concept before going off to the races with your straw man philosophizing.

J

I think I've made it as easy as it is in reality, and given one possible simplest explanation.

A scholar defines sublimity "as that which is beyond all comparison (absolutely) great, either mathematically in terms of limitless magnitude, or dynamically in terms of limitless power..."

"The term 'sublime' is used to designate natural objects that inspire a kind of awed terror through sheer immensity".

I have not negated the notion. Self-evidently, there are things that briefly stun the senses by their size or power and creates some emotion.

Self-evidently, we quickly recover our rationality and ask ourselves "what is it?"

It's nothing I see to make a fuss over.

How would anyone "understand the concept" when it is after all, subjective and emotional? In Kant's reckoning and description.

To any specific "natural object", one person might feel: Wow! And another: Ho hum.

[Jonathan]

Quite commonly, there are aspects of magnitude in Nature which will cause a temporary sensory overload in a consciousness. Like a sudden clap of thunder, or viewing a night sky or being confronted by a vast mountain range.

(If one called that mental phenomenon 'Shock and Awe' instead of The Sublime, around the same thing I reckon).

You reckon wrong. That's not what the Sublime is. Heh. It's not as hard as you're making it. You need to slow down, pay attention, and set aside your emotions. Understand the concept before going off to the races with your straw man philosophizing.

J

I think I've made it as easy as it is in reality, and given one possible simplest explanation.

A scholar defines sublimity "as that which is beyond all comparison (absolutely) great, either mathematically in terms of limitless magnitude, or dynamically in terms of limitless power..."

"The term 'sublime' is used to designate natural objects that inspire a kind of awed terror through sheer immensity".

Wrong.

You're leaving out the other of half of it.

The Sublime is the "terror that delights." You're ignoring the exaltation part of the concept. You're leaving out the stimulation of reason and of fortitude.

J

[william.scherk]

A fun intellectual excursion with Jonathan and Tony ...

Quite commonly, there are aspects of magnitude in Nature which will cause a temporary sensory overload in a consciousness. Like a sudden clap of thunder, or viewing a night sky or being confronted by a vast mountain range.

(If one called that mental phenomenon 'Shock and Awe' instead of The Sublime, around the same thing I reckon).

You reckon wrong. That's not what the Sublime is.

I think I've made it as easy as it is in reality, and given one possible simplest explanation.

A scholar defines sublimity "as that which is beyond all comparison (absolutely) great, either mathematically in terms of limitless magnitude, or dynamically in terms of limitless power..."

"The term 'sublime' is used to designate natural objects that inspire a kind of awed terror through sheer immensity".

I have not negated the notion. Self-evidently, there are things that briefly stun the senses by their size or power and creates some emotion.

Self-evidently, we quickly recover our rationality and ask ourselves "what is it?"

It's nothing I see to make a fuss over.

How would anyone "understand the concept" when it is after all, subjective and emotional? In Kant's reckoning and description.

To any specific "natural object", one person might feel: Wow! And another: Ho hum.

Tony, when you quote a 'scholar,' I think you should include a reference or hyperlink. In this case, your two quotes appear to be from a website called Philosophy & Philosophers -- in particular the first of three pages of brief blog-style entries devoted to Kant, specifically a small entry called Kant and the Sublime. Here is the whole passage that I believe you borrowed from without attribution:

Kant defines sublime as that is beyond all comparison (that is absolutely) great, either mathematically in terms of limitless magnitude, or dynamically in terms of limitless power. This is the standard meaning, derived from Kant.

The term ‘sublime’ is used to designate natural objects that inspire a kind of awed terror through sheer immensity.

In the 18th century, it was common to consider asthetic experience under the paired concepts of the beautiful and the sublime. The sublime was held to be satisfying either, as for Edmund Burke, in virtue of of the pleasurable nature of the terror that it arouses, or, as for Kant, in virtue of its intimation of a capacity of the mind to apprehend the limitless or indeterminable.

