Kant and Aesthetics

[Ninth Doctor]

A few more thoughts on Kantian Sublimity: Since, according to him, one must experience the rebellion of the outright formlessness, and feel the revulsion and the disgust at the formless, and then overcome it with reason; then going to a modern classical concert that plays some atonal piece of shit, followed by Tchaikovsky's "Sleeping Beauty" is to experience Kantian Sublimity;

Funny you should use such an example. Rand asked Deems Taylor to do an adaptation of Anthem, using atonality to depict the state and tonal music for the hero. It was to be an opera, as I recall. Look up Joan Kennedy Taylor, his daughter, she writes about it somewhere.

Something I posted to FaceBook:

I used to have a policy of never getting into an argument with a Kantian,

Are you under the impression that you’ve been having a conversation with Kantians? Think of it this way, if you overheard an argument where one person is patiently explaining to another that Jesus did not advocate cannibalism (this is my body…) would you automatically conclude that the informed one is a Christian?

[brianleepainter]

As I understand it, philosophy is much like a roadmap to help guide one's life through the application of reason, correct? Out of curiosity, in what ways have Immanuel Kant's works of both branches, aesthetics and epistemology, written through his Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Judgement provided an integrated philosophy to help guide your life in the absence of religion?

Edited February 20, 2012 by brianleepainter

[Ninth Doctor]

Out of curiosity, in what ways have Immanuel Kant's works of both branches, aesthetics and epistemology, written through his Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Judgement provided an integrated philosophy to help guide your life in the absence of religion?

I’m not a Kantian, and I’m confident that Jonathan isn’t either. The main value I find in studying Kant is a better understanding of intellectual history. It’s not too different from an atheist studying theology: if you want to understand Dante’s Divine Comedy or Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes, you need to have some background in the ideas that inspired them. And the more background you have, the better you’ll appreciate them, up to a certain point at least.

Here’s a couple pieces of music that fit the concept of the Sublime, including Kant’s version. The first is Faust’s Invocation to Nature, by Berlioz. The second depicts the creation of the universe out of chaos.

[Jonathan13]

Something I posted to FaceBook:

I used to have a policy of never getting into an argument with a Kantian, because you can never pin them down as to how Kant's supposed ideas are based on the facts of reality.

Well, then, it's a good thing that you didn't have to deviate from that policy when arguing with me, since I'm not a Kantian and since I've explained over and over and over again how the ideas of Kant's that I've been discussing are based on the facts of reality. Perhaps their being so strongly reality-based is the reason that Rand adopted them as her signature aesthetic style.

Had the same problem with Platonists in college. They always claim Kant / Plato are true to reality, but never explain anything, just tell you you have to come to understand what they are saying.

In other words, the Platonists whom you ran into back in college explained everything very clearly on a level that even a child could grasp, but you didn't get it because everything they said to you was being bent around in your mind by your angry Objectivish zealotry and uninformed prejudices?

And then when you do come to understand what they are saying, they refuse to talk with you any more -- which is a good thing

So, you're just making stuff up to impress your FaceBook buddies, huh? Haven't you noticed that I'm not refusing to talk to you? I'm right here. You're the one who keeps announcing that he's not going to participate anymore! Not only am I here, and ready and willing to talk to you, but I'd still be very interested in hearing any answers that you might have to my earlier questions about why you accept contradictions, inconsistencies and blatant double standards in the Objectivist aesthetics. Isn't accepting them a bad thing according to Objectivism? Maybe you should invite your FaceBook pals to come here and help you out, since you don't appear to have any solutions yourself -- you just clam up and go into what Rand called "blank out" mode.

J

[Ninth Doctor]

Funny you should use such an example. Rand asked Deems Taylor to do an adaptation of Anthem, using atonality to depict the state and tonal music for the hero. It was to be an opera, as I recall. Look up Joan Kennedy Taylor, his daughter, she writes about it somewhere.

