Michael writes: > Cheerskep, did you intend to convey the notion that Kate has her own > notion of > "aesthetic ideal"? > Primarily, I meant to ask about the wording of her lines, "There is also the sad idea that if you are uncertain what an aesthetic ideal is, you may be uncertain as to whether or not you have one, and be confusing it with the contents of department stores and art galleries." Kate seemed to be saying that uncertainty about "what an aesthetic ideal" IS, leads, sadly, to uncertainty about whether or not you have one, and to other confusions. Rephrased more strongly, Kate's lines felt to me like she was saying only a sorry bozo would fail to know what an "aesthetic ideal" IS.
I was quite unsure that she did mean this, and that's why my query was: "Your usage there, Kate, suggests you know what an "aesthetic ideal' IS. Do you mean that?" It's not impossible that Kate would indeed say, "Yes, everyone knows what an aesthetic ideal is," though I hope she doesn't. As I tried to get across earlier: The phrase 'aesthetic ideal' has no intrinsic meaning; what notions the utterance occasions in one's mind is a function of the mind's recall of previous associations with the sound. My own receiving apparatus was immediately able to think of three different possible notions a speaker might have in mind -- none of which is THE, absolute, Plato-endorsed "meaning". > Or do you really believe that Kate thinks that aesthetic > ideals exist?