From this reduction, I get the notion that the individual mind has a capacity to apprehend the limitless or indeterminable. We have actually been down this road before.**

For me the notion of the Sublime always includes a sense of intellectual mastery -- it includes the emotion contingent on a sublime experience, includes the power or intensity of the 'feeling,' but is also always enveloped by mind, by Reason. I think you may be trying to cut at the joints according to a Randian butcher diagram. It might not be appropriate. (see also my notes in a freshly launched post in the Boydstun-initiated Rand/Morality thread)

And if you decide to join authentic humanity – growing, evolving, and being more passionate you might then find more meaning in my work, www.michaelnewberry.com

Having dripped poison into the well by deeming his critical interlocutors evul, stupid, disgusting, criminal or ungrateful for his gifts, the poisoner retreats to his castle.

Quite commonly, there are aspects of magnitude in Nature which will cause a temporary sensory overload in a consciousness. Like a sudden clap of thunder, or viewing a night sky or being confronted by a vast mountain range.

[...]

On these occasions, the process of 1. perceiving "a fact of reality", 2. identifying it and integrating it conceptually, 3. assessing its value to life and 4. having an emotional response - may be overwhelmed or 'short-circuited'. Here, I think one perceives 'the fact' - but straightaway feels an emotion (threatening or overawed). Only after, does one overcome the emotion, identify what the fact is, and judge its value or disvalue.

Honestly I don't see the big deal in something rationally explicable, which Kant himself said is "based on the instinct for self-preservation".

The process seems jury-rigged.

1. perceiving "a fact of reality"
2. identifying it and integrating it conceptually
3. assessing its value to life
4. having an emotional response

It seems to me that number 4 -- having an emotional response -- is not the sum at the end of a list of cogitations, but actually interpenetrates the experience. I do not think 'having an emotional response' only comes once the first three cognitions are complete.

I was just musing do prisoners get internet? It seems that half of the posters here are criminals.

Drip.

My take on Kant, in the past and present, is that he believes that the Sublime is centered on fortitude (victimhood), violated imagination, and experiences of displeasure. And that its means can be formless. He thinks that these are ideal states, the Sublime, and we should strive towards those states as the ultimate in human experience. He doesn’t talk of overcoming those states to achieve flourishing, gratitude, or happiness. I think he is wrong.

Never take Newberry on a wooden no-lap belt roller-coaster or gravity-drop ride. The thrill would be gone, or at least dissipated by his jaw-jaw on overcoming the states ...

Is it nasty to use humour to deflate a bit of your pomposity? Maybe yes, maybe no. I liked when you finally showed your teeth to Lindsay Perigo and flounced off Solopassion some time ago. Sometimes you need a display of teeth or aggression, or maybe sometimes you get sick of people and their pretensions and stupidities. I am sure you are quite the cut-up in private, and that when provoked you can be nasty in turn.

Michael Newberry bared his teeth to OLers, and flounced. I predict he will be back blowing bubbles when he completes his next large canvas of smoke and flesh.

_________________________

** -- one of this forum's much-discussed writers has twice attempted to get at the sublime:

“I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.”

You see, I am an atheist and I have only one religion: the sublime in human nature. There is nothing to approach the sanctity of the highest type of man possible and there is nothing that gives me the same reverent feeling, the feeling when one's spirit wants to kneel, bareheaded. Do not call it hero-worship, because it is more than that. It is a kind of strange and improbable white heat where admiration becomes religion, and religion becomes philosophy, and philosophy — the whole of one's life.

Edited October 27, 2015 by william.scherk

[Brant Gaede]

How about the greatest sunset in the world PLUS that sight of the NYC skyline?

--Brant

"Greed is good."

[Selene]

How about the greatest sunset in the world PLUS that sight of the NYC skyline?

--Brant

"Greed is good."one

From the Brooklyn Bridge side through the arches - absolutely...