Here's a reference for this:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/riggenbach2.html

Joan introduced her new friend to her father, and the two quickly became fast friends themselves, getting together for evenings spent "

itting and listening to recordings of his works." According to Pegolotti, Rand asked Deems Taylor "to consider writing an opera based on her short science-fiction novel

Anthem

. The plot looked to a distant future when ‘I’ is lost from the language and only ‘We’ is used. The hero is the one who rediscovers ‘I.’ Rand suggested a Schoenberg-type modernist music for the ‘non-I’ portion, and then a change to romantic melodies of a Rachmaninoff-type when ‘I’ is rediscovered. But Taylor declined."

Presumably Rand, rightly, regarded atonality as just another technique in the composer's "toolbox". It has its place, how else to do something like Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw? The Baroque piece I posted above, though not technically atonal, is a pretty good example of what I mean.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

Well, if Dante and Mr. 13 are not Kantians posing as Objectivists or Kantian trolls, then I will apologize for the implication that you were. However, if you are going to uphold Kant as an advocate of reason, then I think you need to check your premises. His "pure reason" was "reasoning" completely disconnected from evidence provided by the senses and did not reason from such evidence. He held that the senses distorted true reality because the "inputs" were run through the "sensory manifold" (something he completely made up) and got scrambled, except we couldn't every figure out if it was scrambled or not because we would have to use the evidence of the senses to figure it out, and he was against that. Reason, real reason, as understood by Objectivism and Objectivists, is our faculty of awareness -- awareness of what? of existence. A rational man knows that his senses are true to reality because they are strictly causal and not open to volitional adjustments.

This position alone (his metaphysics and his epistemology) would logically lead to an esthetics from which modern art would stem strictly because non-objects painted on canvases and a-tonal music does not convey anything specific or intelligible to the rational mind. It is only in the sense that they convey confusion, randomness, and formlessness that Miss Rand held that they could be considered art, but only if understood that way, and not as stating something profound about either the artist or reality. About modern art she says, "As a re-creation of reality, a work of art has to be representational; its freedom of stylization is limited by the requirement of intelligibility; if it does not present an intelligible subject, it ceases to be art."

So, Kant's view that one could only experience sublimity via chaos and disruptions to human endeavors and rising above that means that he held chaos and formlessness as being important in art, when they are not. Now, Miss Rand was not against non-objective art to convey modernity and thoughtlessness and dis-harmony with human (rational) life -- small portions in a larger work is fine. She did this in The Fountainhead to convey the type of "artists" that Toohey was collecting together, and she occasionally used it to convey the non-thinking of those who were taking over the world in Atlas Shrugged. This most certainly does not mean that any of Ayn Rand's works of art "were based on Kant's esthetics"; quite the contrary, they were based upon the ideas that art must be a concretization of an abstraction and that works of fiction had to have plot (free will applied to causation -- a man is what he thinks). That's why I thought the two of you were Kantians. If you are not, then stop supporting Kant, who set about to destroy reason as an absolute.

[Ninth Doctor]

That's why I thought the two of you were Kantians. If you are not, then stop supporting Kant, who set about to destroy reason as an absolute.

I take this as your earnest appeal that we nod our heads in agreement to any and all future misrepresentations of Kant’s ideas, so long as they come from (or refer back to) an approved Objectivist source. Anyone else we should have on our “give no quarter” enemies list?

BTW, I still see no evidence that you understand Jonathan’s application of Kant’s Sublime to Rand’s plots. He’s explained himself very clearly. For my part, I find the opening and closing images of The Fountainhead to be particularly good examples, though the ending (arguably) subverts it.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

BTW, I still see no evidence that you understand Jonathan’s application of Kant’s Sublime to Rand’s plots. He’s explained himself very clearly. For my part, I find the opening and closing images of The Fountainhead to be particularly good examples, though the ending (arguably) subverts it.

I see no evidence in Ayn Rand's writings that she was applying Kantian esthetics to the idea that the man of reason could rise above the chaos of his day. I'm sure that if she thought that was an important part of art / novels that she would have mentioned it in The Romantic Manifesto, but she did not. Besides, she definitely affirmed that Kant created the chaos of our day. By 13's very broad grasp of the Kantian esthetics that has man rising above chaos *any* plot that had a rational man succeeding over irrationality would be based on Kantian premises. I just don't see Kant as the initiator of that idea. For example, one could make the claim (as Christians do) that Genesis in The Bible has God creating the universe out of chaos by speaking His Word ("word" implying the application of reason, since it doesn't say His sigh or His spit or His motion of His Hand). And even later books in The Bible have Moses bringing order to chaos by asserting Law onto the land. So the idea of reason rising above chaos wasn't even begun by Kant.

