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There is Objective Beauty in Art

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Comments

  • @espiegel123 said:
    @mjcouche : the burden
    of proof is on you to demonstrate that there is an objective standard that holds across all cultures and times. A number of philosophers have tried over a few thousand years to argue for an objective aesthetic. None have succeeded.

    The burden is on the person postulating a truth to demonstrate its truth…and the ability of their hypothesis to withstand counter arguments.

    It isn’t a counter argument to simply say “there might be an objective beauty.”

    If you believe there is one, how do you account for the things that I mentioned?

    I believe you are correct. Others may claim you are not. Who’s right?

  • I think a culture can use a Darwinian approach towards art and elevate some portion to the level of objective beauty.

    Then the challenge for the cultural outsider is to educate himself to a level where he can appreciate the value of the work.

    Digging into Chinese Opera for example or Indian Classical Music and learning to value the finest practitioners of those arts.

    My theory is that a culture validates specific art and the individual needs to level up. The option to simply pass and move on in blissful ignorance.

    I try to apply this mode of evaluation here when listening to music that's "not my thing". Then slowly, overtime add knowledge that gives me insight.

    Hopefully one day a new found appreciation dawns on me. This process is learning to discount emotion and personal prejudices and adopt new criteria.

  • edited February 2022

    A Thought on Objectivity

    It’s quite easy to understand.
    When one is moved by the spirit of creation they go through the motions of this creative spark to manifest this purity of vision into the world. Those who lack the ability to harness and wield the spark spend their days postulating, debating and defining their paradigms of meaning…creating their myopic structures of intellect as a reservoir for their observations.

    Meanwhile the fisherman fishes…
    The poet evokes their rhythm…
    The composer captures the whispers and chorus of angels to release upon the world…
    And the artist…well, the artist is one who hears, feels, observes and innately senses the calling of the unknown and reveals it to the world in many forms and functions through their dance…

    So you have a choice…either talk or do or strive to grow closer to the source…but know that all can be a revelation if you allow yourself to truly see.

    🙏🏼💕👊🏼™️

  • @Svetlovska said:
    There may be an objective reality. (Doubtful, but still…) in which Platonic ideal forms exist, external to human culture, but anything ‘I’ perceive (including the ‘me’ that is ‘I’, moment to moment, the hard problem of consciousness itself) in the flickering wall-shadows of the firelight, is not only necessarily subjective and limited to the current functioning of the wetware between my ears, my situation of facing the wall not the entrance to the cave, etcetera, but is also, necessarily, mediated through the cultural norms and anti-norms of not only the hegemonic culture in which my experiencing occurs, but the endless divisible micro cultures of age, class, wealth, ‘taste’ and so on within the specific situatedness of my gender expression, bodily sex, cultural gender expression, historical position, educational attainment, aesthetic literacy… And so on and so on… Without these caveats and endorsements, works cannot even be perceived as art, or craft, or any damn thing at all.

    Against this backdrop, any ‘artistic’ endeavour can therefore only ‘succeed’ and be differentiated from other cultural modes of production such as ‘craft’ or ‘play’ and/or attain any objective set for it by it’s maker, which may or may not include a specific, limited sense of ‘beauty’, ‘transcendence’, ‘sublimity’ etcetera, in the terms set not only by it’s maker, but by it’s maker in dialogue, consciously or otherwise, with extant forms of cultural expression available which may be compared to, contrasted with, rejected, accepted, or wilfully ignored.

    If the terms explicitly and/or implicitly set by or accepted within the maker happen then to accord with sufficient approvals from the makers’ proposed and/or actual and/or accidental audience(s) :

    then, kid, you done got yerself a hit rekkid!

    Anyhoo:

    Also: fart or beauty?: FIGHT!

    :)

    perfectly put.

    I'm firmly on the side of "fart"

    arguments of this sort remind me of being a teenager again.

    At this point, I've learned that extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. To loudly proclaim something is just not enough.

    If someone walks in the room, loudly proclaiming that the earth is flat, Oprah is eating babies for breakfast, god exists, or that (fill in the blank) woo = truth, or that their held opinion is the only true perspective to have, I choose not to take the bait. I've got better ways to waste time.

    if the op had the guts to prove their claim, they could easily provide dozens, or even hundreds, or thousands, of examples of such objectively beautiful art that we could all agree is objectively beautiful. lol, good luck with providing a single example! Fortunately, the burden of proof is on the one making extraordinary claims, not the dissenters.

  • @mjcouche said:

    @espiegel123 said:
    @mjcouche : the burden
    of proof is on you to demonstrate that there is an objective standard that holds across all cultures and times. A number of philosophers have tried over a few thousand years to argue for an objective aesthetic. None have succeeded.

