From: kbrooks@ut-emx.uucp (kevin brooks)
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: postmodern knowledge and beauty
Keywords: Kant Classicism Modernism Beauty Epistemology Ontology
Date: 14 Oct 92 20:27:09 GMT
Followup-To: alt.postmodern
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas

From: hooker@aristotle.ils.mwu.edu ( BOB HOOKER): 

 >>In article <1992Sep27.142728.16956@panix.com>, gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
 >>writes:
 >> 
 
 >> 
 >> As for "beauty", beauty originated in a reaction, a taste,
 >> which was in the eye of the beholder.  At least by the time
 >> of the Classical Greeks, philosophers and other servitors of
 >> the powerful were trying to capture the reaction in a net of
 >> words so they could use it -- to get it out of the eye of
 >> the beholder and into something controlled by the state so
 >> the beholder would have to pay for it.  This effort has
 >> come right down to the present day -- there are people who
 >> will lecture you on what is beautiful and what is not, as
 >> if you had nothing to do with it.  But, to some extent,
 >> postmodern authors have gone around the establishment of
 >> rules for beauty and attacked the political assumptions and
 >> motivations behind the rules.

 >You are projecting a Postmodern concept of beauty on the archaic greeks. 
 >Naive humanity lives in the world of objects,  he is an object with the
 >world of objects.  Naive humanity understands Moore's assertion that for
 >humanity object and self are both equaly supported by experience,  to
 >question the reality of one is to bring the other in doubt.  
 
This "doubt" is itself an _aporia_ demarcating a difference between
natural objects and artificial objects.  Where does the "self" fall?
Foucault, in _The Care of the Self_, shows how for the Greeks this 
bifurcation of the self was already operative.

 >It is now that political and cultureal changes have brought the world of
 >objects into doubt.  Baudrillard has said that "Everything began with
 >objects, yet there is no longer a system of objects."

What do you mean that the world of objects is in doubt?  Do you mean that
"things" are never simply "known" themselves but in "relation" to other
things?  I am not sure what B.'s phrase says.  Does this refer to the 
impossibility of absolutely closing off a system because the moment it is
"closed" it comes into relation with other systems?

 >The concept that there is no beauty but in the eye of the beholder is as
 >much the product of the political idealogies of our culture as it is any
 >liberation game.  

 >What do I mean when I say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  I am
 >asserting a number of things, all deeply rooted in the western liberal
 >tradition;

 >1.  That therte is  an individual, a unit, an independent entity.

Not completely independent if it is "beholding."

 >2.  That as an independent entity it is in control of the world that I
 >create,  	an agent of beauty vested with the freedom to make my decision
 >and the reason 	needed to arrvie at one.
 >3. That since my choose is mine and not the choice of Nature,  that in a
 >greater sense all object posses a radical equality greater then my own
 >taste, and that I must respect this equality of all things even if I don't
 >feel it.

I do not understand the latter part of your third assertion.

 >THe idea that beauty is a matter of taste alone and does not exist in the
 >objects depends on the notion of individualism, freedom and the ultimate
 >truth of equality.  
 
 >When I say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" I  am not returning to
 >some primative, true way of seeing beauty,  I am asserting a premise about
 >the universe with in fact contradicts the fact that I see beautiful objects
 >and ugly objects,  and I (the behoder) often am surprised by the beuaty
 >that I find.  

It is this very factor of "surprise" that I believe often accompanies
accounts of beauty that wrests self-control away from the self.

 >How can I find a ruin of a past culture lost for thousand of years,
 >forgotten suddenly exposed on the cover of National Graphics as beautiful? 
 >How could I have made it beautiful,  when did I decide?
 
Decay (as well as surprise) is another term that commonly accompanies 
accounts of beauty.  Particularly in the modernist "tradition."

 >Or do you argue that I make the beauty in an area of my mind beyond my own
 >control, beyond my awareness?  Is the beauty of the ruins in a "unconsious
 >self",  a part of me that I do not experience directly nor control,  a part
 >of me that I can only know through theory,  at a distance.  But have you
 >not cast the beauty of the object from one object to another object?  Is
 >not the be auty still objective to me to my eyes?
 
Here, once again and in the following lines, you touch upon another problem 
that traditionally plagues the discourse of beauty, this beautiful 
discourse: we often arrive at an impasse with regard to the objective or 
subjective nature of the experience of the beautiful.

 >But,  you assert that beauty must be in the eye of the beholder since you
 >see A as beautiful and I do not.  
 
 >You forget that objects are no independent entites but exist for us in
 >terms of their context.  This is why were arrange paintings on tSo when I see such and such painting
 >beautiful and you see it ugly,  it is because we are seeing different
 >objects.
 
 >If I tell you what I see in it maybe you will see it as beutiful,  or maybe
 >you will see it ugly.  I am not trying to make you like me, I am trying to
 >make you see the object I see, the beauty is there,  in the world of
 >objects I see.
 
It seems, then, that beauty was a threat to the integrity of classical 
systems, and today, in a more empirical age, we find the need to marginalize 
it to an aesthetic discourse.  But by the fact that it seems to disrupt the
subject/object system, a system articulated through linguistic 
structures, different from aesthetic ones, it warrants attention from a 
rhetorical point of view.


Richard Carlson, I was wondering what you think about the opposition that
you note Freud makes between Beauty and meaning?  By the way, which essay
is this opposition articulated? -- The one on Michelangelo's Moses?


Kevin Brooks
kbrooks@emx.utexas.edu