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

[JSM83]

I'm trying to read Philosophy - Aesthetics. I've started with Paul Oskar Kristeller - The Modern System of the Arts.

I've only read the first 3 quarters of the article and only read once (I think I should go over it a couple of times - Philosophers seem to write as though they don't want anyone to understand what they are saying haha ).

He seems to basically say - Art didn't exist as we know it before around the 1700-1800's or so. Before that, people didn't think of it as art. "Art" as we know it, was divided up and grouped in with other disciplines.

Later - things like music, poetry and painting got grouped together into "art".

I also read that basically - people read his article and just assumed he was correct and so went along believing his work. More recently, his view is being challenged though.

Have I understood him correctly? Is my take on his article a fair one?

[Jack D Ripper]

... Philosophers seem to write as though they don't want anyone to understand what they are saying ...

If one has nothing worthwhile to say, that is a good strategy to try to hide that fact. If one does have something worthwhile to say, it is a poor strategy if one wishes to communicate with others.

There is a pithy little saying, "publish or perish", which describes the situation for many academics. They must publish something, or the administrators will fire them instead of them getting tenure. As administrators typically do not read and evaluate the publications (often, they are in a field of study that the administrators did not study in college), they tend to judge these things by quantity and the imagined prestige of the journal or publishing company. Not everyone has anything worthwhile to say, but they still want a job so they can eat. So they write in a way to hide the fact that they have nothing worth saying.

Now, I am not saying that that is applicable to the particular individual you are mentioning. But it is a part of the world in which we live.

For those who doubt that worthless gibberish is actually written in academia, I suggest looking for articles on the Sokal Hoax. That can lead to other examples as well, where someone willfully wrote nonsense and got it published in a "respected" journal. There is a lot of nonsense that is published.

And that is not counting just the bad philosophy that one encounters. As I observed in another thread:

Does philosophical inquiry lead to truth?

In most cases, no, absolutely not. We can know this absolutely from the fact that different philosophers disagree on what is true, in widely diverging ways. If you have taken an elementary logic class, you should know absolutely that most philosophers must be wrong.

So, although you may have meant it as a joke, it is literally true that some write hoping that no one will understand what they are doing. Of course, some others are just incompetent writers.

[JSM83]

haha great reply - thanks.

[Terrapin Station]

Kristeller is basically doing a survey of literature that is or that can be considered aesthetics, with an emphasis on the modern "philosophy of art" sense, and he's stressing two things:

One, the apparent "evolutionary" development of a schematic/philosophy of (the) art(s) and its core background concepts, including beauty and the very idea of art itself,

And two, the differences between:
(i) modern and contemporary conceptions of these issues and terms and
(ii) historical conceptions, where he's stressing the importance of not reading historical stuff as if it's saying something in the context of modern/contemporary conceptions.

As such his work is valuable. It's important to keep what amounts to semiotic/semantic warnings in mind when reading historical stuff about aesthetics, and his detailing of the apparent development of aesthetic ideas is interesting and useful as a general outline to keep in mind when reading historical aesthetics.

[JSM83]

Kristeller is basically doing a survey of literature that is or that can be considered aesthetics, with an emphasis on the modern "philosophy of art" sense, and he's stressing two things:

One, the apparent "evolutionary" development of a schematic/philosophy of (the) art(s) and its core background concepts, including beauty and the very idea of art itself,

And two, the differences between:
(i) modern and contemporary conceptions of these issues and terms and
(ii) historical conceptions, where he's stressing the importance of not reading historical stuff as if it's saying something in the context of modern/contemporary conceptions.

As such his work is valuable. It's important to keep what amounts to semiotic/semantic warnings in mind when reading historical stuff about aesthetics, and his detailing of the apparent development of aesthetic ideas is interesting and useful as a general outline to keep in mind when reading historical aesthetics.

Thank you for your reply.

[baker]

If one has nothing worthwhile to say, that is a good strategy to try to hide that fact. If one does have something worthwhile to say, it is a poor strategy if one wishes to communicate with others.

Never underestimate the value of being understood only by a select few. It's like encription of military intelligence, it's done for the purpose of being understood only by a select few, and certainly not be the enemy.

I once did an experiment on an internet forum. A poster expressed an idea in fancy language. I expressed the same, but without using five dollar words, so that everyone could understand. He was praised, I was criticized severely.

There is something vulgar about speaking in such a manner that everyone can understand.

[Jack D Ripper]

If one has nothing worthwhile to say, that is a good strategy to try to hide that fact. If one does have something worthwhile to say, it is a poor strategy if one wishes to communicate with others.

Never underestimate the value of being understood only by a select few. It's like encription of military intelligence, it's done for the purpose of being understood only by a select few, and certainly not be the enemy.

