Art as Microcosm (2004)


Roger Bissell

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On June 4, 2016 at 1:11 PM, william.scherk said:

 

Unrelated image; click for explication:

xia-xiaowan%20%281%29%5B2%5D.jpg?imgmax=

Cool, but the 3D glass layers thing is a resurrection of an art gimmick that was popular in university art departments back in the early 80s.

J

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On June 4, 2016 at 8:29 AM, Brant Gaede said:

So, Jonathan, since Tony, not being stupid or a liar...

He's both.

 

On June 4, 2016 at 8:29 AM, Brant Gaede said:

...is ignorant of the Sublime, did I experience it? Yes, no or I don't know? I'd like only a simple answer. I can reconcile your answer with what you've written previously. Or, expand on your answer in a following post.

 

Okay, so is this previous post of yours what I'm supposed to respond to?:

Quote

 

I can't stand to call you stupid, Tony, and I can't stand to call you a liar. I don't think you're either. It might help if you were one, the other, even both.

I went to a church on Sunday to witness a baptism. First, not about the baptism, I experienced something over-whelming and terrifying in me then I experienced transcendence. (This wasn't religious; I don't believe in God.)

Was this transcendence an experience of the Sublime?

Yes? No? Just a simple answer. Don't add on five paragraphs of explanation or explication; you can do that in a following post. Just a naked answer. Even only, I don't know. There. You have three choices and no outs. As for me, myself and I--I think I did.

 

Answer: I don't know. I'd need more information -- more details as to what phenomena caused the experience, and specifically what you felt in response.

J

 

 

 

 

 

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I'm letting it go for now. The experience is what it was regardless of how it's labeled. I'd rather, now, go research it myself since the answer seems to be more interesting not being simple. So, I'll start by looking again at previous OL posts, especially by you and especially not by your ineffective detractors.

--Brant

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19 minutes ago, anthony said:

Hell. How indeed have the Sublimists hijacked individual emotion in pursuit of men's commonality (universalizability, collectivism).

They haven't.

The imaginary hijacking happened only in your warped head. Your nightmare of what has happened, and who has caused it, is a layer of kookberry paranoia on top of nutburger philosophizing, with batshit sprinkles on top.

Reading your posts is like hearing snippets from the crazy-journal of the killer in the movie Se7en.

seven-compilation2.jpg

J

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5 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

I'm letting it go for now. The experience is what it was regardless of how it's labeled. I'd rather, now, go research it myself since the answer seems to be more interesting not being simple. So, I'll start by looking again at previous OL posts, especially by you and especially not by your ineffective detractors.

--Brant

Well, if you don't want to go into detail, that's fine.

I guess it can kind of be simplified: In the experience, did you feel something like a combination of fear/terror and excitement/exaltation, like you might when standing at the rim of a deep chasm and looking down into it, or when at the top of a turbo-drop tower at an amusement park (or the instant that you're suddenly on the way down)? If so, you probably experienced the Sublime.

J

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1 hour ago, Jonathan said:

They haven't.

The imaginary hijacking happened only in your warped head. Your nightmare of what has happened, and who has caused it, is a layer of kookberry paranoia on top of nutburger philosophizing, with batshit sprinkles on top.

Reading your posts is like hearing snippets from the crazy-journal of the killer in the movie Se7en.

seven-compilation2.jpg

J

An emotion is either, preciously, one's own - like the unique contents of an individual mind - or it exists apart from oneself, in some other realm. No two persons will feel precisely the same emotion at the same sight and experience. (Their value hierarchies differ).

Excitement, nervousness, fear, anxiety, enthrallment, awe, wonder, calm, serenity: all supposedly "sublime". I will name you a hundred, and coming in combinations, thousands. Each one has an identity.

So take your neo-mysticism and collectivism and stuff it. It's less important to me whether Kant etc. had designs on collectivizing mankind by way of the sublime and emotions, or they were innocently ignorant. It is important what the insidious effects have been centuries later. And watch your slurs, laddie.

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35 minutes ago, anthony said:

An emotion is either, preciously, one's own - like the unique contents of an individual mind - or it exists apart from oneself, in some other realm. No two persons will feel precisely the same emotion at the same sight and experience. (Their value hierarchies differ).

No one has claimed that two persons will feel precisely the same emotion.

 

35 minutes ago, anthony said:

Excitement, nervousness, fear, anxiety, awe, wonder, calm, serenity: all supposedly "sublime".

No, all of those are not "supposedly 'sublime.'" The Sublime is described as a specific combination of a sense of fear and exaltation in the face of very specific types of powerful and complex phenomena.

