From: armando baeza <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Expertise and aesthetic experience
To: [email protected]
Cc: "armando baeza" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sunday, November 2, 2008, 12:28 PM
Some how ,in my mind , every thing that is considered good
and
bad ,comes under
the umbrella of morality. and every thing that is ugly and
beautiful
comes under the
umbrella of aesthetics. That line is always crossed at
different
points by different
individuals and groups of individual. So,who is to judge
where that
line should be line ?
If we are to evolve to that 'just' point, what will
happen to the
individual.
mando
On Nov 2, 2008, at 9:15 AM, Michael Brady wrote:
On Oct 12, 2008, at 11:52 AM, William Conger wrote:
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.
I think you've trapped me with the equivalence of
"moral" and
"aesthetic." Jean Annouilh has Henry II
observe of Beckett, "I
think with him, it [morality] is a question of
aesthetics." [paraphrase] And I've said
elsewhere that art
moralizes nature, that is, it organizes our sensory
perceptions and
representations with rules and directives. Morality
(and ethics) is
a social code that promotes certain behavior and
discourages other.
I do not believe that the aesthetic force or aspect of
art itself
leads to moral behavior, or the converse. Morality
addresses
(describes, codifies) right behavior whereas
aesthetics addresses
good form. (See Maritain on that for a long
explanation of the
quality of the artwork made by an immoral maker.) In
fact, I do not
believe that as a necessary condition, there is a
didactic or
ennobling end for art, beyond its own high
quality--although art
has often, even usually, been made with a social
purpose in mind.
Most art that I've seen is of the "oh, look
at this" kind, rather
than "this is how you should [should not]
live."
Pornography is specifically sexual, about sexual
arousal and
portrayals. The immorality of pornography, according
to most
doctrinal and even therapeutic commentators, is that
it exalts
selfish sexual gratification above the shared
experience of sexual
embrace with another person. Not merely that it's
fruitless
(masturbation), but that it is devoid of human love
for a partner.
(This doesn't take into account the moral context
of the actors and
producers of the porn films and pictures, just the
watcher. Their
moral state is a separate issue about instrumentality,
the proper
ends of a behavior, and the perverting of those ends.)
Visual perceptions have a strong power to bypass the
scrutiny of
verbal intelligence and imprint a memory that is hard
to reshape.
Moreover, some sights (visual perceptions) are
profoundly strong
and attractive, as are smells, tastes, touches, and
sounds. These
sensations are primordial and almost impossible to
disempower. It
is a significant property of the "arts" that
they are able to
deceive the senses by simulation. Pictures resemble
their models to
one degree or other (ask the crow in the story of
Zeuxis and
Parrhasius).
The fear of images that Puritans and other iconoclasts
feared
images because the believed that art beguiles with its
fine
appearances and leads innocents away from virtue. The
response to
those outbreaks of iconoclasm was the
counter-assertion that art
leads the illiterate and others to truth by way of
depicting noble
and high moral scenes. Pope Gregory the Great makes
just that
argument, as recorded in Bede. And the reason Plato
wanted to
prohibit artists in the Republic was that art was a
deceit;
Socrates was condemned for scandalizing the youth by
promoting
wrong ways of thinking.
In the cultural history of the Christian West, the
Counter-
Reformation art fought the Protestant spirit with
grand works that
drew in the faithful with awe, imperiousness, and
blandishments. It
was the beginning of propaganda (literally: the
Catholic church
established the Congretatio de Propaganda Fide, the
Congregation
for the Propagation of the Faith), although the
practice of using
images, songs, constructions, sculptures, spectacle,
to elevate the
leader before the public goes back into time
immemorial.
Thus, art--aesthetics--can be (is) subservient to
morality.
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