>From my experience,the laws of nature are unreachable in art. Our only alternative is to attempt it or enjoy our freedom to express it as we wish in our individual manner.
Armando Baeza ________________________________ From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, July 30, 2012 11:13 AM Subject: Re: is list dead? On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 4:14 AM, Michael Brady <[email protected]>wrote: > ...I believe that everything humans do falls under the scope of moral > evaluation > and judgment. Art is one of those things... I believe art is at its best when it serves as an expression of values. > And in all human endeavors, some > practitioners study and define what they take to be the core or important > elements of that practice or discipline, and they or others declare some > ways > of doing it or results to be preferable to other ways or results. I am > confident that this is not a controversial insight. Every discipline, > craft, > practice, area, etc. has guidelines and regulations, and they have > regimens of > training that tell students the best and least effective ways of doing > things. > Some disciplines, like medicine, are so important and may have such dire > consequences that some of their rules and guidelines are enforced by law. > Other disciplines, like art, are not so dangerous and their guidelines come > down to various forms of consensus and social agreement. > > To return to my motto: Art is a realm of human activity. All realms of > human > activity are circumscribed in various degrees by rules, covenants, canons, > etc., that people have made and that regulate and give a degree of > coherence > to them. To the extent that these regulations pronounce 'good' and 'bad' > choices to make when practicing that art form, they are "moral" guidelines, > and artists follow or ignore those "moral" regulations... - ...Cultural constraints condition and limit our choices, shaping our characters with their imperatives. (Jeane J. Kirkpatrick) But I disagree when you go on to say, "Nature, of course, in unconcerned about human "moral" rules about artistic matters. Thus, it "de-moralizes" art." Morality cannot go against the laws of nature: - The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature -- were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) What nature teaches us is that everything has limits and that transgressing those limits has consequences. Couldn't morality be defined as not transgressing limits set by society? Man needs to acknowledge and accept first the limits of nature and then the limits of society: - The object of education is not merely to draw out the powers of the individual mind: it is rather its right object to draw all minds to a proper adjustment to the physical and social world in which they are to have their life and their development: to enlighten, strengthen and make fit. (Woodrow Wilson) - There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law...the law of nature and of nations. (Edmund Burke) | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
