File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1998/bhaskar.9804, message 32


From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gwi.net>
Subject: BHA: Reply to Colin
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1998 16:59:12 +0300


Hi Colin--

>I conceded this point (that hurt!). But again this is exactly my point "you
>think you are angry when really (get that word) afraid." can we say this
>about aesthetics. Can I really think this beer is awful when I really think
>it stinks? Of course, I can eat sushi and claim to like it (when I actually
>hate it - ask Tuomas) but can I really hate sushi but like it? Of course, I
>can hate it today, but like it next week, but that is a totally different
>issue.

Sorry my post went out after you'd already replied to Michael's.  And very
likely this one will as well.  The perils of POP mail, alas.

As to your objections above, while I understand your point, I think the
analogy is misleading.  One's response to artworks can, should, and I would
suspect usually does go beyond "I liked it" or "I didn't like it," even if
particular individuals cannot articulate more than that.  In fact I doubt
that liking/disliking is the key judgment to be made about art.  One can,
after all, have a satisfying aesthetic experience involving an artwork one
doesn't like.  For example, Shaeffer's play *Equus* is an utterly appalling
piece of mendacious trash (IMHO), but I can still think that a particular
production of it was well done (e.g., U-Iowa 1980); more complexly, in my
estimation Ben Jonson's plays are brilliantly constructed and absolutely
fascinating, which doesn't stop me from thinking they're horrific at another
level, and so I have a lot of trouble saying whether I like them or not.
The issue is not just that plays (or whatever) are a lot more complex than
foods, though that's involved.  More than that, an artwork can work well
aesthetically without you needing to like it.  This probably has a lot to do
with the distinction Michael is drawing between the aesthetics of artistic
structure and the aesthetics of experience and taste.

On the whole you seem to be conflating "aesthetic" with "pleasurable" (or
something along those lines), and that may be one reason you allow only a
subjectivist notion of aesthetics.  Certainly the two are often connected,
but as I hope I've shown, they aren't necessarily so.  This is in part
because art doesn't *only* involve embodied experience (much as I have
emphasized that aspect myself!): it also requires a structure of meanings.
This gets us back to the notion of an objectively existing *aesthetic*
structure, which you deny.  But I think you miss part of Michael's point.
If I were to say that *Oedipus* is a comedy about a young lesbian's devotion
to her microwave oven, I would be *wrong*.  There is objective evidence
inhering in the text to demonstrate that.  Any play for which my
interpretation is true would not be *Oedipus* (it might of course still be a
very good play).  This point is valid whether or not I enjoy *Oedipus*, and
whether or not I believe that knowing *Oedipus* is a "good thing."  I think
this is what Michael is getting at when he says there's no necessary
evaluative component.  The recognition of what *Oedipus* is about, how it is
structured, how it accomplishes what it accomplishes--these are all central
to aesthetics, and I tend to feel are *more important* to it than what
people like or dislike.  Aesthetics is *not* only about judgment, and
judgment may not be the most important aspect.  Moreover, those recognitions
I mentioned entail neither elitism about what counts as art (or about whose
tastes are right), nor the aestheticization of everything on the planet (the
concerns you raise).  In fact the denial of objective aesthetic structures,
the treatment of aesthetics as totally subjective, is far more likely to
lead to those problematic outcomes.

I mentioned the subjective nature of knowledge in response to the following:

>I must say that much as I enjoy these posts on aesthetics I remain
>unconvinced about the possibilty of any such theory. Aesthetic experiences
>are clearly real, but as Searle might put it, they are ontologically
>subjective.

You seemed to be saying that, because aesthetic experience is ontologically
subjective, you doubt that it can be theorized.  Now you say:

>I never denied the possibility of theorising about them. The question is
>what would you  be theorising about - my subjective states perhaps?

Sure, why not?  Since the subjectivity of something is irrelevant to the
possibility that it can be theorized (though it obviously affects difficulty
and methods), there's no reason to rule your subjective states out of court.
The point might not be whether you really liked what you say you liked; but
one can certainly investigate why you have Responses X rather than Responses
Y.  For example, Bourdieu's *Distinction* is all about the social production
of tastes.  Your liking for warm English beer and disdain for the band
Genesis might be *socially related*, not just by the geohistorical
happenstance of what town you grew up in, but also by your economic class,
education, gender, etc.  There are many other ways to theorize subjective
responses to cultural products.  But they need not involve saying that
Person A's tastes are better than Person B's.  One can investigation the
formation of aesthetic judgments without approving or disapproving any
particular judgment.

>But the ethical issue is exactly the problem. My liking for beer (warm
>English at that) does not lead me to conclude that warm English beer is of
>worth - aesthetic, moral or otherwise - I like warm english beer, that is
>the most I will say - for good ethical reasons at that.

Insofar as we're talking about warm English beer--or any other particular
product--I agree.  But again the food analogy can be misleading.  As I tried
to point out previously, one important part of the arts is their
relationship not only to experience, but to imagination.  Not liking Genesis
is one thing; being unable to appreciate *any* sort of music is quite
another; detesting all the arts on principle, or being utterly unmoved by
any of it, are still further possibilities.  At some point I think one can
raise concerns about the limited character of a person's development.  You
place stock in species being (which I'll get to): the arts affect the
development of that being.  This is connected to something you mention, the
utility of maths vs that of the arts: it's worth noting that many businesses
have discovered that people with literature degrees can be more productive
than people with business degrees, because they are better able to *imagine*
new solutions and new products.  We don't have to like the way businesses
use such people to acknowledge the significance of their discovery.

I suggested that differences may be more fundamental than universals; you
replied:

>I absolutely (strong words for me) disagree. One thing RB is unequivocable
>on is the ethical need for the maintenance of a notion of species being.
>How can difference be defined independent of universality?

Notice: *species* being.  First, how can a species even be identified
without differences (from other organisms, from rocks, etc)?  Second,
"species" is a biological term.  Once we've accepted that universal, it
still leaves quite a lot of elbow room for the social development of species
being--and it's not altogether self-evident what aspects of human life
belong to the species vs its particular social development (a difficulty
that sexism and racism often trade on, so that social differences are
portrayed as natural).  So there are questions about how we characterize
species being, and whether that tells us much more than "birth, language,
copulation, and death."  Moreover, the focus upon species being has often
been used in bourgeois art to exclude issues of *social* being, and so
social differences: the factory owner and the assembly-line worker have a
beer together and argue football like "real men," everyone worries about
their unruly kids (except *these* kids have a lot of money), love hurts,
love conquers all, and so forth and so on etc etc ad nauseum.  This kind of
stuff is so dominant that it has probably bred in me a reflex kick against
discussions of universals; like Gary, I'll admit to bending the stick too
far sometimes.  So I don't deny that there's a species being and that this
is both relevant and important, but I do think there are a lot of dangers in
pinning aesthetic value to it.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-gwi.net *or* tobin.nellhaus-AT-helsinki.fi
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce





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