I once did an experiment on an internet forum. A poster expressed an idea in fancy language. I expressed the same, but without using five dollar words, so that everyone could understand. He was praised, I was criticized severely.

There is something vulgar about speaking in such a manner that everyone can understand.

You would have to give us a link to the relevant posts for us to evaluate that specifically. However, I can think of cases that would fit your description, so it isn't necessary; we can just discuss the general idea.

Often, when someone expresses things in a complicated way, people will misinterpret what is stated (because it is difficult to understand), and thus they may attribute some meaning to it that the reader regards as profound, but it is something that was not expressed at all. Other people (if they knew what that person imagined) might regard that imagined meaning as false and silly, though they do not see it because it is not there. They, however, may imagine something else that isn't there. You stating the banal and obvious version cuts off their flights of fancy, and don't say anything interesting. And if you say that it is the same as the fancy version, then those who imagined some thing that they liked, will be displeased and disagree, imagining that there was some greatness in it, even though they are wrong. I am guessing that, if your description is accurate, the ones who abused you were among the stupidest who posted in that thread. Given the fact that half of all people are of average intelligence or less, and given the fact that average is not that bright, there is a lot of potential for stupid people imagining all kinds of things, which they will not be doing with your clearly expressed version. (Not to mention the fact that a forum may attract more stupid people than intelligent people, so the average at any given site could be wildly different from the average person in the world.)

That fits in perfectly with what you quote me as stating: "If one has nothing worthwhile to say, that is a good strategy to try to hide that fact."

In fact, with the fancy version of what is said, since people are imagining things that are not actually expressed, they tend to automatically disregard anything that they regard as silly and absurd, and tend to attribute positive things to what is said, because one naturally tends to think that other people are not going to intentionally say something incredibly stupid and obviously false. With all of the fools reading the fancy version, even if what they imagine to be profound is really quite silly, again, others, who would recognize that as silly, do not attribute that to the fancy text. So each fool gives it a profound and deep meaning (profound and deep by their own standards, which need not be accurate at all), and so they admire it, even though it never said what they imagined.

So, yes, there are reasons to write in a convoluted way, but those reasons involve not communicating.

[Count Lucanor]

I'm trying to read Philosophy - Aesthetics. I've started with Paul Oskar Kristeller - The Modern System of the Arts.

I've only read the first 3 quarters of the article and only read once (I think I should go over it a couple of times - Philosophers seem to write as though they don't want anyone to understand what they are saying haha ).

He seems to basically say - Art didn't exist as we know it before around the 1700-1800's or so. Before that, people didn't think of it as art. "Art" as we know it, was divided up and grouped in with other disciplines.

Later - things like music, poetry and painting got grouped together into "art".

I also read that basically - people read his article and just assumed he was correct and so went along believing his work. More recently, his view is being challenged though.

Have I understood him correctly? Is my take on his article a fair one?

I read the article. Here is the link for anyone interested: The Modern Systems of the Arts

I doubt very much that his historical interpretation of the notion of art is original and that other people just went along believing it. The article is from the 1950s and in the 1930s R. G. Collingwood had sketched a similar idea in his attempt to make a historical distinction between art and craft. I believe this was (and still is) a common view in art history.

[h_k_s]

Kristeller is basically doing a survey of literature that is or that can be considered aesthetics, with an emphasis on the modern "philosophy of art" sense, and he's stressing two things:

One, the apparent "evolutionary" development of a schematic/philosophy of (the) art(s) and its core background concepts, including beauty and the very idea of art itself,

And two, the differences between:
(i) modern and contemporary conceptions of these issues and terms and
(ii) historical conceptions, where he's stressing the importance of not reading historical stuff as if it's saying something in the context of modern/contemporary conceptions.

As such his work is valuable. It's important to keep what amounts to semiotic/semantic warnings in mind when reading historical stuff about aesthetics, and his detailing of the apparent development of aesthetic ideas is interesting and useful as a general outline to keep in mind when reading historical aesthetics.

Art was born in the caves of Altamira.

Music was born when a paleolithic child first picked up a hollow old bone and blew through it to make a flute.

While both of these activities are human related, and neither is more than 2 million years old, both have been around a whole lot longer than this Kristeller seems to have known.

[Zarathustra66]

.....very nervous, my first post on the site. Really interesting topic. Much has been written on the subject, with so many compelling and competing views. Tolstoy's What is Art has aesthetics as a communicative tool. Baumgarten has Beauty as the perfect (absolute) ideal perceived by the senses, an idea that draws upon Plato's forms. Schopenhauer's will-less activity is appealing in these troubled times. Nietzsche's idea that art was the only justification for life is truly electrifying. Personally, I like Vico's belief that aesthetics, art and culture were the manner in which we could read and partially understand other peoples, a notion that offers a glimmer of hope in a world that seems to be reverting to a new tribalism. Happy 2021 to everyone.