File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2002/bhaskar.0202, message 142


From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gis.net>
Subject: BHA: Re: Aesthetics and ethics
Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 20:03:53 -0500


Carrol wrote of Pound's politics:

> They are pretty terrible. But not essentially worse than the politics of
> the U.S. government.

I'm sure this was meant to speak to the detriment of the US government, but
it comes off soft-pedalling Pound's explicit fascist sympathies and rabid
anti-semitism.  But I have to agree that one can't simply judge aesthetics
on the grounds of the author's politics.  There are heaps of great writers
with horrid politics, Pound among them.  Why Carrol wants to damn the
fictional Irish airman escapes me -- millions of poor sods get conscripted
into the army with no chance of escaping to Canada or wherever, and this
fellow sounds like one of them.

Mervyn, on the other hand, writes:

> Thirdly, the view that good writing excuses bad politics seems at odds
> with the (D)CR view of aesthetics as 'a branch of practical philosophy,
> the art of living well' (dpf 15), closely related to ethics.
[snip]
>                    The logic of this position is
> ultimately, I think, that of Keats - 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty' -

Personally I think allying aesthetics with ethics is a bad deal for both.
For one thing it starts drifting off toward "politically correct art."  I
can hear Meyerhold being shot already.  Besides, a lot of stunningly
brilliant art is ugly (Francis Bacon's painting is a fine example).  For
that matter, a lot of truths are ugly too.  Keats's claim is lovely, but
highly Romantic in every sense.  I'd bet that radical Shelley knew better.
And Shelley's wife -- the author of *Frankenstein*.

Allergic to over-simplifications as always,

T.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-mail.com
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce




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