I would also think that the skyline standing in the face of a blizzard, or, Sandy would also be Sublime.

[Jonathan]

And if you decide to join authentic humanity – growing, evolving, and being more passionate you might then find more meaning in my work, www.michaelnewberry.com

Having dripped poison into the well by deeming his critical interlocutors evul, stupid, disgusting, criminal or ungrateful for his gifts, the poisoner retreats to his castle.

Castle or hut? I'd suspect hut, which, along with free schooling, might begin to help explain the math that doesn't add up.

I was just musing do prisoners get internet? It seems that half of the posters here are criminals.

Drip.

One of the funniest things, to me, about Newbsie's poison is that his "good buddy" Stephen Hicks has sipped the Kool-Aid that Newbsie is selling. He has trusted Newbsie's unscholarly misrepresentations, and has even been lulled into lacking the intellectual curiosity to investigate the history of the concept of the Sublime for himself. Hicks has accepted Newsie's mistaken notion of the Sublime as being not only original to Kant, but also as being a normative position (and one of hateful, passionately destructive advocacy) rather than simply a descriptive one, and as being about art and its value, rather than as focusing primarily on the effects of entities in nature and our responses to them.

http://www.stephenhicks.org/2010/06/29/is-modoern-art-too-complicated-for-us/

Perhaps it's no wonder that Hicks hasn't moved above and beyond little Rockford.

And Rand's poison also still remains active in the Kool-Aid. To Rand's followers, abstract art is "formless" because its forms(!) are not mimetic/representational. They have the mistaken opinion that if they personally don't get any aesthetic effect from certain forms, then even the most clearly identifiable of those forms (such as triangles, circles, spirals, etc.), magically become "formless."

Ayn's little dum-dum helpers also declare that abstract art is a "rejection" or "banishment" of "beauty" because they claim to find such art to be ugly (they allow their passionate philosophical opposition to the theory of abstract art to taint their aesthetic responses to it: if an abstract pattern were labeled "wrapping paper," "wallpaper" or "fabric design," etc., they would be quite comfortable in admitting that it was beautiful, but call the exact same graphic "fine art" and suddenly it is ugly). And they therefore conclude, stupidly, that abstract painters must have been trying to "destroy beauty" (and to do so through "formlessness"). Nonsense on stilts. Nothing even close to the logic and reason that Objectivism claims to stand for. Morons leading morons.

They are not at all interested in the factual historical reality that abstract paintings contain forms, that their creators were very concerned about and focused on the expressiveness of the forms in their work, and that those creators believed that the forms needed to be beautiful.

I've quoted Kamhi and Torres's What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand on the subject in the past:

"...[Mondrian] claimed that 'the essence of art expresses or evokes our emotion of beauty.' Through his art of 'pure relationships,' he hoped to create a 'moving expression of beauty.'"(137)

"...Mondrian similarly claimed, in an earlier context, that the "fundamental function of art is to express beauty plastically." (394)

"Yet Frankenthaler, too, reveals the widespread 'obsess[ion] with the idea of Beauty' when she admits that what concerns her when she paints is not what her 'picture' represents but 'did [she] make a beautiful picture?'" (395)

"...Roger Kimball maintains that, although artists such as Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian heavily invested their work with earnest spiritual claims, 'their primary claim on our attention has always been an artistic [esthetic] claim: [w]e care chiefly about the beauty of their art' – and 'beauty remains the touchstone of art.'" (396)

I think that Ayn's retarded little helpers should focus on patching the holes in Objectivism, rather than on making the holes bigger. Making uninformed, easily-refutable attacks on other philosophers isn't a good way to promote one's ideology.

