Oh dear,oh dear, I read this one last. No, there was no sorry bozo involved at all,only that if you are uncertain what an aesthetic ideal is,it may cause difficulty in defining your own and you may not be able to use it properly.Actually the last sorry bozo I met had clearly lost sight of something like that and spent some time lecturing me on the perfections of Dubliners when he suddenly remembered he had meant Proust all along. A little clarity in defining his terms and he would been able to drink and talk too.
-----Original Message----- From: Cheerskep <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Fri, Aug 31, 2012 1:50 pm Subject: Re: Aesthetic Ideal 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?
