tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3171270872444683437.post3696609631213977704..comments2023-10-23T09:24:38.388-07:00Comments on Aesthetics: Image, Artwork, and Truth: What is Beauty?kgradyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08019941373142661439noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3171270872444683437.post-43984380048358949052009-09-11T19:12:44.364-07:002009-09-11T19:12:44.364-07:00That's a very good comment Prof. It's actu...That's a very good comment Prof. It's actually something I had spoken to a friend about, and I think my discourse definitely includes that. I believe, for instance, that the planet Earth, the universe, nature in other words, can definitely be beautiful. I am bypassing here the claim of "intelligent design" or some primary source that "intended" the earth to look as it does. For all intents and purposes, the maker of art has no bearing on whether it can be considered art and/or beautiful, as it is based on the person perceiving and experiencing it. But yes, certainly a good point, and one that I incorporated mentally in my analysis of it.Floydhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11511038586800501395noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3171270872444683437.post-25845391081841857682009-09-11T17:25:26.291-07:002009-09-11T17:25:26.291-07:00Thanks for the great post, Floyd. There's a lo...Thanks for the great post, Floyd. There's a lot of great stuff here, and we've already discussed some of it, but I wanted to bring up one small point that I found especially interesting in the following remark:<br /><br />"If something is beautiful, it has to be art."<br /><br />As you go on to say, what you mean by art is something whose existence--its reason for being--cannot be reduced to its utility, by which I take you to mean something like its instrumentality, or its suitedness to the pursuit of some end which is given in advance of (and as the final cause of) its coming into being. First, I just want to say that I very much agree, and that I think you've hit on one of the key features by which we define the fine arts, particularly in distinction from the very similar category of products that we refer to as "arts and crafts" or handiwork--things like finely adorned furniture or chinaware. The latter objects, although they require great skill to produce and may be quite beautifully made, are nonetheless not always thought of as belonging in the same realm as a painting by Caravaggio or a Beethoven symphony, precisely because they seem to owe the greater part of their being to some determinate purpose. (I want to leave the question aside for the time being, but of course this way of distinguishing fine arts forces us to take up the question of whether the "purposelessness" of the arts can really be defended, and if so, whether this is the same as calling art "useless".)<br /><br />At the same time, however, I want to point out that I think there is another way that objects can avoid the reduction to utility, and so appear to us as equally beautiful to artworks, and that is by their being (or appearing to us) as natural products. Products of nature cannot be thought of as owing their being to their utility, unless of course we posit some kind of divine purpose (and intelligence) not only within nature, but throughout it--that is, in every natural being as an individual, and not just in the whole of nature understood as a system. The latter is certainly a self-consistent possibility, but it is one that philosophy has tended to avoid, since it can tend to raise more new questions than it puts to rest.<br /><br />In any case, my point is primarily to draw attention to the fact that, very much in keeping with your argument, aesthetics has primarily looked to the fine arts and to nature as the basic categories in which beauty appears. In fact, we will see this semester that many of the thinkers we read will seek to set themselves apart from one another in terms of whether they give priority to natural beauty or to artistic beauty. I'm curious to hear what other people tend to think about this: When you reflect on what you consider to be the most empirically universal and uncontroversial examples of beauty, do you picture artworks or products of nature? Can you articulate why?kgradyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08019941373142661439noreply@blogger.com