> On Aug 27, 2012, at 3:33 AM, joseph berg <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Shouldn't an aesthetic ideal address the necessity of curbing the desire >> for excess and novelty to avoid decadence, decline and demise?
On Aug 27, 2012, at 10:03 AM, William Conger <[email protected]> wrote: > The best art always is excessive. Ah, but Berg didn't ask about the best art. He asked about "an aesthetic ideal." And he used the flimsy weasel verb "address," not exactly a robust notion. "Address the necessity of curbing"? Really? An "aesthetic ideal" expresses the consolidation of achievements that, taken together, exemplify a set of internally harmonious relationships. (I take the Aristotelian approach of empirical evidence that are abstracted into a canon, not a Platonic view of imperfect copies of a pre-existing, immaterial model.) | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
