aesthetics = ethics

[wim]

I know wittgensten said something along those lines, and now i read a bit about it in a book by Richard Schusterman.. i believe it was called "Pragmatist Aesthetics", the essay was called: "The Art Of Living" I'm especially interested in this subject from a so-called "post-modernist" point of view. Can someone direct me to some other books, authors,.. who wrote on that subject?

and secondly: what are your views on this idea? i'm interested to hear them.

thanks

[Karolina]

how is aesthetics equated with ethics? I don't understand

[Rafajafar]

It's saying that (not just) all things that are beautiful are good, but all things that are good are also beautiful.

Therefore, by finding out what is beautiful, you've also found out all things that are good.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[wim]

my teacher puts it like this:

he says that aesthetics is all about observation and perception. ethics is about the way we live on earth.
if we talk about an ethical dimension of aesthetics we quickly are placing one on top of the other. (meaning: one is more important than the other)
if we place ethics above aesthetics, and thus aesthetics is subordinate to ethics: for example the russian constructivists who made their art in function of ideological goals.
if we place aesthetics above ethics: then it's "l'art pour l'art", as if art can be totally pure, and not influenced by it's social context.
Esthetics is about us, seeing and feeling the world and others, how we construct our life and how we let others particpate in that. we pay attention to the diversity of what we see. And this both has an ethical and aesthetical dimension; there's no need for an order of this 2 domains. thus ethics is aesthetics and aesthetics is ethics.

---------------------: that's roughly translated (in bad english) what my teacher said.

i understand it like this: what we see what is beautiful we're about to associate with good. for example: art; when we're open to it, there's no doubt that art will change how we think or feel, and so it influences ou way of living. in this way ethics and aestetics are so connected there is no need for a separation.

i'm going to read about Wittgenstein who said the same and i'll re-read that Shusterman essay. i'll post it here if i found out what exactly they mean. i think i understand what they are saying partially.. i also don't get why they want to 'unite" aesthetics and ethics. i can see they influence eachother though, but that doesn't justify to unite them to me.

if someone could help me with this: it would be greatly appreciated!

[hyena]

If we look at ethics the same way we look at aesthetics, that means that ethical judgements ("this is good", "this is right") are like aesthetical judgements ("this is beautiful", "this is art").

Of course, that could mean a few things. First, it could mean that what's good and what's right is similar to what's beautiful (something like what Rafajafar said). Second, it could be something like what wim's teacher is talking about. Third, it could mean that there is no good and no right, at least no objective standards for it (just as there are (supposedly) no objective standards for beauty and art). Fourth, it could mean that some people are better suited to judging what's good and right than others, just as some are (supposedly) better suited to judging what's beautiful and what's art. Fifth, it could mean that acting ethically (or morally) is similar to making art: You can stick to the old rules, and succeed or fail according to them, or you can try to make your own rules. If the rules are good enough, and if you live up to your own standards, then you might succeed (and be good), and if you don't live up to them, or if they fail, then you fail (and are bad). Sixth, it could mean that we should judge others like we judge artists, with a mix of our own opinions and what the artist was trying to accomplish.

There are probably more possibilities than this, though, but my imagination is limited at the moment.

[nevskey1]

It's saying that (not just) all things that are beautiful are good, but all things that are good are also beautiful.

Therefore, by finding out what is beautiful, you've also found out all things that are good.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't agree with this argument. I always get annoyed at morals like in that movie with jack black where the fat chick appears beautiful to him because of how good she is. I don't think that being morally good (or bad) has any thing to dwoth being aesthetically appealing - beautiful. According to The Da Vinci Code, that painting of the mary on the rocks is religiously unethical, though that doesn't stop it from being beautiful, at least in my eyes (or unethical for that matter). Art may offer moral wisdom, but it should first be concerned with beauty. In fact, i think that moral conflicts are just a good basis for a picture or story, but the reolution is not so important as how beautifully it is presented (e.g. measure for measure, and cf. oscar wildes notes on art, or chekhov's)

[neil_kerr]

Mark Johnson is, of course, most famous for his two works with the linguist George Lakoff, Metaphors We Live By and Philosophy in the Flesh. You may want to read those books first as they contain the elements of their philosophy but I will attempt to summarize.

They claim that investigations of the brain reveal that humans think metaphorically. We experience the world from a young age and create our conception of the world through conflation of experiences. These "conflations" are sets of metaphors that structure the way we see the world. Examples are:

Happy is up (e.g. I'm feeling up)
Categories are Containers (e.g. Are tomatoes in the Fruit or Vegetable Category)
Time is Motion (e.g. Time Flies)
etc. etc.

According to Lakoff and Johson we use these metaphors among others to think. Now some of these metaphors seem close enough to direct human experience as to be practically universal but most of our metaphors are culturally and historically determined.
That means that claims to Universal Moral Laws are not supportable. I do not think they would be post-modernist exactly, in that I understand post-modernism (a la Beaudrillard) to be joyously relativistic and I think that the embodied philosophy of L&J says that there are standards from which to judge.

THe whole notion of Moral Imagination is that the whole process of our morality is necessarily imaginative. We must investigate the appropriateness of our moral principles for given situations. Quoting MI:

...(T)he kind of imaginative judgement widely recognized as appropriate to the making, experiencing, and evaluating of artworks can serve as a model of moral judgement, insofar as it is pervasively imaginative in many of the same respects. pp214-5

So Aesthetics =/= Ethics but Ethics»Aesthetics

[wim]

i've read the part of wittgenstein again in his tractatus

he says that ethics & aesthetics are one because language cannot express that. you can't talk about it in words because there are no objective standards. ethics & aesthetics deal with values, not with facts and language is only there to 'show' facts.

what he does say is that: art can express the things we can't say with language and so placing art above words..


ofcourse: if i understand it correctly (i'm still learning.. it's my first year philosophy at a university..à