Hegel

We are free of the domain of Kant, finally...

And now we move to Hegel. Now Hegel splits creativity into the five fine arts; poetry, painting, sculpture, music and architecture... all of which have developed alongside the pursuit for ideal beauty represented in art.

Splitting art into symbolic, classical and romantic Hegel differs from Kant in a few ideas that I agree with. Firstly the idea of basic forms without meaning aside from their unquestionable beauty as Kant believed. Hegel looks more into how religion plays a role in creating art; and thus how meaning and subjectivity of the viewer comes into play for the whole experience of viewing art.

Basically put; Hegel started to look more into the personal reaction created from art.

His ideas around how art and the 'other' outside world create self understanding and consciousness is what is fascinating to me. It makes more sense than most ideas that philosophers come up with. Our search for perfection in art reaches a level at which the next stage of understanding opens; with new challenges and skills for us to reach we again pursue perfection again causing another level to open up for us.

His description of the role of seeking perfection in art to our own understanding of the world and creation of our own self consciousness plays out a little bit like a video game to me.

We have to keep striving, and as we do each level up will bring more parts of the world to explore.

The Final Kant Down... please forgive the pun

Our last look at Kant we now move into my favorite part of his philosophy, the sublime.

When I first heard mention of the sublime before I fully understood what Kant meant by the term I asked my friends on face book what had ever given them a sublime moment. Most turned to films, the opening of Hugo, Avatar, V for Vendetta. At first I believed there was a lot that transferred to a sublime moment, taking it simply as a moment where you are transcended out of your reality by an event. At a base level this is true, however what seems to really define the sublime for Kant is what the experience causes. It is not enough to have a moment out of the scope of our imagination but this has to cause us to realize the limits if our own imagination in comparison to nature but to rise through this and come to belief in our own possibilities as the human race in the face of the power of nature.

The sublime falls into two categories, the dynamic or the mathematical. The dynamic is the forceful overwhelming of the senses whilst mathematical refers to the concept of infinity or numbers that are to large to comprehend. A volcanic explosion would be an example of the dynamic while the scale and scope of space in comparison to man is a mathematical sublime.

These days when asked for a sublime moment most people think more to an 'epic' moment, epic is a very popular coined phrase these days and can, as the nostalgia chick put it used to reference anything from tacos to haircuts. Whilst I enjoy epic moments, once I realized its difference from the Kantian sublime, I became very saddened as I don't think I have ever experienced a moment of the sublime. Neither dynamic or mathematical. Now that is not to say I don't understand that space is infinitely larger than my world or myself however having an understanding of the concept and seeing the reality of it is two very different things.

Having just finished my essay on the subject I am, fair to say, a little burnt out on the sublime. Should I have more time I will hopefully come back and look into this in more detail but as it stands above is the basics to understanding what Kant means by the sublime.

Kant - the second coming and The cave by an artist

We've had our second week on Kant and gone a bit deeper into his views on beauty. Which I will get into in a moment, but first I wanted to quickly showcase a music video I'd discovered recently which seemed to represent Plato's 'The Cave Allegory' however, it was in fact music and art that allowed the person to escape rather than keep them trapped.

Now looking back at Kant, this one quote summarizes a lot about his views of beauty.

'We call agreeable what GRATIFIES us, beautiful what we just LIKE, good what we ESTEEM or ENDORSE'

Kant's view is that good, beauty and agreeable are different because beauty is the only one that does not survive a purpose outside of being beautiful. Good, serves a function that benefits society. The agreeable, serves a function that only benefits the individual.

Beauty is not possible if it invokes personal interests. If it is beautiful is it universally beautiful and universally liked. This becomes more difficult, as under Kant's definition only things that have pure structures and pure colors. Meaning only primary colors as they are agreed to be at a base level beautiful universally. If the colors are mixed than it becomes an 'opinion' rather than a fact of beauty.

Real beauty equals the pure abstract simple forms, no distraction from colors or tone. I would have to disagree with Mr Kant as I believe when something is considered universally beautiful it should be classified as good. To me, beauty is a purely subjective pursuit, granted that this no doubt comes from a society where there is an increased emphasis on the individual, their wants/needs/desires and a seeming idea that no opinion is without worth observing. Good however, is something that is without subjectivity. When something is good; removing the moral or ethical views of goodness for the time being, than it is structurally sound as it were. It is not so much the look but filling in a set of unknown, yet agreed upon criteria. The great works of art from the renascence are not good because they are beautiful; I certainly find the Mona Lisa to be incredibly overrated in terms of beauty, but I understand and respect the skill behind it. It is a good painting.