Contrary to your nutty interpretation, no one has advocated the position that everyone must experience the Sublime in any or all such events in reality. If you personally encounter such phenomena yet don't experience the combination of a sense of fear with exaltation, then you didn't experience the Sublime. Their is no "ought" involved. You're forcing a normative position into a discussion which has never been about making normative judgments. Philosophers' thoughts on the Sublime have always been merely cognitive: they were simply identifying what the Sublime experience is, and what is involved in it, and not at all prescribing what people should experience. REPEAT: It is not about telling other people what they should experience in any given situation. Somehow you've gotten that fact mixed up in your frantic little Rand-demented head. You can't keep the paranoia our of your mind, and can't distinguish between another person's dealing in cognitive abstractions versus normative abstractions. To you, your imagined enemies are always trying to tell you what you should do.

Not that you're alone in O-land. The cognitive/normative confusion thing is very common, and it's a big part of why Objectivism and today's Objectivists are laughed at, and will never be taken seriously.

J

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"Weakest Feeling of Sublime--Light reflected off stones (Pleasure from beholding objects that pose no threat, objects devoid of life).

[...]

Fullest Feeling of Sublime--Immensity of Universe's extent or duration. (Pleasure from knowledge of observer's nothingness, and oneness with Nature)."

(Schopenhauer).

-------------------------------

At the very least, surplus to requirement.

An individual feels what he/she feels personally, and nothing more has to be said, and certainly nothing had to be systemized. Whatever the phenomenon, whatever the emotion, makes no difference.

But that's not the purpose, is it? That's not all.  As seen in Schopenhauer's sublime hierarchy, the ultimate object is "oneness with Nature" through "feelings".

To what end? To connect man to his roots and all things? It's through his mind and identification that he knows where he is and where he originated, not through emotions. And feelings will arise ~as consequence~ to his values in Natural pleasures anyway. Except, from the get-go, we are informed (by implication), he will: perceive-emotionally; identify-emotionally; integrate- emotionally; evaluate/judge-emotionally. And THEN, "reason" arrives on a white horse to save the day...after the fact.  However, cognition, and so, reason, starts with perception ->evaluation. If we wish to wipe out reason, we only need to replace it with feelings as cognitive tools. 

I have personal knowledge of what a sublime-type emotion is. Where's the difference with this "Sublime experience"? Do I need to be specially gifted to attain it?

(Coincidentally, I was at a baptism too, two months ago. I felt a great wonder for the infant and beneficence for those around and their ritual, beside the font ).

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Okay, my experience was not of

10 hours ago, Jonathan said:

Well, if you don't want to go into detail, that's fine.

I guess it can kind of be simplified: In the experience, did you feel something like a combination of fear/terror and excitement/exaltation, like you might when standing at the rim of a deep chasm and looking down into it, or when at the top of a turbo-drop tower at an amusement park (or the instant that you're suddenly on the way down)? If so, you probably experienced the Sublime.

J

I'm getting a better handle on it now. My experience (at the baptism) was not of the Sublime.

Jumping out of an airplane as a paratrooper for the first time--that was the requisite fear (behind which was a lot of complexity all coming to a head)--and there you are falling out of an airplane between two worlds. One the safety of the airplane, vanished. Two, the safety of a parachute, not deployed. The fear came up in stages. First, this was the day of my first jump. Second, putting on the gear correctly, just so. Third, into the airplane you go with a whole bunch of scared others. Fourth, the plane takes off--will it make it? Fifth, we stand up and attach our static lines to the cable above. Sixth, the door on the side of the plane is opened, Seventh, the red light (stop!) turns green (go!) and everybody shuffles up to the door as fast as possible and jumps out as soon as he gets to the door. "GO, GO, GO, GO, GO!" Eighth, I jump right into air rushing by at--they never told us--150mph and I am counting "one-thousand one, one-thousand two, one-thousand three, one-thousand four" wondering when will the damn chute open and SNAP it opens and I de-accelerate almost all that 150mph in a very few seconds. That was the fear--terror. The chute opening and knowing I wasn't going to die--that was the exaltation. Knowing that and knowing all that training, plus having to repeat the first week for I hadn't qualified on the 34 ft tower (bummer!) had paid off 100 percent and I was on my way to Special Forces after four more jumps--no doubt about it now still 1000 ft in the air coming down--if that wasn't the Sublime then I've never experienced it.

--Brant

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14 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Okay, my experience was not of

I'm getting a better handle on it now. My experience (at the baptism) was not of the Sublime.

