Hi Marco:
Sorry for the delay in replying to your post of Dec. 23. I was away
for a few days over Christmas. I think we agree on many aspects
of art/intellect issue.
> Good definitions for art. More generally, according to Pirsig, I'm using
> RT as the term indicating all what's "well done", just to distinguish
> Einstein from Picasso. Both "RTists", but only the latter is, according
> to the common term, an artist. As the whole discussion is about whether
> Picasso was an intellectual, I must use two different terms.
Pirsig agrees with you. He defines art as "high
quality endeavor." So both Einstein and Picasso were artists.
Perhaps under that definition you and I and others who participate
in this discussion might also be considered artists. Do you
consider our endeavors high quality? I do. But beautiful, no--
except in rare cases where someone that captures the essence of
the MOQ in a line or two. IMO, without the presence of beauty
there is no art, and its at this juncture that I part company with
Pirsig.
> > Some have argued that beauty and DQ are synonymous. Perhaps
> > so. But in Chap. 30 of "Lila" Pirsig writes, "Static social and
> > intellectual patterns are only an intermediate level of evolution." If
> > we take him at his word, then there are new levels, above the
> > intellectual, to come. And the next new level, as Pirsig suggested,
> > might be called a "code of art."
> >
>
> IMO beauty is not equivalent to DQ. Of course it depends on our
> agreement about the terms we use....
>
> Of course we can find beauty everywhere. But it's hard to say that the
> carbon atoms created DNA for its beauty. Or that the ancient humans
> decided to live in tribes 'cause it was beautiful. To describe the input
> for those evolutions we have the term DQ and it's enough. DNA and tribes
> were created as it was "better".
>
> If I look at the Niagara falls, I find the beauty of nature... but this
> "me" finding beauty is a person, and is behaving according to a four
> level logic. In facts, if I fall down into the water, and the stream
> leads me towards the falls, my biological self will have the high
> priority, and the falls will be not so beautiful....
>
> And also socially it's hard to recognize the value of such a beauty. The
> contemplation of nature is a nonsense, according to the social logic of
> success, celebrity, usefulness.
>
> Intellectually... this is the point. From a scientific point of view,
> beauty remains a nonsense, so it could be another level, above. But,
> tell me. If it is another level, where is beauty now? Now that the
> levels are four? I don't deny the possibility to have a fifth level of
> beauty in the future... but as long as it is not a level of its own, IMO
> art, carrier of beauty, is the dynamic side of intellect. Just like
> philosophy, carrier of knowledge, has been for centuries the dynamic
> side of society.
>
> In few words, I do prefer to use the term DQ to point to the necessity
> of
> excellence which is pertinent at all levels. IMO the capacity to
> appreciate beauty is a very high quality pattern, maybe proper only of
> humans, surely active when the biological and social selves are left in
> a secondary position... and when intellect abandons for a while its
> static positions in order to grasp DQ.
>
> Yes, beauty is the name intellect uses when talks about DQ. Beauty is
> the "better" of intellect.
You make an excellent case for DQ and beauty not being
synonymous. I think the connection is so close as to be almost
indistinguishable. But I admit to having no counter arguments to
your points. Thanks to you I will have to reconsider some of my
previous conclusions and do a better job of placing art in level
above intellect, if indeed such is the case.
> Actually, as you suggest, art is a "conscious" activity. When the RTist
> performs his/her own skill, is consciously and intellectually trying to
> translate DQ into sQ. He/she is an intellectual knocking on heaven's
> door.
Does "conscious activity" always mean "intellectual?" Maybe. It seems
there are as many definitions of "intellectl" as there are
participants in this discussion group. But I agree that the purpose
of art is to translate ones experience of DQ into SQ so as to
generate the experience of DQ in others. (For me at least, Picasso
failed to accomplish this.) And, "knocking on heaven's door" is a
beautiful phrase to describe our reaching out for DQ. It reminds
me of Edgar Allen Poe's words:
"The artist struggles to create such supernal beauty, to make one
see or hear with shivering delight a sight of sound which cannot
have been unfamiliar to angels."
I won't be satisfied until I can give beauty its rightful place in the
MOQ scheme of things. You, Danila, Roger and others have
helped me think more deeply about this problem, for which many
thanks.
Platt
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