My proposal to ban aesthetic, beauty, and cognates for 10 years was of
course a joke - well, half a joke.
My point however is that in the philosophy of art both words are used as
crutches. They are ways of sparing oneself the trouble of thinking. 'What
does art do for us?' we ask. 'Oh yes, it gives us aesthetic pleasure.'
What is art? Ah yes, beauty. Problems solved. All we have to do now is
rhapsodize a bit about beauty (not difficult), make various apparently
profound remarks about 'the aesthetic' - which are always hard to contradict
because the term is so slippery anyway - and hey presto Aesthetics 101, 202,
and 303 are squared away...
DA
On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 11:51 PM, William Conger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> Below is another example of Derek addressing an absent
> audience, the one which is not on this list.
>
> His Manifesto demanding 10 years without the words
> aesthetic and beauty or whatever bring to mind the
> Fururist Manifesto in which the nude, as one example,
> was to be banned from art. It's amazing how some
> people are always ready to ban ideas they don't like
> instead of dealing with the messy reality as it is.
>
> Derek doesn't like lyrical language even if it engages
> feeling better than other modes of speech.
>
> He wants a one-to-one correspondence between speech
> and thought, object and subject. OK, he'll get it,
> and so much the worse for the enormity of human
> experience that's left out.
>
> WC
>
> --- Derek Allan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > This is getting a bit ancient now but I realise I
> > didn't reply to an earlier
> > email from Cheerskep which said in part: "I
> > honestly believe no one of
> > competence could fail to grasp what I was after when
> > I asked for "locutions
> > that can be used with no loss in conveying the
> > notion one is entertaining, and with the benefit of
> > reducing confusion". I
> > didn't go on at length about the sort of thing I was
> > recommending because I
> > thought I'd made it amply clear in discussing
> > replacements for 'real' and
> > 'reality'....And yet you did not address that
> > central thrust of my posting,
> > and my request for "Any thoughts?" Believe it: I'm
> > not at this moment making
> > a whine of amour propre: "Jeez, you didn't address
> > my precious ruminations!"
> > I'm truly trying to figure out how your mind let's
> > you do that."
> >
> > This was about my half joking proposal to ban the
> > words aesthetic, beauty
> > and ugly.
> >
> > Cheerskep is assuming, I think, that I want to
> > propose working substitutes
> > or replacements for these words. I don't. I just
> > want them ignored for say
> > about 10 years. I want people to forget they ever
> > existed. Then see how they
> > go talking about art and the theory of art without
> > them. I think they would
> > get on just fine. Moreover I think the standard of
> > discussion would go up
> > noticeably. The ban on the word beauty should
> > reduce the number of entirely
> > useless lyrical outpourings on the subject. And the
> > ban on aesthetic should
> > stop the short-circuiting of thought processes that
> > the word so often
> > causes. ('What do I think is the reason for this? Oh
> > yes, must be that
> > aesthetic thing. I'll call it aesthetic.')
> >
> >
> > DA
>
>
--
Derek Allan
http://www.home.netspeed.com.au/derek.allan/default.htm
