----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Beauty? I think not!
Somebody said that all beauty implies completeness.
Is not, Derek, your examples of not beautiful Goya's or Isenheim
Altarpiece
have that spiritual completeness?
Even reasoning is beautiful when it has flavor of completeness.
Boris Shoshensky
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While "completeness" doesn't have to imply finality, I thought I would alert
you to
Only a Promise of Happiness:
The Place of Beauty in a World of Art
by Alexander Nehamas
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8357.html
This is a 2007 publication. I found it both honest and insightful. Nehamas
argues that "Beauty" is an open concept defering finality. He sees
"beauty" as the promise of happiness. To say that something is "beautiful"
for Nehamas is to claim a fulfilling, yet perpetually incomplete state of
contentment. We keep returning to beautiful things in the hope of
discovering the Omega point of happiness, but if we ever reach the point
where a work of art no longer has more to say, we are at once disillusioned
and discontent.
I was persuaded to accept Nehamas' point of view, with a side of Spinoza.
You may recall that Spinoza defined Joy as the promise of perfection. I
prefer Spinoza's construction to Nahamas' so I now regard the experience of
Truth, Beauty and Goodness to be Joy in Spinoza's sense of the promise of
perfection.
What is perfection? I use that term in a relational way based on the
context of the particular. In the case of The Great He Goat, The Witches
Sabbath, it may be a perfect appreciation of my own animalistic nature or
perhaps the role of Bacchanalian archetypes in my life.
My POV may be a little incomplete, but I think it has a lot of promise. :)
Mike Mallory