This then brings me into a quick look at modern, that is my contemporary, art, is the art of now good? For the most part I certainly wouldn't classify it as beautiful.

Currently on exhibition at the Sydney museum of Contemporary art this work by Stephen Birch is not, to me, beautiful. I have difficulty calling it good as well, as while previously art strove to be as realistic as possible in the renaissance, than to break the boundaries of form in Modern art and finally to question and insert personal meanings and questions of society in Post Modern. Art is now no longer considered good unless it has a message to it; unless the author has a purpose beyond showcasing beauty. And for this work, I simply have no idea exactly what is trying to be said... and I studied art for years in school! 

It is no secret I am not a fan of a large proportion of contemporary art, I do believe however that messages do have a place in art but that if art strives for the simple complexity of beauty it should not be discounted and in fact still aimed for. This can include personal opinions, they can be earth shattering revelations of the injustice in our society or simple judgements around individual endeavors; such as entertaining your time by painting, in your own opinion, the most beautiful man alive.

Immanuel Kant - a hearty meal and a real pissant.

We'll be spending the next three weeks on Kant so there should be a number of posts about him, particularly the sublime moment which interests me greatly but we'll return to that in a couple of weeks. For now we'll be looking at just the start of his work on Aesthetics, and to help us understand him a look at how his views differ from Plato the week before.

Kant makes a number of key distinction's from Plato when it comes to the topic of beauty; firstly that it is not directly linked to good as Plato often claimed. This is not to say that beauty cannot be good but it is no longer a direct correlation.

The large difference to note is in the way they approach knowledge. Plato had the view that pure knowledge was granted from the moment of birth and that we were just remembering it as we grew older. Kant however believes our knowledge to be based on experience. We cannot know that which we haven't experienced or tested. Our knowledge comes not from the idea of pure forms inbuilt into out ideas but from our interaction with the physical world. There is one exception to this and that is the notion of beauty, this is the only concept that is based not on cognitive reasoning but on senses and in our own mind. There are a few other aspects of knowledge that can be drawn through reasoning and not from experience; such as mathematical forms that can't be experienced or tested, such as the theory of relativity, that however still comes from a rationality, a cognitive understanding.

We need to look now at the idea of beauty as being inbuilt, or is it a construction or society. The argument of whether our construction of the idea of beauty is created by our society is an oft debated view and I do believe that there is some weight to it. We are told to associate certain qualities as beautiful, but how much of beauty to we have built into us.

I'll have more to say on beauty in art, as it is an issue I have been dwelling on for some years after studying Modernism and Post Modernism in high school. But quickly I shall have a word or two on the notion of beauty as a predetermined notion. I don't think it is the concept of beauty we are born with, I think that, the idea of it is something that is created by society to help explain the emotive response we receive from something 'beautiful'. I personally find the term of beautiful, as used to describe something that draws a wonder or affection from us, very limiting. As a child, we have a moment were we experience an emotive response to things we can't explain and when it is a visual stimuli that has triggered that we are told that we have seen something beautiful. Then as we get older we associate the idea of beauty less with the emotion that is brought out but with a few concepts that are meant to represent beauty.

And now a quick video, showing a young one's first view of 'beauty' and a sublime moment.

Welcome to all... we start with a classic vintage

Plato is often called the father of Western philosophy, much in the way that Sigmund Freud is considered the father of psychoanalysis; however whilst Freud is considered outdated by modern standards two thousand years later Plato is still held in high regard. Plato writes about many philosophical topics we are going to focus on his views that relate to aesthetics, what are Plato's views on art and understanding of beauty.

A couple of Plato’s most famous Socratic dialogues the Republic and the Symposium talk extensively about the concept of beauty as well as the place of art in a perfect republic… namely none existent.

Going at a basic level of explanation Plato’s concept of knowledge is that we a born with full and pure knowledge or forms and ideas; such as we have a knowledge from the beginning we have a concept of ‘beauty’ before we ever see what we consider what we believe to be beautiful . As we then learn, we are actually remembering these ‘truths’ or ‘ideas’. The physical work is imperfect with differences of reality. Plato uses the example of a bed to explain this; there is the idea of a bed. Once you are told to think of a bed, the basic idea is the same to all. That is the ‘pure’ form, from there differences come to mind, in the shape, colour, structure and design; this is the physical object which is impure because it is not universal. Pure forms include things such as beauty, truth, justice and courage.