J

[Jonathan]

It's not that there aren't a lot of very good art experts out there, only that so many "experts" tout garbage for extremely wealthy ignorant patrons--

Don't forget that someone is said to have bought this painting, and to have paid a very large sum for it:

[anthony]

Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime

The German edition

Author Immanuel Kant Original title Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen Language German Subject Aesthetics Published 1764 Media type Print

Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (German: Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen) is a 1764 book by Immanuel Kant.^[1][2][3]

The first complete translation into English was published in 1799. The second was published in 1960 by the University of California Press.

Contents

• 1 Section One
• 2 Section Two
• 3 Section Three
• 4 Section Four
• 5 Editions
• 6 Further Reading
• 7 References

Section One

Of the Distinct Objects of the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime

Kant states that feelings of enjoyment are subjective. In this book, he describes his observations. His interest is not in coarse, thoughtless feelings or in the other extreme, the finest feelings of intellectual discovery. Instead, he writes about the finer feelings, which are intermediate. These require some sensitivity, intellectual excellence, talent, or virtue.

There are two kinds of finer feeling: the feeling of the sublime and the feeling of the beautiful. Kant gives examples of these pleasant feelings. Some of his examples of feelings of the beautiful are the sight of flower beds, grazing flocks, and daylight. Feelings of the sublime are the result of seeing mountain peaks, raging storms, and night.

In this section, Kant gives many particular examples of feelings of the beautiful and the sublime. Feelings of the beautiful "occasion a pleasant sensation but one that is joyous and smiling." On the other hand, feelings of the sublime "arouse enjoyment but with horror."

Kant subdivided the sublime into three kinds. The feeling of the terrifying sublime is sometimes accompanied with a certain dread or melancholy. The feeling of the noble sublime is quiet wonder. Feelings of the splendid sublime are pervaded with beauty.

Section Two

Of the Attributes of the Beautiful and Sublime in Man in General

Kant described the relationship between these finer feelings and humanity. The feelings are not totally separate from each other. Beauty and the sublime can be joined or alternated. Kant claimed that tragedy, for the most part, stirs the feeling of the sublime. Comedy arouses feelings for beauty. The personal appearance of humans prompts these feelings in various cases. A person's social position also affects these feelings.

Human nature has many variations of the feelings of the beautiful and the sublime. Some variations of the terrifying sublime are the adventurous and grotesque. Visionaries and cranks are persons who have fantasies and whims. The beautiful, when it degenerates, produces triflers, fops, dandies, chatterers, silliness, bores, and fools.

Sympathy or compassion and also good-natured agreeableness are not true virtues, according to Kant. True virtue is the quality of raising the feeling of humanity's beauty and dignity to a principle. When a person acts in accordance with this principle, regardless of inclination, that person is truly and sublimely virtuous.

"A profound feeling for the beauty and dignity of human nature and a firmness and determination of the mind to refer all one's actions to this as to a universal ground is earnest, and does not at all join with a changeable gaiety nor with the inconstancy of a frivolous person." With this observation, Kant will attempt to fit the various feelings of the beautiful and sublime, and the resulting moral characters, into Galen's rigid arrangement of the four humours or human temperaments: melancholic, sanguine, choleric, and phlegmatic.

Kant asserted that the human temperaments or dispositions are fixed and separate characters. An individual who has one frame of mind has no feeling or sense for the finer feelings that occur in a person of another temperament.

• A person who has a constitution that is melancholic will have a predominating feeling for the sublime. That person may possess genuine virtue based on the principle that humanity has beauty and worth.
• One who has a sanguine nature will mostly have a feeling for the beautiful. This results in an "adoptive" virtue that rests on goodheartedness. This person's compassion and sympathy depend on the impression of the moment.
• A choleric human will have a feeling for the splendid or showy sublime. As a result, this person will possess an apparent virtue. Kant calls it "a gloss of virtue." This includes a sense of honor and concern for outward appearance.
• Phlegmatic people have apathy or lack of any finer feeling. They therefore may have an absence of virtue.

As a whole, human nature in general is a combination of these virtues. As such, it is a splendid expression of beauty and dignity.

