Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Jklint]

Beauty cannot be defined.

Philosophers have a lot to say about it: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauty/

Philosophers say anything about everything...or is it the other way around? Anything that means something to someone amounts to nothing more than a personal preference. For example, for me DADA is landfill art; so how is this to be judged? Very simple, you guys like it while I think a long piece of turd can just as easily be made into Dada art, maybe in the contours of a smooth shaped spiral...if it hasn't already. Whatever relates to beauty, everyone is their own philosopher as expressed in their pulchritude proclivities. It doesn't take another useless academic tome to realize it's ALL conditioned by one's inner preferences.

[GaryLouisSmith]

Gary, the same can be said of flatulence.

Yes, of course the same thing goes for flatulence and dirty hair and fingernail clippings and lint under your bed. Think of Dada in art. You take an ordinary something, rip it out of its life-context, put a frame around it or put it up on a pedestal, then put it in a museum and there in the stillness it becomes a Universal Form seemingly outside of space and time. You can do the same with found words if you put them in a poem between covers either material or electronic. Some artists are very good at taking the trash of life and elevating it up into Eternity. Of course you have to believe. If you don’t, then it is nothing. But even that can be a Universal Form.

[GaryLouisSmith]

Philosophers have a lot to say about it: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauty/

Philosophers say anything about everything...or is it the other way around? Anything that means something to someone amounts to nothing more than a personal preference. For example, for me DADA is landfill art; so how is this to be judged? Very simple, you guys like it while I think a long piece of turd can just as easily be made into Dada art, maybe in the contours of a smooth shaped spiral...if it hasn't already. Whatever relates to beauty, everyone is their own philosopher as expressed in their pulchritude proclivities. It doesn't take another useless academic tome to realize it's ALL conditioned by one's inner preferences.

Here's a poem I just wrote. I hope you like it. I call it

You Guys

Philosophers say anything
about everything...or is it
the other way around?
Anything that means
something
to someone
amounts
to nothing
more than a personal preference.
For example, for me
DADA is landfill art; so how is this
to be judged? Very simple, you guys
like it while
I think a long piece of turd
can just as easily
be made into Dada art,
maybe in the contours of a smooth shaped spiral...
if it hasn't already. Whatever relates
to beauty,
everyone is their own philosopher
as expressed
in their pulchritude proclivities.
It doesn't take another useless academic
tome
to realize
it's ALL conditioned by one's inner preferences.

by Gary Smith

[Jklint]

actually that should read pulchritudinal proclivities THEN you would have created a masterpiece of free verse...if you could even give it away for free!

[Jklint]

Btw, is Harold Bloom still alive? He should know about the great new poetic genius arriving on the scene.

[GaryLouisSmith]

Btw, is Harold Bloom still alive? He should know about the great new poetic genius arriving on the scene.

As far as I know he is. My real genius shines forth, however, on my Tapatic Madness blog. There I encase my heavy words between empty spaces. I don't think Mr. Bloom likes Dada stuff. At least I have never seen any comments by him on the topic. Have you already seen this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEhMR0U6oz8

[GaryLouisSmith]

actually that should read pulchritudinal proclivities THEN you would have created a masterpiece of free verse...if you could even give it away for free!

I also think I should have put "spiral" on a line of its own.

[Belindi]

GaryLouisSmith wrote:

I as a philosopher speak of beauty all the time. I say it is a simple existing thing that cannot be captured or contained in a definition. And as with all simple existents it is uncontrollable. It is incorrigible. It comes and goes when it wants and where it wants. We bend our knee to it; it does not bow to us. The most a human being can do is point to where it has appeared to him. Then it vanishes without a trace. The perfect crime.

"The most a human being can do is point to where it has appeared to him" indeed ? A human being who makes something with skill and honesty can make beauty but every signpost can point.

Moreover some man made beauties endure through century after century, in museums or obscurity. Remember too natural beauties which , as all men are alike in some respects , might appear or sound beautiful to all men.

It is so easy to find ugliness; I read this morning about a dugong that has died with plastic in its stomach. If nonchalant destruction is the essence of ugliness then careful making is the essence of beauty.

[GaryLouisSmith]

GaryLouisSmith wrote:

I as a philosopher speak of beauty all the time. I say it is a simple existing thing that cannot be captured or contained in a definition. And as with all simple existents it is uncontrollable. It is incorrigible. It comes and goes when it wants and where it wants. We bend our knee to it; it does not bow to us. The most a human being can do is point to where it has appeared to him. Then it vanishes without a trace. The perfect crime.

"The most a human being can do is point to where it has appeared to him" indeed ? A human being who makes something with skill and honesty can make beauty but every signpost can point.

A human being might make a beautiful thing, but no human being can make Beauty itself.

[Belindi]

GaryLouisSmith wrote:



"The most a human being can do is point to where it has appeared to him" indeed ? A human being who makes something with skill and honesty can make beauty but every signpost can point.

A human being might make a beautiful thing, but no human being can make Beauty itself.

Be that as it may and it may well be for all we can know, there is a way ahead for us and where big time liars and other retarded men lead to death artists and other makers lead to life.

