Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1998 15:06:09 -0230 (NDT)
From: Walter Okshevsky <wokshevs-AT-morgan.ucs.mun.ca>
Subject: Re: PLC: Truth and its friends




On Wed, 13 May 1998, Howard Hastings wrote:

> On Tue, 12 May 1998, Eric Yost wrote:
> 
> > I would argue that the real truth of our existence is PRIVATE, and that the
> > socialized language games of verification are but a template through which
> > we experience truth and falsehood, a method of appealing to an introjected
> > authority saying "Look!  Look!  I am making true claims."
> 
> If authority is introjected--i.e., internalized from some social matrix
> outside the individual--in what sense could truth be private? 
> > 
> > [For this reason, certain kinds of art may venture further into truth by
> > summing up the unverifiable. 
> 
> How does one distinguish between "summing" and "verifying" here?  Seems
> like summation would be a kind of verification, or at least presume such.
> 
>  Hence the notion of innovative art CREATING
> > its audience, by stepping ahead of the "publicly agreed upon methods of
> > inquiry." Only after a work of art has established a tradition may it be
> > said to firmly rest on conventional language games.]
> 
> I think innovative artworks do create their own audience.  I don't know
> whether I would call this "stepping ahead."  They rework tradition, extend
> it sometimes by strategically violating it. For this they are often
> decried as unintelligible, immoral, deviant, diseased, and, worst of all, 
> fashionable, written to gain attention, cause a fuss, superficial. By the
> time they gain general acceptance it is in part because their edge has
> been dulled and they have been gradually integrated into a traditional
> humanist critical apparatus which reads them as great works which express
> universal truths about the human condition.  Their status as classics then
> makes them a point of contrast with new works deemed unintelligble,
> immoral, etc., lacking the universal appeal of the former. 
> 
> Hey, did I just say what you said, only in different terms?
> 
> hh
> .....................................................................
> 
> 
> 
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> 



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