Is there not such a thing as moral relativism in art.
mando
On Oct 11, 2008, at 2:40 PM, William Conger wrote:
That answer is not analytical. There are always some people who
advocate any view at all. So philosophically I think it's pointless
to justify a position on the grounds that some people will choose
it. The issue finally becomes a moral one. Is the aesthtic
limited to what is morally good and if so, does it have a social/
political dimension? I think the aesthetic is primarily a social
affirmation, not a personal one, at least with respect to
approaching a workable definition of it. If we approach it through
the moral and the ethical then will that help to avoid ending with
purely solipsistic stalemates?
WC
--- On Sat, 10/11/08, armando baeza <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: armando baeza <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Expertise and aesthetic experience
To: [email protected]
Cc: "armando baeza" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Saturday, October 11, 2008, 3:50 PM
To some people ,I think it certainly does.
mando
On Oct 11, 2008, at 1:41 PM, William Conger wrote:
So does porn qualify re aesthetic experience?
WC
--- On Sat, 10/11/08, GEOFF CREALOCK
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: GEOFF CREALOCK
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Expertise and aesthetic experience
To: [email protected]
Date: Saturday, October 11, 2008, 3:18 PM
Here is my "vague summary" definition of
"aesthetic experience"
(idiosyncratic though it may be): a satisfying or
significantly pleasurable
response, sustantially but not necessarily solely
affective, to a stimulus
(painting, poem, play, photograph or natural event
- add
your own
favourite).
I agree that definition is difficult, but that is
not, for
me, a reason to
make no effort. (Look at the fine work of
President Bush to
manage national
debt.)
Geoff C
From: William Conger
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Expertise and aesthetic
experience
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2008 08:27:27 -0700 (PDT)
Most philosophers say that whatever the
aesthetic
"experience" is, it
cannot be fully explicated because to do that
is to
describe it in terms
separate from the experience. Experience is a
flow, a
continuum, always
mixed with a variety of feelings and memories
in
addition to the moment at
hand. How is it possible to isolate "an
experience" except in vague
summary? Thus I think the aesthetic
experience, a
faulty term, is
ineffable. In fact, I suspect we could say
the same
about any sort of
experience whatsoever. We need to use a
language to
reconstruct the
presumed experience and that has its own
experiental or
even aesthetic
evocative and therefore constructive aspects.
In
short, the word we use to
describe our experience is also an experience
and thus
has its own defining
impact.
Because no experience can be replicated by a
language I
frankly have no
idea what an aesthetic experience is. Some
episodes of
my ongoing
experiental life seem to be more surprising
and
fascinating, and remind me
of the "oceanic" metaphor, like out
of body
fantasies, but, really, nothing
is adequately both necessary and sufficient to
describe
any experience
without making it anew, and false.
I am one who answered in the affirmative
regarding the
"aesthetic" benefit
of learning from critics. I use the word
critic
expansively here, and
apply it a range of writers from writers like
Baudelaire to art scholars
like TJ Clark, among hundreds of others. Why?
These
people have given me
deeper access to art, enabling me to
experience it far
more fully than I
might have otherwise. Sometimes, their prose
alone is
so enlightening that
it becomes fused, as it were, with the
artworks they
discuss. And isn't
art something that should attract and reflect
the
distilled experiences
expressed by its audiences? When it begins
life, an
artwork is empty, or
meaningless, as all things are, and attains
vitality
through the content
its audiences create and vicariously extend to
it.
WC
--- On Sat, 10/11/08, Chris Miller
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: Chris Miller
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Expertise and aesthetic
experience
To: [email protected]
Date: Saturday, October 11, 2008, 9:05 AM
As Derek once asked, "What *is* an
"aesthetic
experience"?" --- and perhaps
not everyone here would say that they had
such
things - or
even if we all
would -- it's quite likely that we use
the
phrase
