Today marks the start of something a little different—an experiment, if you will. It’s a solution I came up with to solve a problem I have, which is: getting into massive philosophical discussions with people via email. Don’t get me wrong, I love getting into massive philosophical discussions with people via email. There’s just one downside. It takes just as long (if not longer) to write those emails as it takes me to write a typical Not A Blog™ entry. Plus, it’s the same sort of stuff that I write about here. So why not just kill two birds with one stone and have the debate be on the blog? That’s what’s happening in this entry. That’s also why this is Part 1 of n. I have no idea for how long it will continue.

The debate is between myself and Paul of The Paul Forum. The rules—well, they’re more like guidelines—are that each of us will devote one post per week to the ongoing topic of discussion—and the topic shall be limited, to the greatest extent possible, to one main point. (Also, the maximum length is 1500 words both for our sanity, and yours.) This leaves each person a few days to ruminate and form an answer, and also allows both of us to post on other topics during the week, as is our wont.

You all know my schedule. For the time being, Mondays are the day I’ll be furthering this discussion. Paul doesn’t post on a set schedule, but he’ll put up his side of the discussion on Fridays. I’ll link forward to them when they happen. Like I said: something different.

This debate started back a few months ago, and we carried it on via email for a few emails. The topic came up again recently when Paul posted a polemic on the state of art today in an article titled The Self as an Idol. I jumped right on that proverbial band wagon and fired off an email. It took forever to write (and probably took forever to read, too) and it raised entirely too many points to debate coherently. Paul kept putting off a reply since they took so long to write. That’s when I suggested we take it outside—er, I mean, take it online—so the amount of time we were putting into the emails wouldn’t be wasted on just us.

Go read Paul’s original article first, if you haven’t already, since mine is a direct rebuttal to some of the things in there. (Also, I’m not counting this introductory explanation as part of my 1500 words.) Then jump into my reply after the break.

There were many things in this post I disagree with—in particular your use of “all” or “never” when you don’t really mean “all” or “never”—but what I’d like to focus on first is what you quoted from Michael Chekhov’s book To The Actor. Chekhov may have been a brilliant actor, but he’s a lousy philosopher. He writes, “What is the reward of artists brave enough to acknowledge the objectivity of the world of imagination?”

This supposition is just flat out wrong. Imagination is not objective. “Objective” means (among other things which don’t apply to the discussion): “dealing with things external from the mind rather than with thoughts or feelings” and “not influenced by personal feelings, interpretation, prejudice” (definitions from dictionary.com) Things external to the mind. Your imagination is not external to your mind, and it most certainly is influenced by your personal feelings and interpretation.

On the other hand, “Subjective” means “existing in the mind” and “relating to the nature of a thing as it is known in the mind as distinct from the thing in itself.” It’s that old philosophical saw: if I ask you to imagine a tree, you have an idea of what it looks like. It may be a particular type of tree. I can even ask you to think of different types of trees: firs, abstract, orange—and even if the request doesn’t make sense (think of a “bubble tree”, for example), you can still imagine what it might be.

Despite this wide range of possible imaginings, none of what you imagine as a tree is how I imagine a tree. If we talk, we can come to a consensus as to what sort of tree we should be discussing, but unless one of us draws a tree (and even then), we can never be sure that we’re both thinking about the same type of tree. Of course, as soon as it gets drawn, it’s no longer subjective, either! Now we’re talking objectively—about this object on the table that represents a tree.

Imagination is not objective; it is subjective.

You defended Chekhov’s statement by saying, “Of course imagination has to deal with absolutes.” Here, you’re committing a fallacy of equivocation. An “absolute” in the philosophical sense (as related to imaginings) is something that is the ultimate “pure” representation of an object. You are indeed dealing with an absolute of a tree when you think of one—a philosophical absolute. Just because it’s called an absolute, doesn’t actually mean it’s an “absolute” in the sense of “universal” or “objective”. Not everyone thinks of the same “absolute” when they think of the same thing. It has nothing to do with objectivity, as I’ve just shown with the tree example.

This is why I say Chekhov was a lousy philosopher. Even if this is what he meant, he used the wrong terms, which is worse than meaningless. It’s irresponsible.

You later talk about universal standards of beauty (also from email):

“Imagination must be filtered through objective standards of beauty and craftsmanship, or it’s all meaningless.”

“To say that my standards of beauty are not better or worse than anyone else’s is to say that the pursuit of skill is a waste of time.”

“We look at the form and the structure [of art] to analyze the skill of the artist’s hand. There are objective standards in play.”

“When presenting a story, a picture, a piece of music, it is only understandable because of universally accepted standards of what is beautiful, ugly, stupid, intelligent, etc.”

I’ll take the last point first. Art is not incomprehensible if it doesn’t adhere to universally accepted standards. The very fact that someone can say, “I don’t like genre music,” is an indicator that there aren’t universal standards. If there were universal standards, there should be no disagreement as to the beauty present in of major works of art—but there are. Some people don’t like certain things, while other people do. I’m not particularly fond of Albrecht Durer because I think his figures are somewhat stiff and lifeless, but there’s no denying the artfulness of his work. There also exists music, notably from India, containing notes that are not in the western scale. Some people don’t like it, and in fact think it is dissonant. This does not affect the importance of the work, nor does it act as a barrier to understanding, as it is obviously a simple enough matter to study something which you don’t personally like.

To say that no one’s standard of beauty is better or worse than anyone else’s might be a bit blithe—but to say that your standards of beauty are not the same as other standards of beauty found throughout the world is a fact. They are not the same.

You talk about the importance of the skill of the artist. You wrote also that your step-father hounds you to make sure you’re working on your craft. You talk about how your step-father’s abstract paintings are good, but the reason you give for them being good are because he has “Thick paint on them canvases.” In other words: how the art was produced. You don’t speak at all to what is actually depicted on the canvas, only that it was depicted well. An excellence in execution.

This is the same thing our debate came down to last time. It’s about me making a distinction between the beauty of the art in the context of its cultural environment and the craft behind it (I believe they should be critiqued separately), whereas you do not make a distinction between the merit or quality of a work and how it was produced. In fact, to not have been produced by traditional means, or using the rules of the old masters: to you, this alone is sufficient to make the art bad.

I need to know the answer to this: describe to me these absolute standards of beauty in concrete terms. No weasel words. No comparisons or metaphors. Define them. Pick music, if you like, since you’re more familiar with it. Define the standards of beauty.

When I ask you to define standards of beauty, I’m not asking about the standards of aesthetics; they’re two different things. Don’t talk about form, composition, tension, etc. Those things define aesthetics. While the majority of people will consider aesthetically “correct” art to be pleasing, art need not follow the rules of aesthetics to be pleasing, either.

You talk at length about the importance of a standard of beauty; how it is worthless to elevate one standard above the other so by implication there must be one that is best; and how art is completely meaningless without them. Since they are so important, please explain what the universally accepted standards of beauty are.

-Ted