[Hairnet]

The sublime is a reaction that mixes the emotions of exaltation and fear of nature. I think that this emotional experience can be taken in a lot of direcitons.

For instance, look up Insane Clown Posse's "Miracles". In this song, a sad group of bad hip hop artists talk about how their ignorance oft the workings of nature gives them a sense of mystery and excitemen. Viewing the world as completely magical. (Many occultists actually say that everything is magical, even what we think is mundane). This is different however because the emotion of fear is lost.

Another related aesthetic idea is that of "Cosmic Horror". Which is like the sublime, but pessimistic and irrational. This is what Thomas was talking about when he used the words "Formless". This is incorrect though, as I doubt Kant would approve of the works of H P Lovecraft. Where many of the horrors in that book are decidedly not described, but you are given the idea through natural imagery that there is something very wrong and horrible. This plays on the "everything is magic" trope also by combining the idea of dark irrational gods with the nastier, more powerful aspects of nature. This is different because one looses the sense of exaltation.

Ayn Rand's books may uplay the power of evil during their initial parts, because this is necessary for the drama. However, the trope is subverted when you basically discover that most of the villains are pretty sad people. If you want an example of another work of art that plays on this theme, I would point to my favorite film, Casino. Where evil is depicted as this kind of cluster**** that one should distance one's self from. I find a lot of Police and Crime dramas have this theme as well.

So we see that Kant's aesthetic ideal of the sublime (if I read this forum correctly) is distinct from just being awed at nature, or being afraid of the universe. In a sense it is the natural sense of life of the frontiersman who is aware of the dangers of nature, and seeks to overcome them, yet he chooses to live on the edges of society where he must always make these struggles. Howard Roark on the other hand, lived in the most civilized places in the world. Where he could build sky scrapers. He didn't need to struggle against blizzards and tornados, or hike up big mountains. He was totally immersed in production, and distracted by politics.

Maybe unlike Howard Roark, the frontiersman thinks he won't make it in civilized society. He may even grow in contempt for those who live by civilization's often arbitrary values. He may even worship nature's honest brutality. However nature's brutality can kill him, and that gives him that sense of apprehension that underlies his fellings of exaultation.

I hope this clears some things up. I appologize in advance if I misunderstood Kant's aesthetic ideals. His writing style is kind of hard to read.

Edited February 22, 2012 by Hairnet

[Ninth Doctor]

So the idea of reason rising above chaos wasn't even begun by Kant.

Again, Kant didn’t invent the concept of the Sublime, he merely put forth his own version of it.

Alright, how about we try a different approach. Schiller was one of Rand’s favorite writers, a major influence, check Barbara Branden’s biography, or Tore Boeckmann’s piece in the Atlas Shrugged essays collection. Schiller was influenced by Kant, particularly the Critique of Judgement, and he wrote about the Sublime in terms such that if I put a quote from him next to a quote from Kant you couldn’t guess which was which. So, Schiller worked to realize Kant’s ideals, and Rand was influenced by the result.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiller

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

I'm not sure what "Good Will Hunting" has to do with Schiller; but yes, Miss Rand acknowledged him as being a great romanticist writer of plays. I don't know if I have read anything by him, since I don't like to read plays, but yes, the Wiki article does say he was influenced by Kant. However, Ayn Rand doesn't mention this at all in The Romantic Manifesto. But clearly, from the "romanticism" page on the Lexicon, she identified aspects of romanticism that had to do with the nature of man and the necessity of concretizing abstractions, which Kant certainly did not go into.

"The (implicit) standards of Romanticism are so demanding that in spite of the abundance of Romantic writers at the time of its dominance, this school has produced very few pure, consistent Romanticists of the top rank. Among novelists, the greatest are Victor Hugo and Dostoevsky, and, as single novels (whose authors were not always consistent in the rest of their works), I would name Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Among playwrights, the greatest are Friedrich Schiller and Edmond Rostand."

