Date: Wed, 26 Nov 1997 13:01:36 -0400
From: Stirling Newberry <allegro-AT-thecia.net>
Subject: Re: PLC: Re: Art and Truth


At 12:02 PM -0500 11/26/97, Jeffery DeShell wrote:
>	I'm a bit uncomfortable with the definition of art as necessarily
>involving some sort of transcendental or ecstatic experience in Reg's and
>Michael's posts.  Both positions to me seem ultimately Hegelian, and
>therefore, ultimately totalizing, singularizing, and limiting.

In the long run we are all dead. This seems like one of those debates over
definition, which is really a debate over world view. People who want art
to be transcendant have one world view, people who are uncomfortable with
this notion another. In the end such debates are futile, because each sides
*real* assumption is their sense of self and identity. One can't deal with
that without attacking the world view.

>	If we think art as transcendental, as a getting out of self
>(ekstatis), then it's quite easy to plug this transcendence into the
>Hegelian aufhebung.  From there, all art becomes part of the dialectical
>system, and is thus necessarily progressive, and ultimately, still in the
>system, it is something to be gotten over, finished, completed, so that
>we can move on to something even more transcendental, i.e. religion.
>This , to me, is a very problematic view of art.  I'm not familiar with
>Hegel's _Aesthetics_ yet, where he might address these objections.

As we used to say in debate: "The snowball argument" - x leads to y leads
to z which is just horribly unacceptable. Whether z is the end of the
world, the end of art, the end of civilization, totalitarian government or
dogs and cats cohabitating is largely irrelevant.

The question I will ask is this: from what frame of referencing are you
defining art, and what is the end that you want to define art in certain
terms for. This will make it possible to translate the "art as *ekstasis*"
view (which you obviously don't like for apriori reasons) into which ever
framework you do like (for equally apriori reasons) and actually gets some
insight. Rather than running around the tired track of "art acts by
imposing itself on the ego" versus "the ego works by imposing itself on
art" - a quandry which has no solution because both are corallries of world
views and not propostions that can be in anyway argued except in so far as
they apply to some specific case.


Stirling Newberry
business: openmarket.com
personal: allegro-AT-thecia.net
War and Romance: http://www.thecia.net/users/allegro/public_html




     --- from list phillitcrit-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---