Jumping out of an airplane as a paratrooper for the first time--that was the requisite fear (behind which was a lot of complexity all coming to a head)--and there you are falling out of an airplane between two worlds. One the safety of the airplane, vanished. Two, the safety of a parachute, not deployed. The fear came up in stages. First, this was the day of my first jump. Second, putting on the gear correctly, just so. Third, into the airplane you go with a whole bunch of scared others. Fourth, the plane takes off--will it make it? Fifth, we stand up and attach our static lines to the cable above. Sixth, the door on the side of the plane is opened, Seventh, the red light (stop!) turns green (go!) and everybody shuffles up to the door as fast as possible and jumps out as soon as he gets to the door. "GO, GO, GO, GO, GO!" Eighth, I jump right into air rushing by at--they never told us--150mph and I am counting "one-thousand one, one-thousand two, one-thousand three, one-thousand four" wondering when will the damn chute open and SNAP it opens and I de-accelerate almost all that 150mph in a very few seconds. That was the fear--terror. The chute opening and knowing I wasn't going to die--that was the exaltation. Knowing that and knowing all that training, plus having to repeat the first week for I hadn't qualified on the 34 ft tower (bummer!) had paid off 100 percent and I was on my way to Special Forces after four more jumps--no doubt about it now still 1000 ft in the air coming down--if that wasn't the Sublime then I've never experienced it.

--Brant

That sounds like it would probably be about the limit of the most extreme Sublime that can be experienced.

J

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21 hours ago, anthony said:

At the very least, surplus to requirement.

Garble.

Are you incapable of using the language properly? No wonder you can't think properly!

 

21 hours ago, anthony said:

An individual feels what he/she feels personally, and nothing more has to be said, and certainly nothing had to be systemized. Whatever the phenomenon, whatever the emotion, makes no difference.

In other words, since you personally lack any sense of natural intellectual curiosity about the issue, nothing needs to be investigated or thought about it -- it's just a big waste of time.

Yeah, it "makes no difference," and is "nothing to be systemized," even though Rand adopted it as her signature aesthetic style. It was just an emotion, and there's no value in anyone's pondering it and its effects and influences. Let's just call it evil and blank it out!

 

21 hours ago, anthony said:

But that's not the purpose, is it?

Yes, defining and systematizing is the purpose.

 

21 hours ago, anthony said:

That's not all.

False. That's all.

 

21 hours ago, anthony said:

As seen in Schopenhauer's sublime hierarchy, the ultimate object is "oneness with Nature" through "feelings".

No, that's just your nutty, hostile, intentional misreading. You're willfully misinterpreting everything that you read in order to invent villains whom you can hate. Your every thought is guided by hatred.

 

21 hours ago, anthony said:

To what end? To connect man to his roots and all things? It's through his mind and identification that he knows where he is and where he originated, not through emotions. And feelings will arise ~as consequence~ to his values in Natural pleasures anyway. Except, from the get-go, we are informed (by implication), he will: perceive-emotionally; identify-emotionally; integrate- emotionally; evaluate/judge-emotionally. And THEN, "reason" arrives on a white horse to save the day...after the fact.  However, cognition, and so, reason, starts with perception ->evaluation. If we wish to wipe out reason, we only need to replace it with feelings as cognitive tools. 

Irrational, hate-driven blabby garble. Nonsense, illogic, and bile. You're inventing positions that others didn't hold and assigning them evil motives that they didn't have.

 

21 hours ago, anthony said:

I have personal knowledge of what a sublime-type emotion is. Where's the difference with this "Sublime experience"? Do I need to be specially gifted to attain it?

WTF? You lost me there. Could you please try to focus just a little, and attempt at least a minimum of mental clarity?

Your blissful ignorance/cognitive dissonance reminds me of Howard J. "The Cruiser" Turkstra from the movie Stripes.

"There was one?"

 

 

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21 hours ago, Jonathan said:

Garble.

Are you incapable of using the language properly? No wonder you can't think properly!

 

 

 

"Surplus to requirement" means: superfluous; redundant; not needed:

Ultimately, too: self-evident and obvious.

If one had any self-awareness and inductive experience, you'd have known early on as a kid that your emotions, and by inference those of others, are part and parcel of one's consciousness. That is, consciousness for all men, for all time. Millennia before Schop. and Kant tried to explain and enshrine the package deal of Sublimity, men felt emotions of every type there is.

iow, the rational animal has the capacity for a range of emotions. iow, men can experience a spread, roughly, from delight and ecstacy -to- fear and terror. iow, there is no mystery about them, each emotion has an identity--as have one's value-premises--as has an object or occurence which threatens/gratifies those values. Because every emotion is 'owned' by each individual and has its source in his consciousness - in response to an existent.