Section Three

Of the Distinction of the Beautiful and Sublime in the Interrelations of the Two Sexes

In Section Three, Kant asserts that women predominantly have feelings for all that is beautiful. Men, on the contrary, have mostly feelings for the sublime. Any other feelings that are only for the enhancement of the main feeling. Kant admits, though, that the distinction is not absolute. Since "we are dealing with human beings; we must also remember that they are not all alike."

Kant helps to root notions of inequality in the Western social structure. For example, Kant argues that "a woman is little embarrassed that she does not possess high insights; she is beautiful and captivates, and that is enough ... Laborious learning or painful pondering, even if a woman should greatly succeed in it, destroys the merits that are proper to her sex."

Women's mental ability and understanding, then, refer to the beautiful. Men's deep, noble understanding is not suitable for women. Women have beautiful virtues such as kindness and benevolence. Men's virtue is noble and has to do with principles and duty. Because a woman is concerned with the beautiful, the worst that can be said against her is that she is disgusting. A man's greatest defect, however, would be that he is ridiculous, as this is the opposite of the sublime.

In sexual selection, a woman demands that the man have noble and sublime characteristics. A man wants a woman to possess beautiful qualities. In a marriage, the husband and wife unite their disparate attributes to form, as it were, a single moral person. The man's understanding combines with the wife's taste to constitute a union.

Section Four

Of National Characteristics, so far as They Depend upon the Distinct Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime

Here Kant describes the different ways that various people have finer feelings. He qualifies his remarks by stating, "[W]hether these national differences are contingent and depend upon the times and the type of government, or are bound by a certain necessity to the climate, I do not here inquire."

The Italians have a strong feeling for the beautiful with some mixture of the thoughtful sublime. The French have mostly a feeling for the beautiful, but with the addition of the joyful sublime. The feeling of the Germans is an almost equal blend of both the beautiful and the splendid sublime in that they are much concerned with outward appearances. The feeling of the noble sublime predominates with the English, whose actions are guided by principles rather than impulses. With their cruel autos-da-fé and harsh conquests, the Spaniards have feeling for the terrifying sublime. Dutch people in Holland have no finer taste and are concerned only with what is useful. Arabs are like the Spaniards. Persians resemble the French. The Japanese are the Englishmen of the Orient. West India displays its love of the grotesque sublime, as also do the Chinese. African Negroes possess no finer feelings. North American Indians, however, have a feeling for the sublime in that they are adventurous, honorable, truthful, proud, brave, and valorous.

In antiquity, the ancient Greeks and Romans had remarkable feelings for both the beautiful and the sublime. However, with the Caesars, this decayed into a love of false glitter. The subsequent barbarian Gothic civilization had an overpowering feeling for the grotesque. Kant claimed that his time witnessed "the sound taste of the beautiful and noble blossoming forth both in the arts and sciences and in respect to morals." He declared that it is necessary to educate the younger generation so that they will have noble simplicity, high morals, and finer feelings.

Editions

• Kant, Immanuel. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. Trans. John T. Goldthwait. University of California Press, 1961, 2003.

[anthony]

Kant's reflections on his own work above, bear out the paradoxes, convolutions, rationalizations and rationalisms of his epistemology and what he referred to as "reason". Feelings, extreme ones of the sublime and beautiful, lead the way (perhaps providing a foil and vivid contrast which must be transcended, for "reason").

I think Kant was a mystic, if a well-meaning one.

cf. Rand: "An emotion as such tells you nothing about reality, beyond the fact that something makes you feel something".

"Emotions ... are lightning-like estimates of the things around you, calculated according to your values".

"Reason integrates man's perceptions by means of forming abstractions or conceptions, thus raising man's knowledge from the perceptual level..."

"Existence is Identity; Consciousness is Identification."

[Jonathan]

Moron.

[anthony]

How choleric of you as usual.

