tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7564007356373257861.post3457917215438653832..comments2023-07-18T02:10:14.514-07:00Comments on Paul at Holme: BEAUTYPablohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115475321255577337noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7564007356373257861.post-6188834799045974432011-04-30T22:34:28.432-07:002011-04-30T22:34:28.432-07:00But anyway, before she's even let out of the c...But anyway, before she's even let out of the castle what does it mean to say "there is a girl, as yet unseen, and she is beautiful"? She's like Shrodinger's Cat. Until she appears at the castle gates she is neither beautiful, nor ugly. If she never appears, but remains in seclusion for the rest of her life, then who is to say what her degree of beauty is or was? It would be an irrelevance, except as a teaser to our imagination – “It’s rumored that a young woman of surpassing beauty was locked away in this castle...” the stuff of fantasy and fairytale.<br /><br />I take your point that there's more in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in anyone's philosophy. Science, too, is a wonderful work in progress. Nevertheless, Pirsig's point is important too, especially if we are to transcend the alienation that seems to have dogged our species since science came into being. Yes, experience teaches me to accept theoretically that the world would spin on without us, but to cling to that as if it were an experiential truth, rather than yet another theory, merely reinforces the illusion of an independently existing objective reality - a position which I think is philosophically untenable. <br /><br />Everything we have to say about anything is inevitably from our p.o.v. The phrase "Man is the measure of all things" is not easily tossed aside. We work from a viewpoint, consisting of a bundle of acquired values, whether we care to acknowledge it or not. There is no such thing as a disinterested observer. Interest is the starting point of everything. I am not saying man (the subject) is the source of all things; that would be subjective idealism, and I think we're beyond that. But he is necessarily the measure. I don't see how we can escape from this any more than we can escape from our own skins. <br /><br />IS, in relation to the absolute/infinite, strikes me as a very good word. Blake says that the infinite is in everything. Buddhists say that the Buddha nature is in everything. Both say we can realise this truth - which is Truth, the Absolute - in the here and now, and, in fact, only in the here and now. "The perfect Way is without difficulty. Only avoid picking and choosing." Hahaha! Easy to say, but next to impossible to do! But this is the insight of the mystics, that the absolute - the infinite - is not so much the Ultimate Bus Stop at the end of the journey of life, or eons in the future, as it is the giving up of all categories and seeing that everything is in relation to the here and NOW. Yes, "IS" is good: the Present, in which both past and future are contained (Meister Ekhart’s “isness”). And what is is also Good. All of it.<br /><br />There is no REAL division into subjects and objects. The primary experience, the ever-present IS, precedes subjects and objects, says Pirsig, and gives rise to them. "Everything you think you are and everything you think you see are undivided". The apparent division which occurs the moment we start to think about experience is a useful convention that makes it easier to control the world, but also alienates us from it. <br /><br />Maybe we're not as far part as we seem?Pablohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02115475321255577337noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7564007356373257861.post-8985319149241941862011-04-30T22:33:17.915-07:002011-04-30T22:33:17.915-07:00If the utterly utilitarian is someone's idea o...If the utterly utilitarian is someone's idea of beauty, and not yours or mine, then beauty is a value that requires a beholder, and is not an independently existing, external, objective reality. And, yes, of course that goes for the princess locked away in the castle, too! Surely, standards of beauty vary radically from culture to culture, and era to era. Ideal beauty could not reside in a single (ideal) woman. And presumably there are different standards for men. A beautiful man would perhaps appear more muscled than his female counterpart, but to what degree? What would their ideal heights be? How fat or skinny? Their age? Would these be in relation to each other? Should they then be considered as a matching pair? To which racial or cultural norm should such features as skin color, size and shape of eyes, nose, ears, etc, conform? Should both conform similarly, or might each represent a different ideal? <br /><br />It's a significant fact that congenitally blind people given sight have to be persuaded that their noses are not grotesquely large, but normal. What we take as objective reality is a collection of values arrived at by agreement among those whose views we trust. Beauty is a social construction... (more)Pablohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02115475321255577337noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7564007356373257861.post-52597521193683522012011-04-28T01:32:52.882-07:002011-04-28T01:32:52.882-07:00Many thanks for your comment, Francisca! It sure i...Many thanks for your comment, Francisca! It sure is difficult posting comments! I just wrote what I thought was a beautiful response to yours, tried to post it, and promptly lost the whole thing. Rather de-motivating. Will try later if this gets through successfuly.Pablohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02115475321255577337noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7564007356373257861.post-58778385550308410962011-04-25T04:13:51.612-07:002011-04-25T04:13:51.612-07:00The very fact that there is an entire school of ph...The very fact that there is an entire school of philosophy dedicated to the topics of aesthetics means it's a complex subject with many takes. And it goes back to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. I am certainly not qualified to add to the discussion, even if the bits I have read about it, including your post, Pablo, fascinate me. <br /><br />Just a few random (uneducated)comments, then. <br /><br />As I was reading your first paragraph, I was thinking, hey, that's just ugliness, the opposite of beauty and does not therefore define beauty, but only the continuum of aesthetics. I'm afraid your grim description in the second paragraph does not illustrate life without aesthetics either, but rather someone's idea of a colourless shapeless world... rather inelegant, and yes, ugly. Say I, the subject, one who could be accused of being an aesthete.<br /><br />As I understand it (it's been decades since I read ZMM), Pirsig goes beyond Kant in the subject-object argument: I think therefore I am. No doubt our perceptions, culture and values do define our realities. Where I part ways with you is the idea that nothing would exist without humans to perceive it. Zap every human off the face of the globe and voila! the end of everything. I don't think so.<br /><br />The undiscovered beauty in the closet? She always was a beauty, even if there was no one to see her or call her that. What is, is. IS does not need an audience. Beauty is part of IS. (So is ugly, evil, love... etc)<br /><br />There is an Absolute Truth. An IS. But we humans are way too stupid and ignorant to grasp it. This Truth would incorporate human-made abstractions like Beauty, Love, Truth, Peace... that cannot be measured by current [human] scientific means. Without humans, I suggest, those abstractions would not be needed. But if they exist, they are part of the big IS. And thus not subject to our perception. Man is NOT the measure of all things. We may just be angels on the head of a needle. Who really knows?<br /><br />Just because our knowledge is incomplete, I do not see a conflict between values/perceptions and scientific pursuits. All just part of the IS. To be human is to be curious. We need science and philosophy. And beauty.<br /><br />In the meantime, you and I shall continue to see and experience our universe with very different lenses.Franciscahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10733111654769386624noreply@blogger.com