And oh yes. Fear. (Or other strongly negative emotions). As kids we all learned (I assume) that often it may be necessary to overcome one's fear to some perceived danger, and to think clearly and act decisively - whether for self-protection, or coming to the defense of values, or one's integrity to principles, etc.. That's been the stuff of literary art (and film) for a long while. Therein is the volitional consciousness, of which the Sublime is a bad copy.

For me, that's the whole "Sublime-System" in a few paras, leaving aside "dynamic", "mathematical" and "the noble" and "oneness" and "nothingness", to which reams and reams of words have been dedicated by some thinkers. From them, it seems, one should ask oneself: "Was this 'a Sublime emotion', I felt?" Or: "How do I an artist create 'a sublime' picture?". Prescriptive and constrictive, as I've suggested. Not: What emotion is it? Is this an emotion appropriate to me and my values? What can I learn from it? How can I convey my feeling in my art? Is it an *honest and true* emotion?

In reply, everything -and nothing- can be 'sublime'. If you want it to be, you can call a feeling whatever you wish. ("Weakest feeling of the sublime", and so on, up). i.e. sublimity is subjective. Objectively, an emotion is an emotion is an emotion, all one's own and with an idenitity.

Do you get "surplus to requirement"- now?

It is kinda, sorta, like, "Duh!"

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1 hour ago, anthony said:

"Surplus to requirement" means: superfluous; redundant; not needed:

Ultimately, too: self-evident and obvious.

 

But clearly philosophical investigations into the Sublime are not superfluous or self-evident, since, despite all of the time we've spent discussing the issue, you still don't grasp the concept!!!

 

1 hour ago, anthony said:

iow, the rational animal has the capacity for a range of emotions. iow, men can experience a spread, roughly, from delight and ecstacy -to- fear and terror. iow, there is no mystery about them, each emotion has an identity--as have one's value-premises--as has an object or occurence which threatens/gratifies those values. Because every emotion is 'owned' by each individual and has its source in his consciousness - in response to an existent.

So you agree with Kant! Without realizing it? Doofus.

 

1 hour ago, anthony said:

And oh yes. Fear. (Or other strongly negative emotions). As kids we all learned (I assume) that often it may be necessary to overcome one's fear to some perceived danger, and to think clearly and act decisively - whether for self-protection, or coming to the defense of values, or one's integrity to principles, etc.. That's been the stuff of literary art (and film) for a long while. Therein is the volitional consciousness, of which the Sublime is a bad copy.

You still don't grasp the simple concept of the Sublime. Pathetic, but also hilarious.

 

1 hour ago, anthony said:

For me, that's the whole "Sublime-System" in a few paras, leaving aside "dynamic", "mathematical" and "the noble" and "oneness" and "nothingness", to which reams and reams of words have been dedicated by some thinkers...

And none of which you've understood.

 

1 hour ago, anthony said:

From them, it seems, one should ask oneself: "Was this 'a Sublime emotion', I felt?" Or: "How do I an artist create 'a sublime' picture?". Prescriptive and constrictive, as I've suggested. Not: What emotion is it? Is this an emotion appropriate to me and my values? What can I learn from it? How can I convey my feeling in my art? Is it an *honest and true* emotion?

Hahahahaha!!!!  As usual, you've gotten it completely backwards.

 

1 hour ago, anthony said:

In reply, everything -and nothing- can be 'sublime'. If you want it to be, you can call a feeling whatever you wish. ("Weakest feeling of the sublime", and so on, up). i.e. sublimity is subjective. Objectively, an emotion is an emotion is an emotion, all one's own and with an idenitity.

Irrationality, non-sequiturs, slop-thought, straw men, and windmills. The refusal to see and to understand. Stubborn, pigheaded, reality-denying Rand-dementia.

J

 

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"Discussing the issue" - is a lie. You have not "discussed", you have shouted down, negated and scoffed. Whatever I know of the subject is from academics, not from you, and I've read from them enough to uncover the b.s. to my satisfaction.

In short. Intrinsicism: the theory that things have value or disvalue, in themselves, needless of a human -valuing- consciousness. But the Sublime is not intrinsic to any part of Nature - which is what it is, independent of consciousness. Therefore, the Sublime is not 'out there', it is not an existent, it can't be conceptualized, it is not "a concept".

Subjectivity: Mutable "feelings" - about the placidity--enormity of things, and such - is paramount to these philosophers, or else students could not emotionally reproduce the notion for themselves. I.e., it only 'works' because *everybody* has felt delighted, overwhelmed, fearful, etc., by some thing, some time. So the "feelings" of their hypothesized collective of minds are the hook for all the rationalizing that follows, by the philosophers.