    The burden is on the person postulating a truth to demonstrate its truth…and the ability of their hypothesis to withstand counter arguments.

    It isn’t a counter argument to simply say “there might be an objective beauty.”

    If you believe there is one, how do you account for the things that I mentioned?

    You may want to read some more philosophy. To state none have succeeded - I agree the burden of proof is on the one who is postulating a truth.

    Which philosopher provided a generally accepted proof or demonstration that there is an objective universal beauty?

    There are many that have claimed such a proof -- but which claim do you believe holds up?

    If you are arguing that there is an objective beauty in art, please explain how you account for the things that I mentioned in my earlier post. And also explain how one would know if a work of art satisfies whatever criteria you posit as the characteristics of something that is objectively (across all cultures and time) beautiful.

  • Question:

    Could Objective Reality be nothing more than the observable universe without the filter of intellect and human linguistic interpretation?

    A Tree is only a Tree to us Humans. To a bird, ant or chimpanzee it is entirely something different.

    Our observation, personal world view and experiences color everything we perceive…and ultimately diminishes what is truly present before us.

    For me at least, at times in deep meditation and prayer i sense what i believe to be objective reality as “Me,” “I” fades away and the floor, the air, everything around me unifies into a singular state of flow.

    There is no Me. No Floor. No House. No Tree. There just is All.

    For me at least this state of being, though momentary, is what i classify as Objective Reality.

    But what do i know. I’m just a monkey poking on glass to turn fart sounds into music.

    😉🤪

  • @espiegel123 said:

    @mjcouche said:

    @espiegel123 said:
    @mjcouche : the burden
    of proof is on you to demonstrate that there is an objective standard that holds across all cultures and times. A number of philosophers have tried over a few thousand years to argue for an objective aesthetic. None have succeeded.

    The burden is on the person postulating a truth to demonstrate its truth…and the ability of their hypothesis to withstand counter arguments.

    It isn’t a counter argument to simply say “there might be an objective beauty.”

    If you believe there is one, how do you account for the things that I mentioned?

    You may want to read some more philosophy. To state none have succeeded - I agree the burden of proof is on the one who is postulating a truth.

    Which philosopher provided a generally accepted proof or demonstration that there is an objective universal beauty?

    There are many that have claimed such a proof -- but which claim do you believe holds up?

    If you are arguing that there is an objective beauty in art, please explain how you account for the things that I mentioned in my earlier post. And also explain how one would know if a work of art satisfies whatever criteria you posit as the characteristics of something that is objectively (across all cultures and time) beautiful.

    Take a look at Dietrich von Hildebrand’s Aesthetics. This would answer your first and second queries about what I believe. It may also discuss certain criteria.

    Umberto Eco also has a book on Thomas Aquinas’ Aesthetics.

    Different cultures, again, do not need to accept something as objectively beautiful for the object to be beautiful in itself. I’ll do some further researching when I have the time and the “guts” to answer.

  • @mjcouche said:

    @espiegel123 said:

    @mjcouche said:

    @espiegel123 said:
    @mjcouche : the burden
    of proof is on you to demonstrate that there is an objective standard that holds across all cultures and times. A number of philosophers have tried over a few thousand years to argue for an objective aesthetic. None have succeeded.

    The burden is on the person postulating a truth to demonstrate its truth…and the ability of their hypothesis to withstand counter arguments.

    It isn’t a counter argument to simply say “there might be an objective beauty.”

    If you believe there is one, how do you account for the things that I mentioned?

    You may want to read some more philosophy. To state none have succeeded - I agree the burden of proof is on the one who is postulating a truth.

    Which philosopher provided a generally accepted proof or demonstration that there is an objective universal beauty?

    There are many that have claimed such a proof -- but which claim do you believe holds up?

    If you are arguing that there is an objective beauty in art, please explain how you account for the things that I mentioned in my earlier post. And also explain how one would know if a work of art satisfies whatever criteria you posit as the characteristics of something that is objectively (across all cultures and time) beautiful.

    Take a look at Dietrich von Hildebrand’s Aesthetics. This would answer your first and second queries about what I believe. It may also discuss certain criteria.

    Umberto Eco also has a book on Thomas Aquinas’ Aesthetics.

    Different cultures, again, do not need to accept something as objectively beautiful for the object to be beautiful in itself. I’ll do some further researching when I have the time and the “guts” to answer.

    You have named people who have claimed to establish an objective aspect of aeshetics -- the history of philosophy is full of people who have made that claim. Claiming to have proven something is different from having proven it. Countless philosophers claim to have proven the existence of God as well. But that doesn't mean that their claims are true.

    Is there a consensus among philosophers and artists that Hildebrand or Eco is correct? The lack of consensus is, of course, not proof of anything.

