Thank you, Imago Asthetik, for putting so much effort into this discussion!
Other listers are quite content to dismiss Rand as a fascist kook and then
ignore her.
I get the feeling that you are responding to my presentation of Rand, rather
than reading the "Romantic Manifesto" yourself.
Is this correct?
In which case, only I can be blamed for your mis-understandings.
So far, through chapter 4, Rand has not mentioned Objectivism at all, but
assuming that she would consider it to be the best philosophy, she might say
that it would guide its followers to a superior sense of life.
"philosophy does not replace a man's sense of life, which continues to
function as the automatically integrated sum of his values. But philosophy
sets the criteria of his emotional integrations according to a fully defined
and consistent view of reality (if and to the extent that a philosphy is
rational)" (page 37)
Therefore, both your PRF (Premise from Rand)#3 and your Subconclusion#2 are
incorrect, and the conclusions that you draw from them are irrelevant.
What distinguishes Rand from other famous thinkers about art, aesthetics, and
sense of life?
Do any of the others demand that the above be subject to a rational
philosophy?
She's almost the complete inverse of Danto, who created art theory to
rationalize famous art (Warhol, DuChamps, etc)
Following her philosophy, she calls for an art that hardly exists yet.
She offers her own novels as examples, but that's not to say that we have to
agree that they have any esthetic or literary merit.
*******************************************************************
**
Imago Asthetik wrote:
1. Art expresses a sense of life (Premise from Rand [PRF])
[For all X such that IF X is art, Then X expresses a form of life]
2. Philosophy is a higher, autonomous discipline that supervenes upon art
(PRF)
[For all P such that IF P is philosophy, THEN P is a metadiscourse*]
3. Some senses of life are better -- to wit, the best is Objectivist
(PRF)
[For some X and Some Y, X is more valuable than Y, and X is
Objectivist]
*By metadiscourse, I mean a determination of the truth-conditions of
functions (predicates), like 'is more valuable than'. Objectivism is one
such metadiscourse.
Subconclusions:
- Philosophy is a discipline that evaluates (from 2 & 3)
- Evaluation is based upon the sense of life an artwork expresses (from
3)
Now, from the subconclusions, it follows that philosophy also expresses a
sense of life, otherwise it could not evaluate [from premise 2 and
Subconclusion 2), for it would have no principles of evaluation. However,
if philosophy expresses a sense of life, then it is not autonomous, not
independent of a sense of life, and certainly not higher than a sense of
life. And this yields a contradiction: By premise 2, philosophy is
indpendendent of a sense of life, even as it entails that philosophy cannot
be independent. P implies not-P, which is impossible. QED.
To be sure, there are a number of ways to avoid the contradiction -- one
being to relativize the whole framework, such that all discussions are
inherently personal, subjectivistic, and non-communicable; another being to
universalize the 'sense of life' so that every work expresses the same
sense, though from a unique perspective (monadology). There are undoubtedly
others.
All this to say, then, that I have in fact provided a valid argument. My
claim concerning evidence had everything to do with the fact that I have
seen no evidence of a defence against it. To be sure, you are right to
point out that a lack of evidence does not entail inexistence, but that does
not affect my substantive claim. If Rand has a counterargument or a
counterargument can be produced on her behalf, then please do so.
In any case, claiming that art expresses a sense of life is hardly an
original idea, and I can find it in almost every piece of German aesthetics
since Baumgarten (and through to Gadamer). What distinguishes Rand from
these thinkers (excluding for the moment bad argument)?
There have been a great number of writers who have changed my mind on
aesthetic/artistic matters. A number of Adornos writings have changed the
way I look at art. I remember the lists brief discussion of Jay Bernsteins
discussion of Dutch painting, which changed my mind about it. Greenbergs
New Lacoon prompted me to rethink several points.
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