As is lacking mostly in Kant's writing (and yours) is reference to man's consciousness, especially that it too has identity. That alone is a tip-off, because the subject of sublimity should be ALL concerned with consciousness wrt existence. Ignoring those brings the dive into neo-mysticism. You claim reality. I don't believe you can handle it.

 

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58 minutes ago, anthony said:

As is lacking mostly in Kant's writing (and yours) is reference to man's consciousness, especially that it too has identity.

Kant acknowledges that consciousness has identity. He goes to great lengths to discuss what he thinks it is. Rand's point is that Kant thinks that the identity of consciousness disqualifies it from knowing reality as it really is. (This is discussed in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.)

REB

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1 hour ago, Roger Bissell said:

Kant acknowledges that consciousness has identity. He goes to great lengths to discuss what he thinks it is. Rand's point is that Kant thinks that the identity of consciousness disqualifies it from knowing reality as it really is. (This is discussed in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.)

REB

Yes, she nailed him on that.

'The Kantian Sublime: Why Care?' [Anoka Faruqee, 2009]

"We have seen how an object might be deemed universally beautiful, how this judgment cannot be based in interest or definite concepts. It is based rather in the purposiveness of an object and yields indefinite concepts of the understanding. The three Criteria for judging the sublime are the same as the beautiful: disinteredness, subjective universality, and purposiveness without a purpose". [AF]

(and rings a bell):

"In the history of philosophy, epistemological theories have consisted predominantly of attempts to escape one or the other of these two questions--by means of skepticism or mysticism. The motive of all the attacks on man's rational faculty, is a single, basic premise: the desire to exempt consciousness from the law of identity [...] and that identity is the *disqualifying* element of consciousness". [AR]

In fact, as if 'you' are not 'there'...

 

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17 hours ago, anthony said:

Yes, she nailed him on that.

'The Kantian Sublime: Why Care?' [Anoka Faruqee, 2009]

"We have seen how an object might be deemed universally beautiful, how this judgment cannot be based in interest or definite concepts. It is based rather in the purposiveness of an object and yields indefinite concepts of the understanding. The three Criteria for judging the sublime are the same as the beautiful: disinteredness, subjective universality, and purposiveness without a purpose". [AF]

(and rings a bell):

"In the history of philosophy, epistemological theories have consisted predominantly of attempts to escape one or the other of these two questions--by means of skepticism or mysticism. The motive of all the attacks on man's rational faculty, is a single, basic premise: the desire to exempt consciousness from the law of identity [...] and that identity is the *disqualifying* element of consciousness". [AR]

In fact, as if 'you' are not 'there'...

 

Heh. Clearly you don't grasp the terms being used.

But it still is very entertaining watching you don the Randian goggles, misread, misinterpret and distort words and phrases, and then arrive at the predetermined false conclusion.

Tony, you're notorious for evading questions, even when they're asked repeatedly, but will you please do my a big favor and answer just one? I promise that I won't even argue against whatever your answer is. I just want to know. Here's the question: What do you think that Kant meant by "disinterestedness" when discussing beauty?

I promise that I will not argue with you over your take on it. Please, answer.

Thanks,

J

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On 6/6/2016 at 10:09 AM, william.scherk said:

 

http://www.popsci.com/can-computer-make-art

And we’re actually getting closer to that reality-- this year, IBM’s Watson helped fashion firm Marchesa design a dress for the Met Gala, suggesting directions for colors and materials.

During the production process, Marchesa gave Watson five emotions to draw from: joy, passion, excitement, encouragement and curiosity. Watson analyzed previous dresses from Marchesa, and through its tool that connects colors with emotions, designed a color palate for the garment. Watson services then were able to narrow 40,000 fabrics down to 150 choices, and provide 35 recommendations for designers.

Project Magenta aims to create truly generative music and art, writes Eck. The idea is to start with nothing but the machine, and with the click of a button suddenly have a piece of music with all the elements that a human composer would incorporate.

Magenta will also work on bringing narrative arcs into the generated music through recurring themes and characteristics of the music.

 

[From Newberry's site, on The Veil:] 

Can a painter show the inner being? How far can transparency go? Do we have auras that surround us? Do they feel like this?

Anoka-Faruqee-2013P-84-Wave-2013-Acrylic

On 6/9/2016 at 9:14 AM, anthony said:

What emotion is it? Is this an emotion appropriate to me and my values? What can I learn from it? How can I convey my feeling in my art? Is it an *honest and true* emotion?

Screen-Shot-2012-11-25-at-10.16.23-AM.pn

On 6/9/2016 at 9:14 AM, anthony said:

Objectively, an emotion is an emotion is an emotion, all one's own and with an idenitity.

