Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Sunday Aesthetics: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Consider this building–Building A, for our purposes:
And now, consider Building B:
One of the great solaces of Ricochet is that I will not have to persuade anyone here–I hope–that the second is in fact more beautiful than the first, and that to say so is to say something more interesting than, “I like the second one better, although they’re both equally beautiful because of course that’s all relative.”
Nor do I think I’ll have much difficulty in persuading people to take seriously the idea that beauty–as an objective, external reality, perhaps even a Platonic one–may well be connected, in an important way, to moral goodness. (I may have trouble convincing some people here that this is so, but I’ll bet you’ll take it seriously, as an idea.)
I have lots more about this to say, as you may have guessed. But it’s still too fuzzy. I’d like to translate my broad intuitions about this into a very defensible argument, and for that, I need a robust theory of aesthetics. To my surprise, though, I’m finding the philosophical literature less helpful than I would wish. Perhaps I’m not looking in the right places?
So: can anyone suggest interesting ways to look at the following ten questions? (I think I can handle some of them quite well, but I’ll hold fire for now.)
- Why exactly is Building B more beautiful than Building A?
- Assuming that we have good answers to question 1), do they suggest principles that may be broadly applied to all buildings?
- Assuming the answer to 2) is yes, does this suggest principles that may broadly be applied to the idea of “beauty?”
- What are your intuitions about the connection between “the beautiful” and “the morally good,” particularly in this context? And 4a): What are your arguments, as opposed to your intutions?
- What are your intuitions about what it might do to human societies, morally, if they start constructing many more things that in terms of beauty are far closer to A than to B? And 5b): See 4a.
- Looking at 5) from a different angle, what are your intuitions about what might be going on, morally, when a given society begins to think it’s a good idea to build many more A-like buildings than B-like ones?
- Can you back up those intuitions with evidence?
- What, for that matter, would constitute “evidence?”
- If your intuition or answer thus far involves, “something morally bad is probably happening when the As start vastly exceeding the Bs,” can you rule out–with sound arguments, and even better, evidence–a response such as, “the answer here is less importantly connected to beauty and goodness than it is to changes in building technology and economics?” (I mean the latter in the sense of, “It costs less to build something like A.”)
- To which philosophers–particularly those who focus on aesthetics–would you turn in thinking through this problem?
Now, some special rules. To make this more fun and challenging for James Gawson, he, in particular, is not allowed to mention this. Others are however allowed and encouraged. To make this more fun and challenging for Gödel’s Ghost–and yes he is among us, apparently–he is not allowed to mention Moles, Nake, or Schmidhumer. Others are however allowed and encouraged. To make this more fun and challenging for us all, everyone is encouraged to see whether he or she can with a straight face and in all seriousness include a genuinely useful thought from a philosopher in the school of Derrida. And to make everyone stop laughing themselves half to death once they’ve tried that, I suggest a quick review of Vitruvius. That will sober you up right fast.
Published in General
OS,
The question is, how did you know a beautiful girl fell down in the woods in the first place? For a Kantian, since the beautiful is the good subjectively perceived, if you already knew she was beautiful, then you would also presume her to be good.
By this logic, as the good transcends time and space, her beauty would not only exist but would exist irrespective of age. She would always be beautiful to you.
Beauty then wouldn’t be so much ‘In the Eye of the beholder’ but ‘In the heart of the beheld’.
Regards,
Jim
This certainly can be a problem, and often is. One thing I’ve learned to appreciate, ex post facto, about several examples of architecture in my world-famous home town is the care the architects took with adhering to choices make by other architects in the surrounding environment. A good example is the color palette and general skyline design shared by W. D. Richards Elementary School (my school) and First Baptist Church.
Then there’s my childhood second home.
I disagree with Mecken’s atheism just as I disagree with Penn Jillette’s, but I’d have dinner with either (or better yet, both). Mencken’s “thoroughgoing racism” seems to have been limited to an assessment of reasoning ability but did not extend to rejecting equal treatment under the law (except, perhaps, insofar as he was critical of the law in a representative democracy). He urged Roosevelt to let the Jews—all of them—come to America before WWII started. He explicitly rejected Anglo-Saxon superiority. If that’s racist, I wanna be a racist.
I dunno. In criticism of Mencken, frankly, I see quite a bit of over identification with the “common man” that seems more like romanticized collectivism, albeit of a soft form—say, the mural in the Coit Tower—than like reasoned opposition.
Gödel’s Ghost:
Agree somewhat. I think of what I have read of Mencken, and it seems that he praises the common man as a generic workingman. When writing about real people, however, he was scathing and condescending.
I have not read a large amount of his work, so perhaps I have been steered towards the bad stuff.
[Also, the Comment function is not working properly for me.]
GG
If Marx lionizes the weak to heroic, so Nietzsche degrades the weak to less than human. If Marx resulted in Stalinism, so Nietzsche resulted in Fascism. I think Mencken derided the weak and complained about democracy because it gave the weak too much of a voice.
At the scopes trial Clarence Darrow was a Bolshevik sympathizer. Mencken, with his predisposition to genetic Darwinian arguments, disdained the average Southerner and hated the Christianity of William Jennings Bryan. American left-wing intellectuals have romanticized this through the ‘Inherit the Wind’ myth for much too long. I think Dr. Berlinski’s adroit criticism of garden variety Darwinism should suggest to us that a reevaluation of the ‘Inherit the Wind’ myth is long overdue. I think Mencken could use a reevaluation along with it.
We can’t take everything away from Mencken. His writing talent and his energetic engagement are quite something. This is why, GG, you would enjoy him as a dinner companion. However, I think MJ’s initial reaction to him is spot on.
I would classify him, at best, a guilty pleasure, at worst, someone who might get his teeth knocked out at dinner and deserve it.
Regards,
Jim
Regards,
Jim
I don’t find Mencken’s admiration of Nietzsche admirable, but I can understand his appreciation of Nietzsche’s promotion of a heroic individual ideal while completely agreeing that the exact same philosophy taken collectively results in fascism, whether as a literal political phenomenon or in its more populist form of a cult of personality. Perhaps ironically, the latter is how I see Ayn Rand’s Objectivism in practice. Then again, “leader of an individualist movement” sounds suspiciously like an oxymoron.
Was he wrong about democracy? After all, the US is deliberately not a democracy, precisely in order to avoid the mob rule that Mencken was concerned with.
Many people at that time were “Bolshevik sympathizers,” including C.S. Lewis’ later wife, Joy Davidman. As for the average Southerner of the time, I can’t say. But I myself don’t have much patience for Bryan’s moralizing fundamentalist brand of Presbyterianism.
I agree with the former, but the latter is a non-sequitur.
I find this entirely plausible, but then, I’ve been the one deserving of having my teeth knocked out at dinner before, so perhaps this helps explain my relatively accepting stance.
GG,
I think we are getting too far afield (even if it’s fun) from the intent of Claire’s original post about architecture. To go further here, we would be discussing philosophy and journalism.
However, I will give one piece of advice. If you are having dinner with Casey never insult Pittsburgh. I will not be held responsible for the result.
Regards,
Jim