    If you reduce the claim to something like "all humans have aesthetic experiences" I could buy that -- but the notion that there are works of art that are beautiful outside of a particular cultural context seems unlikely to be true -- and I've never seen an attempt to prove such that wasn't subject to cultural bias. (And, yes, I have read a lot of attempts at such proofs.)

  • @echoopera said:
    Question:

    Could Objective Reality be nothing more than the observable universe without the filter of intellect and human linguistic interpretation?

    The multiverse may contain universes that lack observers. And those universes forgoing observers will go forever unobserved.

  • “Ya know. For kids!”

  • edited February 2022

    @Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr said:

    @echoopera said:
    Question:

    Could Objective Reality be nothing more than the observable universe without the filter of intellect and human linguistic interpretation?

    The multiverse may contain universes that lack observers. And those universes forgoing observers will go forever unobserved.

    Indras Web is a wonderful concept…and one to explore late in to the night while composing 👊🏼™️

    Our power of observation is only as good and revealing as the instruments we use.

  • edited February 2022

    @mjcouche said:
    This dichotomy is where a lot of us get caught up. We confuse objectivity and subjectivity. Thus we can mistake objective talent being scorned because of people’s subjective musical taste.

    It seems you're conflating 'talent' and 'creativity'.

    In regards to musicality, what is objective 'talent'? I'd say it entails: dexterity, speed, precision, and maybe memory and knowledge of forms. These are measurable criteria. One at a high capacity for these things in use of a cello or piano could be considered 'talented'. The same can be observed for sports, craftsmanship, etc.

    But creativity isn't bound to talent. One doesn't need an extensive 'knowledge of forms' or muscular dexterity to create music or art. While it's true that creative output (e.g. records produced, pieces written, songs performed) can be objectively measured, still, creativity as a force itself can not be measured. One doesn't need to be talented to be creative.

    The heroin music of John Fruscinate is creative. The piano concertos of Ravel are creative. Cardi B's WAP is creative. The artists behind each work have differing levels of talent in their trades, though nothing that they've created can be construed as having inherent beauty.

    Talent ≠ beauty.
    Talent = talent.

  • I think we could all agree on one thing but it might take a lifetime time to settle on it.

  • edited February 2022

    What is also laughable about this subject altogether is that it is assuming a Western mindset as its defining point as the references above allude to.

    I’ve not read the Vedas nor the Tao Te Ching nor even understand the Aboriginal dream time…but i am sure the subject is one explored, defined and articulated by all great thinkers from every culture since we first awoke sparked by consciousness.

  • @aleyas said:

    @mjcouche said:
    This dichotomy is where a lot of us get caught up. We confuse objectivity and subjectivity. Thus we can mistake objective talent being scorned because of people’s subjective musical taste.

    It seems you're conflating 'talent' and 'creativity'.

    In regards to musicality, what is objective 'talent'? I'd say it entails: dexterity, speed, precision, and maybe memory and knowledge of forms. These are measurable criteria. One at a high capacity for these things in use of a cello or piano could be considered 'talented'. The same can be observed for sports, craftsmanship, etc.

    But creativity isn't bound to talent. One doesn't need an extensive 'knowledge of forms' or muscular dexterity to create music. While it's true that creative output (e.g. records produced, pieces written, songs performed) can be objectively measured, still, creativity as a force itself can not be measured. One doesn't need to be talented to be creative.

    The heroin music of John Fruscinate is creative. The piano concertos of Ravel are creative. Cardi B's WAP is creative. The artists behind each work have differing levels of talent in their trades, nothing that they've created can be construed as having inherent beauty.

    Talent ≠ beauty.
    Talent = talent.

    Even to the extent that " dexterity, speed, precision, and maybe memory and knowledge of forms." might play into SOME people's view of talent -- that is far from universal. There are plenty of players that are relatively deficient in those areas compared to some whose works are considered by many to be the near the epitome of artistic expression.

  • edited February 2022

    I Mentioned it in another thread, this book is fantastic. Can’t recommend it enough. The author tries to answer the very question that this thread is about. Is there such a thing as good and bad music?. He uses Celine Dion’s music as a focus/metaphor. It’s smart, hilarious but also very objective and scientific in its approach.

    https://books.google.com/books/about/Let_s_Talk_About_Love.html?hl=es&id=mwGpAwAAQBAJ

    Btw the title is a lot better, it translates to “Shitty Music” which is a lot more accurate!.