Do emotion names capture that sense of identity?  Does your epigram capture the passage of time, intensity, shifts and blurs in your own emotional life Of what use is this generalization and home-truth to the project of appreciating(criticizing) art?  Do you have a project, in so many words?

If someone's emotions are curiously blunted and limited, Tony, as in Damasio's case studies, do you think they could still appreciate art?  Would removing Kamhi and Torres emotional life render their judgements on art more or less useful?  Would cutting out all the insults and moralistic 'you people' crap from this thread serve your argument better?

I don't expect answers to these questions, but set them as a hook for my own thoughts.  I  would love to see someone in this thread go off and gather some art, select some items for discussion, and 're-set.'  Roger's introduction reads to me like a laissez-passer to an Invitational, an event, an intellectual event.   The personal invective adds no value to me. But here is my last emotional outburst, a sketch of OL emotions, pictured -- and labeled (In Polish). Have I missed any of the Big Objectivish Emotions expressed so far?

moooods.png

19 hours ago, anthony said:

'The Kantian Sublime: Why Care?' [Anoka Faruqee, 2009]

The Kantian Sublime: Why Care?

Published in ‘Why Theory,’ Cal Arts Exhibition Catalogue, 2009

 

The Kantian sublime exists as topic, ghost, or foil in many current critical texts about art. Immanuel Kant lays the foundation for a mode of thought that yields two centuries of critique. As Terry Eagleton notes, it is within Kant’s vision that “Marx’s immanent critique will find a foothold.”i Despite the simplification of Kant in some contemporary writing, the actual text is nuanced and at times contradictory; Kant exists at the threshold of rationalism and romanticism. A close read of the text dispels the notion of a pure formalism; even within the Kantian realm, the concepts of beauty and the sublime originate with sensory experience but ultimately assert the triumph of the human capacity to reason. Revisiting Kant’s text seems particularly relevant to our cultural moment as critics such as Edward Said and Eagleton reassess the material outcomes of countervailing anti-essentialist theories. Perhaps the most controversial and fantastical aspect of Kant’s text – the assertion of beauty and the sublime as universal experiences deserves the most thoughtful enquiry.

 

[...]

 

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1790) shifts the emphasis of the sublime from the object to the subject. For Kant, the sublime though instigated by objects in the world is not an external object itself, say a mountaintop. The sublime is a mental process, a particular subjective experience that presents the limits of human knowledge to the subject. By emphasizing the subject and the limits of human cognition, the Kantian sublime ultimately rests not in Nature itself, but in the human capacity to reason about Nature.

 

[...]

 

Despite humanism’s misuse of politics and public policy in the form of ethnocentrism and empire, Said asks us to remember the humanist ideal “based on the human being’s capacity to make knowledge, as opposed to absorbing it passively, reactively, dully.”xxvi Can we similarly see Kant’s universality not as the masquerade of authoritarianism but as an assertion of what makes human beings common? Kant’s ideas are nuanced; they carry the tools of their own dismantling. There is an awe of reason in this formalist world, a limit to subjectivity in this humanist vision and the paradox of a universality that is also subjective.

 

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22 hours ago, Roger Bissell said:

Kant acknowledges that consciousness has identity. He goes to great lengths to discuss what he thinks it is.

REB

To be clear, right through I have been sticking narrowly to the aesthetics of Kant (in particular), and to "consciousness" only within this frame. I'm no way qualified to argue with his Critiques on reason.

I think Kant shows he had little understanding of art and the creating of art - by an individual's consciousness, and its contemplation - by yet another. Except for his aims to "universalize" beauty and in matters of "taste" and "pleasure", he rarely acknowledges consciousness (in his aesthetics). (I remind that the start of this debate was abstract and modern art).

Overlook that an artwork has substance/content, deny or "disqualify" the artist's consciousness for having a particular identity and contents, and that the viewer's consciousness has it too; focus all and only on beauty ... and Kant's conclusions are the result, I believe.

"With the sublime as with the beautiful, Kant's aesthetics subordinates art to nature. In both cases, this is partly because the 'Critique of Judgement' sets out primarily to provide a philosophy of organic nature, and partly that he believes art is beautiful and great to the extent that it does in some sense follow or copy nature".

(Which could also be influenced by Kant's personal theistic conviction about Nature possessing Design and purpose).

----A few more quotes from my recently acquired book:

"We may proceed, Kant thinks, to apply the same principle to nature as considered as a whole; i.e., we may ask not merely 'What is the purpose of this or that particular natural object?' but also 'What is the purpose of nature considered as a whole?' It is important not to misunderstand Kant's meaning here. He is not saying that everything in nature has, as a matter of fact, been designed by a mind with certain purposes in view. As a convinced theist, he believes that this is so... He is saying, at this stage, merely that nature is unintelligible to us unless we regard it as if everything within it were purposively designed in the mutually helpful way he has described".

