Regarding the history of this issue, Kivy asserts that : "Kant's aesthetic ideas are to be seen as the first (or any) historical step in the aesthetic conflation of form with content"
I am in no position to dispute that assertion, but I do question whether "the Greek and Roman world.... would have found (Bradley's) claim very puzzling indeed and rejected it out of hand" (as did Kivy). Kivy's evidence for this historical claim comes from Lucretius's "De Rerum Natura": "I have chosen to set forth my doctrine to you in sweet-speaking pierian song, and as it were to touch it with the Muses' delcious honey, if by chance in such a way I might engage your mind in my verses, while you are learning to see in what shape is shaped the whole nature of things" Got it? Lucretius says that he was using poetic language to sugar-coat a pill of bitter knowledge. (which, presumably, could have been expressed in other, more prosaic words) However, there is no evidence that Lucretius ever tried to present "in what shape is shaped the whole nature of things" in non-poetic language. So there remains the possibility that this poetic form was the only form through which his knowledge could be presented. Kivy thinks of Lucretius as a scientist, working at the cutting-edge of knowledge, and then trying to present his discoveries to a skeptical, general public. But that seems to be an anachronism. Regarding Kant -- in the Critque of Judgment - section 49 - Kant introduced the notion of an "aesthetic idea": "by an aesthetic idea I mean a presentation of the imagination which prompts much thought, but to which no determinate thought whatsoever, i.e. no [determinate] concept , can be adequate, so that no language can epress it completely and allow us to grasp it" And it is the power of aesthetic ideas that imparts to the fine arts what Kant calls the "geist" (Spirit) -- which is beyond taste: "Of certain products that are expected to reveal themselves at least to be fine art, we say that they have no "spirit" , even though we find nothing to censure them as far as taste is concerned. A poem may be quite nice and elegant, and yet have no spirit." "Hence the aesthetic idea is a presentation that makes us add to a concept the thoughts of much that is ineffable, but the feeling of which quickens our cognitive powers and connects language, whch would otherwise be mere letters, with spirit" "Poetry expands the mind; for it sets the imagination free, and offers us, from among the unlimited variety of possible forms that harmonize with a given concept, though winin the concept's limits, that form which kinks the exhibition of the concept with wealth of thought to which no linguistic expression is completely adequate, and so poetry rises aesthetically to ideas" (as opposed to the pleasure of "free beauty" -- i.e. decoration - where ideas do not occur) Unfortunately for his subsequent credibility among those who study literature, Kant chose only one poem to exemplify such poetry - a poem by Frederick the Great, where: "the King is here animating his rational idea of a cosmopolitan attitude, even at the end of his life, by means of an attribute whtich the imagination (in remembering all the pleasures of a completed beautiful summer day, which a serene evening calls to mind) conjoins with that presentation, and which arouses a multitude of sensations and supplementary presentations for which no expression can be found" As Kivy understands him, Kant is therefore presenting two kinds of content, one that we can state (the "beautiful summer day" etc) and that "for which no expression can be found" And on that basis, Kivy presents Kant as a step towards the conflation of form with content, but without going as far as A.C. Bradley Which makes sense -- although I don't think the difference between them is very important. For Kant, the content which is most relevant to "fine art" cannot be stated -- so as we try to identify it, all we can do is point towards the form. ____________________________________________________________ Lose up to 20 lbs in one month with a new diet. Click here. http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/fc/BLSrjnxRO9suzeTS1OM34EU9AYvdWW P9sWtZFuXBXZoBfeRZYykHDzcSafG/
