Boris and William... Naturalist pragmatism holds that "all" truth evolves and is thus fallible, including the "absolute" truth posited by metaphysical art and the "positive" proof culled from empirical science. It is therefore the search for truth that indeed is important, and not its final attainment, which is impossible in any event, because of the limits imposed on mind by sense. All that humans can do is guess that the possible haze of sense is the actual stuff of fact, and is likely real and true. It is a process of preening and grooming phenomena. This realist stand on the matter is against objectivism and relativism and subjectivism, yet it seems to be reasonable. It may of course be disputed in ways that escape me, but perhaps not from a Kantian stance or thrust. ---Frances
-----Original Message----- From: William Conger [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, 27 December, 2010 4:12 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: "Is today's [art?] irrelevant?" What, please, is Truth in art? This is a fanciful, poetic, romantic use of the word truth. Fine. But that sort of truth is very much different from scientific truth. And then there is the truth for each person, amounting to infinite truths for the same belief or observation or opinion. The poetic definitions of the word truth are plentiful and informative, I suppose, but in science, one truth at a time, please. That means such and such is true until it ain't true anymore by successive science. In poetry, many truths exist all the time, any time. The two concepts of truth, in art, in science, are not compatible. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: Boris Shoshensky <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, December 27, 2010 11:15:38 AM Subject: Re: "Is today's [art?] irrelevant?" "... to bring the critical treatment of the beautiful under rational principles, and so to raise its rules to the rank of a science. But such endeavours are fruitless." Art and science have similar element, this element is a continuous search for the Truth, even we know that it only can be achieved in small portions with no full completion. Boris Shoshensky ---------- Original Message ---------- From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: Re: "Is today's [art?] irrelevant?" Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2010 21:36:04 -0500 What KAnt says partly is this. He does mean aesthetics as connected to art or else he wouldn't have cited Baumgartner. He seems to be dealing with the first problem of intuition on the way to finding beauty. Kate Sullivan The Germans are the only people who currently make use of the word 'aesthetic' in order to signify what others call the critique of taste. This usage originated in the abortive attempt made by Baumgarten, that admirable analytical thinker, to bring the critical treatment of the beautiful under rational principles, and so to raise its rules to the rank of a science. But such endeavours are fruitless. The said rules or criteria are, as regards their chief sources, merely empirical, and consequently can never serve as determinate a - priori laws by which our judgment of taste must be directed. On the contrary, our judgment is the proper test of the correctness of the rules. For this reason it is advisable either to give up B36 using the name in this sense of critique of taste, and to reserve it for that doctrine of sensibility which is true science -- thus P 067n approximating to the language and sense of the ancients, in their far-famed division of knowledge into aisqhta kai nohta -- or else to share the name with speculative philosophy, employing it partly in the transcendental and partly in the psychological sense. P 066 There must be such a science, forming P 067 the first part of the transcendental doctrine of elements, B36 in distinction from that part which deals with the principles of pure thought, and which is called transcendental logic. In the transcendental aesthetic we shall, therefore, first A22 isolate sensibility, by taking away from it everything which the understanding thinks through its concepts, so that nothing may be left save empirical intuition. Secondly, we shall also separate off from it everything which belongs to sensation, so that nothing may remain save pure intuition and the mere form of appearances, which is all that sensibility can supply a priori. In the course of this investigation it will be found that there are two pure forms of sensible intuition, serving as principles of a priori knowledge, namely, space and time. To the consideration of these we shall now proceed. -----Original Message----- From: William Conger <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, Dec 24, 2010 8:05 pm Subject: Re: "Is today's [art?] irrelevant?" Kant seems to deny any purpose for art, either practical or moral, and stipulates a third category aesthetics which is an end in itself. This has been taken as support for the view of arts for art's sake, the central concept of modernism. I do have difficulty with the art for itself idea because it allows nothing beyond the material artwork and whatever can be said about the artwork could be tipped into the practical or moral category. So it's ineffable. If we appreciate something for itself, some formal attributes, how do we know those are the best attributes or in any way distinguished from others, supposedly the not best but perhaps worst attributes? It seems obvious to me that our appreciation of formal attributes is affected by a second order of subjective elicitations, possibly emotions and memories, etc., which we somehow fuse to formal. This is why I always say that all art is associational or evocative of something not necessary to its formal attributes but dependent on them. I say it's impossible to look at anything and see it for itself alone, the aesthetic Kant speaks of. It may be an intellectual category but one that cannot be actually experienced. Everything looks like something else. I think that the aesthetic experience is that fusion of the formal and the subjective and while both may be defined separately they don't have aesthetic quality until remade in the fusion. Thus in my formative thinking on this, art has no purpose for and of itself but our own purposes can be objectified in it. wc