[william.scherk]

Er, Tony, a link to and excerpt from the Wikipedia article would be splendid. A poorly-paragraphed splodge, with no introduction, with no particular rationale for posting it -- this is less splendid, at least for me. Maybe this slid out of drydock when you were busy elsewhere. Or, you are meaning to edit it later, as I am quite wont to do.

That said, the Wikipedia entry is fascinating. Kant in 1764 seemed to regard African Negroes as did Rand the Arabs. Savages. How Kant came to such opinions in anthropology I cannot know, but as Wolf has pointed out elsewhere, Kant hardly left the urban confines of Konigsberg.

I recommend for thoughtful readers another volume which comprises the book noted by Tony, one called "Kant: Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and Other Writings." At the Cambridge site touting the book, it is said to be "an important collection of eight different Kantian texts from the 1760s, chosen primarily to highlight the development of his ethical theory and anthropology."

I am of course being a dilettante, having registered at the Cambridge site and gained access to important parts of the volume -- not all (I am still trudging through the Prolegomena).

This extract from the introduction stood out for me, and made me want to have the book:

On April 22, 1764, Immanuel Kant turned 40 years old, reaching what would turn out to be the midpoint of his life. From his humble beginnings as the son of a father who was a harness maker and a mother who was a devoted Pietist, Kant had risen through school to graduate in philosophy from the University of Königsberg; and 1764 marked the year in which Kant was first offered a professorship, the highest honor of his academic guild. By the end of his life, forty years later, Kant had become the most influential philosopher in Europe. This influence was due primarily to a series of Critiques, the first of which – Kant's Critique of Pure Reason – was not published until 1781, when Kant was already 56 years old. In the wake of that “all-crushing” book, Kant developed a philosophical system to make sense of our understanding of the world and moral obligations, an a priori system within which pure reason held sway.

But in 1764 Kant was not offered a professorship in metaphysics or logic, but in rhetoric and poetry. In this year he published a short book –Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime – and an essay (“Maladies”), both written in a playful and entertaining style that one would expect from a teacher of rhetoric. He also published an elegant though more analytical Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality, conceived as a potential “Prize Essay” for the Berlin Academy.

-- and from a review of the Cambridge volume, via Notre Dame University's Philosophical Reviews, it seems Kant was clairvoyant, seeing a future in which Ayn Rand would take up his challenge (emphasis added):

But in his description of his upcoming ethics course we also find the same emphases on "the human heart" and on the need to ground moral philosophy in "the study of the human being" (2: 311/258) that we find in other 1760s texts.

Herder's Notes from Kant's Lectures on Ethics (1762-64) were written by one of Kant's most famous students, Johann Gottfried Herder. While his Notes are neither the most detailed nor the most reliable transcription available of Kant's numerous ethics courses, they are the only published account from the 1760s. In these particular Lectures, Kant advocates "an ethic for man, determined in his nature, by his knowledge, powers, and capacities," adding that it "has yet to be written"

To sharpen the palate for Kant's early ethical splodges, a bit of war-porn from the Russian side of the Syria war. Sublime, not.

Edited October 26, 2015 by william.scherk

[anthony]

Ah William, methinks "sanguine" are you.

[9thdoctor]

Castle or hut?

Are the polls still open? I vote for burrow.

Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime

Critique of Judgement came a quarter century later. We ought to stick to that to avoid unnecessary confusion. It's the one Rand once took a swipe at, with no explanation, hence inspiring all this hullabaloo.

Ah William, methinks "sanguine" are you.

I'll settle for phlegmatic.

[Selene]

To sharpen the palate for Kant's early ethical splodges, a bit of war-porn from the Russian side of the Syria war.  Sublime, not.  

 

Yeah Bill, this stuff never happened before...

 

[william.scherk]

Ah William, methinks "sanguine" are you.

Tony, that is one of the top-five nicest things you have ever written about me.