Pure truths, as Plato describes them, can only be discovered by reasoned thought and critical thinking; whereas objects are understood by sensations such as sight, smell and touch. The physical is the shadows cats on the wall of the cave whilst the sunlight we are blind to is the true forms of ideas. Our sensors are able too be fooled, our eyes can be tricked by lights or reflections; therefore they cannot be trusted to create our understanding or increase out knowledge. From this Plato also goes into why art and poetics are a problem, the epistemic problem with them. If the physical world is an imperfect copy of the world of forms and ideas than art is an imperfect copy of an imperfect copy. Philosophy in ancient Greece steamed from a rivalry between the Sophists and the artists and poets, as they teach competing methods of understanding the morals of the world.

Artists and poets use sensors and passions to invoke what they or society believes to be the right morals in the people who listen or view their work. Plato and the Sophists believe that the use of rhetoric and the questioning of beliefs lead to a deeper level of knowledge and as Plato understood the truths that are based on mathematics, logic, science and rational thought. This and the art and poetry has no knowledge base to it. Going back to the example of the ‘bed’ even the physical form, whilst impure in comparison to the idea of the bed, it still requires skill and knowledge to make a bed; therefore there is still a value in the physical form. To create an artistic representation of the bed does not require any knowledge of how to make a bed. This representation of an object can fool, ‘children or people with a simple mind’ into thinking it is the actual object although there is no knowledge behind it.

There is also the corrupting power of art; that it appeals to a baser instinct of mankind and things such as pleasure, sex or violence. This is an argument that is still very much in the mind of us today; the questions of where the line of art or ‘smut’ is drawn, where should censorship and the government step in. It is this part of the argument that I find particularly interesting, not just because it is a debate that is still alive unlike the idea of forms which has been moved past by most philosophy; but also because it shows, as I see it, the major contradiction in Plato’s work.  He believes that art, poetry, drama and things such as this should be banished from the perfect ‘republic’, apart from hymns to the Gods or praise of great men. Plato makes this claim seemingly unaware of the dramatic method in which he is working. Socratic dialogs are a piece of theatre, they are fictionalized events told in an evocative manner in order to show the moral and ethics that Plato believes are correct. In fact the ‘censorship’ or ideas by the government out of fear for corrupting the youth is what lead Plato’s mentor and friend Socrates to be executed by suicide.

I doubt Plato considered himself an artists; in fact it is a certainty that he did not. Yet, he was. His medium was very close to the theatre and drama, which he criticized as inciting conflict between reason and passion to eventually foster conflict. His belief in the perfect society relies on everyone coming to the same universal truths as him. Plato, as an educated Greek man who was already hailed as a great thinker, would have believed without question; at least in my opinion, that his beliefs were infallible. Plato’s world had been built up by Socrates, a great thinker and more importantly a great arguer, the skill of rhetoric used by them meant that very few if any could hold their own against them in debate. The better you can express yourself the less likely you are to allow new beliefs to change your own, despite the fact that Plato trumpets the idea that you cannot know everything on your own, as you need education and discussion to remember the knowledge of forms and ideas you were naturally born with. Of course, this is again just my opinion, and I must be willing to hear opposing views.

I think I shall have a separate post about censorship of art in our modern world as it is an issue that I have been hearing a lot about of late, especially with the recent American bills of SOPA and PIPA, and far before that of art involving children and young adults with the questions about protections of the innocent.

Quickly I want to look at the idea of beauty that Plato describes in his Symposium, in particular the speech of Diotima. Which Plato presents as the 'correct' view on love. Beauty, as discussed above, is a pure idea from the realm of forms. Love, as Diotima describes it, is the child of passion and contrivance; love desires beauty because love does not posses it. You only desire what you can't have and thus love is always searching for a new beauty. Now this is not meant to mean physical beauty. Plato is not saying that love is the eternal search for this...


Beauty is meant to represent 'goodness'. It is the desire to make ourselves beautiful or good and to make our goodness immortal that leads to our want to procreate. To see ourselves last though the generations. Now this does not mean, our sole desire is for children, we can procreate and last through music, books, or at the greatest form through ideas. There are a number of forms of love but the highest, the one to be aimed for is Platonic love. Love on an intellectual basis, the love of wisdom; philosophy. Plato has in fact managed to reach the highest form of love. His philosophy has been procreated through ideas and discussion to last over two thousand years. He has moved beyond the first level for animal procreation, human procreation which is a desire to create love about the physical desire. Physical love based on morals and ethics; caring for the physical needs of that person. Love of physical beauty, not for the pleasure but because of the goodness that the pure form of beauty represents. Love of the soul, caring for someone intellectual needs over their physical needs. And finally Platonic love, the love of wisdom.


Plato would no doubt, feel great pride and take great pleasure, in how his life has played out in the history of philosophy and the world.