(Assume in favor of Creation in order to understand 'the purpose of nature'...? A watch presupposes a watchmaker, etc.).

---- 

"Moreover, our interest in the beauties of nature is akin to moral feeling in a way in which the appreciation of works of art are not; a thoroughly bad man may enjoy and appreciate works of art but he will not, in Kant's view, enjoy the beauties of nature. There is in fact a kind of analogy between natural beauty and morality, which is illustrated by our tendency to apply to aesthetic objects terms which belong originally to the assessment of moral character".

(Quaint idea. Further on the superiority of nature over the man-made, which in turn is great only so far as it "imitates" nature).

---

Kant compares the feeling of this sublimity with the way in which the righteous man fears God, even though he believes that he himself, as righteous man, has nothing to be afraid of; he still recognises God as a being to be feared by anyone who transgresses his laws. Kant adds that the moral law, when considered from an aesthetic point of view, is sublime rather than beautiful..."

 

'The Philosophy of Kant'. John Kemp, 1968

[Chapter - Aesthetics and Teleology].

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2 hours ago, anthony said:

To be clear...

Heh. You're incapable of being clear. You should have written, "To be garbled..."

 

2 hours ago, anthony said:

...right through I have been sticking narrowly to the aesthetics of Kant (in particular), and to "consciousness" only within this frame.

No, you haven't. Rather, you've made shit up from a Rand-demented perspective.

 

2 hours ago, anthony said:

I think Kant shows he had little understanding of art and the creating of art - by an individual's consciousness, and its contemplation - by yet another. Except for his aims to "universalize" beauty and in matters of "taste" and "pleasure", he rarely acknowledges consciousness (in his aesthetics). (I remind that the start of this debate was abstract and modern art).

No. YOU show that you have little understanding of art and of the creating of art. The only thing that you know is parroting Rand, and hating what she told you to hate. You have less knowledge of art and aesthetics than the average junior high student.

 

2 hours ago, anthony said:

Except for his aims to "universalize" beauty and in matters of "taste" and "pleasure"...

Heh. Kant wasn't aiming to universalize beauty and matters of taste and pleasure. As always, you've missed the point. His point was that people experience such pleasures as if they were universal, despite their actually being subjective.

And aesthetically inept bossypantses like you, Bissell and his wife, and TamhiKorres™, are walking proof of Kant's position: You cannot fathom that each of your aesthetic abilities/sensitivities is not the ultimate standard, limit and universal representation of aesthetic response and refinement. You refuse to even consider the possibility that you might not have the same levels of knowledge, aesthetic sensitivity, and observational skills as anyone else. In fact, you take the mere suggestion of such to be a viciously personal insult. Your abilities just MUST be the limits of all mankind. Despite having no education or training in the visual arts, your responses to and interpretations of visual art just MUST be universally and "objectively" true and accurate, and anyone who disagrees is "rationalizing," "making stuff up," trying to "impress the art world elite," and engaging in "Emperor's new clothes" pretentiousness.

 

2 hours ago, anthony said:

Overlook that an artwork has substance/content, deny or "disqualify" the artist's consciousness for having a particular identity and contents, and that the viewer's consciousness has it too; focus all and only on beauty ... and Kant's conclusions are the result, I believe.

Your conclusions are nonsense.

 

2 hours ago, anthony said:

"With the sublime as with the beautiful, Kant's aesthetics subordinates art to nature. In both cases, this is partly because the 'Critique of Judgement' sets out primarily to provide a philosophy of organic nature, and partly that he believes art is beautiful and great to the extent that it does in some sense follow or copy nature".

The above is also Rand's view.

 

2 hours ago, anthony said:

(Which could also be influenced by Kant's personal theistic conviction about Nature possessing Design and purpose).

Heh. Did you not read and comprehend the quote that you posted immediately following the above? Hahahaha! Obviously not!

 

2 hours ago, anthony said:

"Moreover, our interest in the beauties of nature is akin to moral feeling in a way in which the appreciation of works of art are not; a thoroughly bad man may enjoy and appreciate works of art but he will not, in Kant's view, enjoy the beauties of nature. There is in fact a kind of analogy between natural beauty and morality, which is illustrated by our tendency to apply to aesthetic objects terms which belong originally to the assessment of moral character".

(Quaint idea...

Same view as Rand's.

 

2 hours ago, anthony said:

Further on the superiority of nature over the man-made, which in turn is great only so far as it "imitates" nature).

Heh. Kant was not commenting on the subject of nature versus the man-made. You've only misinterpreted him as having done so, due to your Rand-dementia.