Though I am of course no follower of or believer in the Four Humours, I view it as any other proto-psychology or thoughtful theory/observation attempt to categorize 'types' of human personality. In some ways the Humours are better estimations of humanity's temperaments than the estimations of the Myers-Briggs System. I have much more rational faith in the Big Five system, though it too has its critics.

Sanguine (from the source of great splodges, Wikipedia, lightly edited):

The sanguine temperament is traditionally associated with air. People with this temperament tend to be lively, sociable, carefree, talkative, and pleasure-seeking. They may be warm-hearted and optimistic. They can make new friends easily, be imaginative and artistic, and often have many ideas. They can be flighty and changeable; thus sanguine personalities may struggle with following tasks all the way through and be chronically late or forgetful.

Pedagogically, they can be best reached through awakening their love for a subject and admiration of people.

Of course, while a human being can be said to have a dominant 'mood' or temperament/attitude or sense-of-life, and while a human being can be typed nine ways to Sunday, the individual human is one of a kind to my eyes. Despite my sunniness and optimism, my family has been cursed with Melancholy. Even in the ripeness of middle age, my sunny nature knows of darkness and despair. I do not often choose to share that aspect of my emotional life.

If I could pick one of the Humours to typify you, Tony, I think I would choose Phlegmatic.

To Mister Newberry, who continues to haunt the forum, I think you too are of a type Sanguine, with fits of Choleric like raisins in the pudding. Or maybe I have that backward.

Beyond the merely personal, I think almost all human beings have these (M-B indicator) aspects of personality, apparent at some times and in some situations, tamped down or resting at others ...

-- Adam, point well-taken. The Syria war may be the most horrifying to me, most intimately understood, but horror on the field of war is nothing new. It is a feature of war, not a bug. I find nothing about the Syrian war to be sublime, except perhaps the still-standing inexplicable hopeful humanity among the corrupt and zealous and deranged ... it rather disgusted me that the Russians made such war-porn to sell their intervention to their own captive audiences,

That said, the partly-hidden horrors of Syria approach the institutional evil of the Nazis, Stalinists and Maoists, in the form of industrialized torture, as revealed by 'Caesar,' (NB -- the photos at the link are horrifying in the extreme. See instead a report without photographic evidence of war crimes, from FoxNews: Syrian defector testifies, shows House lawmakers graphic images of Assad torture.)

Edited October 27, 2015 by william.scherk

[Selene]

That said, the partly-hidden horrors of Syria approach the institutional evil of the Nazis, Stalinists and Maoists, in the form of industrialized torture, as revealed by 'Caesar,'

You really need to either remove that or put a very large warning on that link ...

[anthony]

Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime

Critique of Judgement came a quarter century later. We ought to stick to that to avoid unnecessary confusion. It's the one Rand once took a swipe at, with no explanation, hence inspiring all this hullabaloo.

Fair comment, a philosopher shouldn't be expected to not evolve through his career.

Not that his early thinking hasn't significance, comparing points in his 'evolution' shows where he's heading and gives clues of his over all vision.

One sentence in Kant's lighter, less mature work above jumped out:

"True virtue is the quality of raising the feeling of humanity's beauty and dignity to a principle. When a person acts in accordance with this principle, regardless of inclination, that person is truly and sublimely virtuous".

Regardless of inclination.

It's a meme which continues into Kant's moral philosophy, later on. Then, the "principle" is one of duty, in the cause of which Kant repeats the same "regardless of inclination". Iow, no matter what an individual prefers, values, or is compassionately moved to do - more, especially if he gains anything at all out of it, like kudos from people or a feeling of satisfaction - in fact any intention which is driven by an iota of 'selfishness' falls short of the ideal :- Duty to others.

[merjet]

whYNOT,

Your last paragraph is accurate, except for the last sentence. Even acting for the interests of other people undercuts duty. Kant's idea of duty is to the moral law, allegedly to reason. In the final analysis, his ethics is a hodgepodge of floating abstractions.