Date: Thu, 18 Jul 1996 01:49:22 -0700
From: "arjan simons (FWW)" <A.F.W.J.M.SIMONS-AT-kub.nl>
Subject: aesthetics and ethics


dear friends of the lyotard-exegesis,

the recent messages concentrate on the question if lyotard is freudian or a lacanian, 
and the relationship between ethics and aesthetics.
the first issue has my concern, but for me it is to soon to formulate my own view.
the second issue has my complete attention, right now i'm working on my first chapter of 
my dissertation, which is about the aesthetics of the sublime.
i have one observation, which i think is very importantent:
in the discussion concerning the differend or samennes of ethics and aesthetics, we must 
not forget what aesthetics for lyotard means: aisthèsis, the greek for sensation, a 
unformed feeling, a feeling that can only be felt at the cost of a temporary "death" or 
adjournemt of the mind. a feeling as "is it happening?", the "arrive-t-il?".
for lyotard is a work of art aisthèsis, time itself, the now. it ruptures the mind, the 
mind which sees the world as form, as beatiful, as "rein", as pure form.
our soul, the anima, feels the "matter" or the "now", is receptible for the formless 
feeling, that ruptures the diachronic, phenomenological series in time that our 
consiousness forms (the mid).
aesthetics is aisthèis, not art. art is form, rule. the aesthetics of the sublime (the 
aisthèsis) is formless, just a feeling, an "abgrund" for our mind, a "childhood" for our 
mind. "childhood" means here "phonè", inarticulated sounds. the mind is "logos", 
articulated sounds. words are for lyotard inarticulated sounds, thought/thinking strives 
for articulation: pure thought. words are the matter of thought, and matter means here: 
immaterial matter, matter that has no form. the mind considers this "matter" nothing, 
it isn't there, for the representation of the mind, for the mind this "matter" is 
immaterial, X, unknown.

in this view on aesthetics the ethical and the political are not far apart; for lyotard 
is the breaking of the diachronical time of consciousness, which is the method of 
capitalism, a kind of resistance, that no system can be complete, that the system is 
always ruptured by something very "simple" as the occurence. a receptibility for the 
unformed feeling or the (immaterial) "matter" of sublime art can make us receptible for 
the ethical feeling; the feeling of the differend; the feeling that nothing will happen.
the real ominous is not the threat of nothingness (death), but the occurence of a color 
or a word (phrase). that something can happen out of nothing, like lightning in the 
night. the feeling is an occurence, and also a color or word are occurences, which 
forget the occurence of the feeling (first you have the threat of is it happening?, the 
threat of "and now?", the threat of the void, than you have the occurence of a color or 
word, something happens, which forgets the feeling of the threat. sublime art testifies 
that it forgets. form is as representation memory, but we have no memory of the feeling, 
for the mind the feeling never happened. form, as matter/formless form, is as 
presentation the negation of the feeling).