Um, dipshit, do you not remember that Objectivism requires art to "imitate" nature? Art must be representational according to Objectivism!!!!

Heh. Rand and her idiot followers accuse Kant of being the father of modern visual art, yet he held the same views as she did on visual art's needing to represent identifiable things, and, added to that, Rand unknowingly adopted the Kantian Sublime as her signature aesthetic style -- and her "sense of life."

God, what a bumblingly hilarious clown show!

J

 

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1 hour ago, anthony said:

I think Kant shows he had little understanding of art and the creating of art - by an individual's consciousness

Do you really want to stand by this claim?

Since you apparently have not read my essay, which is the impetus for this thread, I'll just quote a couple of points from it, to show how both Aristotle and Kant were very close to Rand's way of viewing art, contrary to your quoted remark above:

Butcher ([1894] 1951), citing Aristotle’s On the Soul (1952c; 3.428a5–16; 3.427b17–20; 10.433a10), notes that the human creative power spontaneously “fuses together the things of thought and sense and forms a new world of its own, recombining and transmuting the materials of experience” (126–27; emphasis added). The imitative artist, Butcher continues, “carries forward . . . the general movement of organic life . . . to a more perfect conclusion” by the use of a “mimic world” (152; emphasis added).

Kant (1790, 528), echoing this philosophy, said: “The imagination (as a productive faculty of cognition) is a powerful agent for creating, as it were, a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature” (emphasis added).

Your uninformed Kant-bashing should be a good qualification for employment at the Ayn Rand Institute. Let me know how the job interview turns out.

REB

 

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3 hours ago, william.scherk said:

I  would love to see someone in this thread go off and gather some art, select some items for discussion, and 're-set.'  Roger's introduction reads to me like a laissez-passer to an Invitational, an event, an intellectual event.

That won't happen. Rand's followers know that they need to strictly stick with theory and avoid applying it to reality at all costs. Asking them to demonstrate their theory by applying it to real works of art always results in either their failing miserably or evading the challenge because they know they'll fail miserably.

 

Here's an "apply the theory to reality" challenge that I issued more than a decade ago in an O-forum (still no takers, no champions brave enough to accept the challenge):

Objecivism holds that "As a re-creation of reality, a work of art has to be representational; its freedom of stylization is limited by the requirement of intelligibility; if it does not present an intelligible subject, it ceases to be art."

Objectivism also holds that architecture is a valid art form.

Identify the "intelligible subject" in this work of architecture:

26977478924_e7165f2e2a_b.jpg

Objectively identify the "artist's meaning" of the artwork, and demonstrate how to objectively measure and rate the architect's technical skills/merits in conveying his meaning through his art.

J

 

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5 hours ago, Jonathan said:

.

 

No. YOU show that you have little understanding of art and of the creating of art. The only thing that you know is parroting Rand, and hating what she told you to hate. You have less knowledge of art and aesthetics than the average junior high student.

 

Heh. Kant wasn't aiming to universalize beauty and matters of taste and pleasure. As always, you've missed the point. His point was that people experience such pleasures as if they were universal, despite their actually being subjective.

 

 

Your conclusions are nonsense.

 

The above is also Rand's view.

 

Heh. Did you not read and comprehend the quote that you posted immediately following the above? Hahahaha! Obviously not!

 

Same view as Rand's.

 

Heh. Kant was not commenting on the subject of nature versus the man-made. You've only misinterpreted him as having done so, due to your Rand-dementia.

 

J

 

 

"Kant believes he can show that aesthetic judgement is not fundamentally different from ordinary theoretical cognition of nature, and he believes he can show that aesthetic judgement has a deep similarity to moral judgement. For these two reasons Kant claims he can demonstrate that the physical and moral universes--and the philosophies and forms of thought that present them--are not only compatible, but unified".

[...]

"He now turns to fine art. Kant assumes that the cognition involved in judging fine art is similar to the cognition involved in judging natural beauty".

---

Conflations galore in these statements, the second, denying the ~ever so slight~ distinction between *the man-made* and *the metaphysically given*, and raises another doubt about Kant and *identity*. Any glibly superficial comparisons with Rand's art-thinking after this, should be declared false. The senses/mind identifies, and so approaches and judges each instance completely differently, with totally distinct standards. A child viewing an artwork intuitively grasps the difference, as I've said before. But the conflation of 'real' and image-of-real has come up often here and been perplexing.

I believe that one can deduce Kant's over-all intent by his 'unifications'. My early impression grows, that Kant from the start had a top-down, 'a priori' plan-dream: to consolidate man's harmonious existence with nature, and a harmony of men in society. "Good Intentions", as he advocated.

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