You didn't address the issue directly. It's not good enough to say "yes" and then qualify it and then suffuse it with broad generalities about nakedness and the "sexual dimension". Why stop at nakedness? Any figure at all has a sexual dimension, clothed or not, alive or not, imitated in imagery or not.
My interest is related to morality and whether or not it has an intrinsic connection to the aesthetic. If so, one needs to recognize the salient signals of the the moral and then approach the aesthetic from them. If pornography is aesthetic in the broad way you mention then I want to know if it's also moral. Downgrading it to the purient and then to the more civil tone of erotica doesn't help unless you can tell me where (and evidenced by what terms "notions") the line is crossed from ammoral to moral; that is, from unaesthetic to aesthetic. Again, is pornography both aesthetic and moral, or are moral and aesthetic separate concepts, not intrinsically connected? WC --- On Sun, 10/12/08, Michael Brady <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From: Michael Brady <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: Expertise and aesthetic experience > To: [email protected] > Date: Sunday, October 12, 2008, 8:59 AM > On Oct 11, 2008, at 4:41 PM, William Conger wrote: > > > So does porn qualify re aesthetic experience? > > Yes, but it's overwhelmed by a kind of didactic or > sensationalizing > effect, namely, the prurient. For the most part, only a > very small > fraction of pornography is particularly noteworthy as > "literature," > and when that happens, it's called erotica! <g> > > It's really hard not to view a naked figure without the > erotic or > sexual dimension intruding itself. > > Why do some religions prohibit human > representations--iconoclasm? > Because of the power of the image to draw interest to > itself and its > represented subject with its intriguing, excitatory, > prurient power. > Pornography just takes the wraps off and makes no excuses > for the > unavoidable way the portrayal of a human figure can > "be read." > > > | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | > Michael Brady > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