  • edited February 2022

    op, please just post a single thing here that meets your criteria of objective beauty. If you're going to point me to dense philosophical books in order to begin to make sense of this laughable claim, then you've only shown me that there is no evidence other than hot air by dusty old "thinkers", and that this thread is nothing but more sad, hot air. Proof is in the pudding my friend. If such objectivity existed at all, it would've reared its head by now, yet in all of human history, not a single shred of evidence for such a claim has been unearthed.

    duality is hard to wrap a mind around, isn't it?

  • edited February 2022

    (Deleted, it was objectively a mistake)

  • Seems to be a lot of confusing objectivity with universality.

  • edited February 2022

    You can tie yourself in knots and drive your brain mental with this topic, but I might add anyone who really wishes to think this subject through, I highly recommend the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Pirsig uses the term "Quality".

  • edited February 2022

    I do believe there’s good and bad art. But the subjective element is what matters at the end. Who cares if a some song is marked as excellent if you don’t like it?.
    Since I’m more informed and very biased with music I like to think of a movie script, where I can be more “sterile” in my analysis. I do think there’s objective elements to judge a script. Does it flow, rhythm, is it obvious, coherent… You might enjoy a Steven Seagal movie but objectively it’s crap.
    A) There’s such a thing as objective beauty, B ) it doesn’t matter.

  • I would posit, in terms of music, an objective example of talent is Prince. You may or may not subjectively like his music, but anyone who wishes to argue that he was not objectively talented as a musician is deluded. Notice I didn't say beauty, I said talent.

  • Objectivity does not mean “5/5 dentists agree!” Consensus (all philosophers agree) and time period (it would have happened by now) have nothing to do with objectivity.

    There are many reasons why people do not agree on many things, let alone topics such as this one, and some reasons are better than others of course. I suppose if one does not accept objectivity, you are still making a decision to accept some line of reasoning. Which will inevitably bring us back to the main topic of objectivity.

    “Everything” can not be subjective, because that contradicts its own statement. How can we say we are smarter than “dusty old thinkers” and dismiss anything and everything they say? What disproves them, simply because they existed before us? Sure we are uncovering more knowledge all the time, but that is quite an assumption to say we are smarter and know better simply because we have more time available to us. There are simple moral truths dating back to the Tao and others that are still used as the basis of reasoning today.

    We don’t enforce aspects of an object, from our minds, onto the object. It reveals its characteristics to us.

    That is my point. Something objective is outside of one’s own criteria.

    Therefore I cannot offer up something based on “my” criteria as objective.

    With regard to talent and creativity. Talent can be beautiful. Talent can lead to beautiful creations. I don’t think there was any conflation there.

    I believe this piece is objectively beautiful, but it is not based on any criteria that I impose upon it.

  • @kidslow said:
    I would posit, in terms of music, an objective example of talent is Prince.

    Finally someone coughs up an example. Nice one too.

    I wasn't on board after watching Purple Rain. I think my prejudice was centered in the use of falsetto in the vocals, the extreme theatrical presentation and the overt sexuality: Rock Star gotos.

    But I was after listening to him do a solo set with just an acoustic.

    I'll throw out another talented example: Sir Paul McCartney.

  • In response to the OP's question, I have seen sunsets and mountain vistas that were objectively beautiful. That is not to say that some curmudgeon somewhere would pish posh my assessment and say otherwise. However that does not diminish the objective beauty. Just because something is not universally beautiful does not mean it cannot be objectively beautiful.

  • @kidslow, a sunset is not art.

  • @LinearLineman said:
    @kidslow, a sunset is not art.

    I think he's trying to leverage the adage that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and we can then
    apply proviso to art.

    It would be pretty hard to prove that there is no objective beauty in art: it would be
    a subjective analysis.

    I prefer to believe that there are many tasteless people but they just aren't interested actually.
    That's how I tend to feel about sports.

  • And I think the song below, ‘Your pussy’s glued to a building on fire’, is beautiful art. But I’m under no illusions that the majority of people would find it shitty and broken.

    Beauty is a human experience. If not human, then one that can only be experienced through sentience. It doesn’t exist outside of perception. It doesn’t have objective reality. Sunsets aren’t objectively beautiful, music isn’t objectively beautiful, sex isn’t objectively beautiful, soldiers reuniting with family aren’t objectively beautiful. I really don’t understand the premise of this thread. Of course art doesn’t have objective beauty.

    I mean, we say ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ don’t we?

    Not, ‘beauty is a truth which can only be seen by the discerning eye’.

  • edited February 2022


    That which ignites and lifts the spirit to feel beyond itself and connected to a grander unified vision might be considered Objective Beauty…that which removes you from your day to day and sets you into the realm of the infinite…that awakens you to the fact that you are spirit and stardust hurtling through space during your lifes journey thru the cosmos…

    I dunno.

    Does it matter?

    Make love
    Make art
    Make music
    Make your soul come alive for the world to see

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