Metaphysicians write rubbish unless their metaphysics is about better ways to live.

[GaryLouisSmith]

A human being might make a beautiful thing, but no human being can make Beauty itself.

Be that as it may and it may well be for all we can know, there is a way ahead for us and where big time liars and other retarded men lead to death artists and other makers lead to life.

Metaphysicians write rubbish unless their metaphysics is about better ways to live.

I think you should stop thinking about metaphysics and start thinking about technology. Back in the twentieth century we were taught that science and technology were our friends; we only had to handle then right. Was that a lie? Is it inevitable that if any civilization, anywhere in the cosmos, develops advanced technology, then that technology will soon make their planet uninhabitable and that civilization will die? Is that why we have not found any other advanced life in the universe? Are we doomed? And soon?

[Belindi]

I do think about the topic you raise, above. But you have abruptly changed the subject. I had written about aesthetics. Have you got a butterfly mind?If you cannot focus on aesthetics I won't try to force the issue, but it's aesthetics I am interested in at this time.

You appear to be a simple hedonist. Pleasure is one component of beauty but not the only one.

[GaryLouisSmith]

I do think about the topic you raise, above. But you have abruptly changed the subject. I had written about aesthetics. Have you got a butterfly mind?If you cannot focus on aesthetics I won't try to force the issue, but it's aesthetics I am interested in at this time.

You appear to be a simple hedonist. Pleasure is one component of beauty but not the only one.

I'm not a hedonist. Read what I wrote to Greta about conceptual art and see my aesthetic theory.

y GaryLouisSmith » Today, 8:36 am

Greta wrote: ↑Today, 4:33 am
Gary, the same can be said of flatulence.

Yes, of course the same thing goes for flatulence and dirty hair and fingernail clippings and lint under your bed. Think of Dada in art. You take an ordinary something, rip it out of its life-context, put a frame around it or put it up on a pedestal, then put it in a museum and there in the stillness it becomes a Universal Form seemingly outside of space and time. You can do the same with found words if you put them in a poem between covers either material or electronic. Some artists are very good at taking the trash of life and elevating it up into Eternity. Of course you have to believe. If you don’t, then it is nothing. But even that can be a Universal Form.

[GaryLouisSmith]

I do think about the topic you raise, above. But you have abruptly changed the subject. I had written about aesthetics. Have you got a butterfly mind?If you cannot focus on aesthetics I won't try to force the issue, but it's aesthetics I am interested in at this time.

You appear to be a simple hedonist. Pleasure is one component of beauty but not the only one.

Aesthetics. You and Greta got all worked up when I talked about the Boy and you both, I think, saw me as fawning over his beauty. But I never talked about that. I never mentioned his beauty, except as maybe a metaphysical entity. I talked, instead, about his becoming a god for me. What does that mean? It is just what I described up above. You take an ordinary boy (not a beauty) and through the magic of philosophy and philosophical art you transform him into a Universal Form. That form has to be removed from its life-context. Put in a frame or up on a pedestal, in a museum, in that stillness. Of course you don’t really do that but in my mind I do it. The boy is removed from the world, isolated. Of course you could do that with anything, maybe a hammer or pieces of scrap lumber. Once removed and categorized, they become Other. It’s a strange otherness. It is no longer part of life. It is a sort of intellectual, artistic, philosophical killing or sacrifice. Then it is a religious act.

My sister is into making decorative, crafty things. They are very pretty, but I’m not really interested. Pretty things don’t interest me more than a little bit. I’m not into gourmet food or quality clothes or well-performed music. I’m only interested in that instant when a thing is removed from the world and it becomes a god. I know you don’t believe in the gods and I am not going to try to convince you otherwise. I just want you to stop trying to put me into your decorative world of pretty living things.

[Belindi]

Gary wrote:

My sister is into making decorative, crafty things. They are very pretty, but I’m not really interested. Pretty things don’t interest me more than a little bit. I’m not into gourmet food or quality clothes or well-performed music. I’m only interested in that instant when a thing is removed from the world and it becomes a god. I know you don’t believe in the gods and I am not going to try to convince you otherwise. I just want you to stop trying to put me into your decorative world of pretty living things.

A maker's skill is necessary for her work to rank as works of art but skill is not enough. You yourself say your sister's work lacks interest for you. What would be added to it so would be interesting ?Did you ever enjoy or learn from a man-made , inanimate work of art ?

I 'believe' in the Roman and Greek gods because they represent forces that man can't control and so we are forced to respect them, and we sometimes try to propitiate them , I don't remember going that far actually.

"that instant when a thing is removed from the world and it becomes a god " is an eccentric usage of 'god' as I guess you know. There is no morality and there's no public ritual .Therefore your usage of 'god' names a private psychological event. A young boy is awesome however some people make private gods out of all manner of stuff some of which is not at all awesome.

You write of Platonic forms. Is the craftwork of your sister a shadow of a Platonic form? Do you believe your acts of worship are subjectively but not objectively better than your sister's?

I conclude you aim to express yourself but not enlighten or instruct.