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

In reading through an article on romanticism on the Wiki, it is interesting that it was a rebellion against reason and industrialization, and focused on nature and intuition, not reason. Clearly this is not the same thing that Ayn Rand is talking about, which was more the Romantic Movement (highlighting emotions) versus Romanticism (highlighting reason and rational decision making). Though I would definitely put Kant in the "counter-enlightenment" category.

Counter-Enlightenment

Many intellectual historians have seen Romanticism as a key movement in the Counter-Enlightenment, a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment. While the thinkers of the Enlightenment emphasized the primacy of reason, Romanticism emphasized intuition, imagination, and feeling, to a point that has led to some Romantic thinkers being accused of irrationalism^{[citation needed]}.

Romanticism focuses on Nature: a place free from society's judgment and restrictions. Romanticism blossomed after the age of Rationalism, a time that focused on scientific reasoning."

Edited February 22, 2012 by Thomas M. Miovas Jr.

[Ninth Doctor]

I'm not sure what "Good Will Hunting" has to do with Schiller;

It’s my way of noting that I’ve played the “but Rand liked it” card twice on you in this thread. First on atonality, now on the influence of Kant on Rand via Schiller. It shouldn’t be necessary, it perhaps amounts to argument from authority, but you keep throwing out all this unrelated Objectivist propaganda about Kant while ignoring the valid points that are repeatedly being made. And you’re off lecturing people about their failure to use the “objective method”. Physician, heal thyself!

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

"But Rand liked it" is not an argument that she accepted parts of Kant's philosophy, especially since what she liked were the **art** of some of those artists mentioned above, and not their esthetic theories. She even mentions in the Romantic Manifesto that she loved Victor Hugo, but didn't like his esthetic theories at all, since she didn't think they were true of his type of art.

In the Lexicon under Kant: On every fundamental issue, Kant’s philosophy is the exact opposite of Objectivism.

And esthetics is a fundamental branch of philosophy.

She may very well have liked the idea of man rising out of the ashes via reason; but you would have to show me where she says explicitly that she got that idea from Kant and decided to use it in all of her major artworks.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

Here is a non-Objectivist writing about Kant's metaphysics and his epistemology, just to show that it is not "Objectivist propaganda against Kant" [**emphasis added**]:

"The first distinction separates a priori from a posteriori judgments by reference to the origin of our knowledge of them. A priori judgments are based upon reason alone, **independently of all sensory experience**, and therefore apply with strict universality. A posteriori judgments, on the other hand, must be grounded upon experience and are consequently limited and uncertain in their application to specific cases. Thus, this distinction also marks the difference traditionally noted in logic between necessary and contingent truths."

And (on phenomenal science):

"First, it must be possible in principle to arrange and organize the chaos of our many individual sensory images by tracing the connections that hold among them. This Kant called the synthetic unity of the sensory manifold.

Second, it must be possible in principle for a single subject to perform this organization by discovering the connections among perceived images. This is satisfied by what Kant called the transcendental unity of apperception."

Objectivism takes an entirely different approach -- there is no need to justify the evidence of the senses by tracing them back to the level of sensations,since man's nervous system does this automatically; the inputs are integrated by the neurology (the nervous system), and does not have to be explicitly known for the senses to be considered to be valid.

Edited February 22, 2012 by Thomas M. Miovas Jr.

[Plasmatic]

I've already provided quotes from Kant, and Ninth and I have already reminded you that I provided them. Here they are once again:

"Every affection of the strenuous type (such, that is, as excites the consciousness of our power of overcoming every resistance [animus strenuus]) is aesthetically sublime, e.g., anger, even desperation (the rage of forlorn hope but not faint-hearted despair)...

"Everything that provokes this feeling in us, including the might of nature which challenges our strength, is then called sublime, and it is only under presupposition of this idea within us, and in relation to it, that we are capable of attaining to the idea of the sublimity of that being which inspires deep respect in us, not by the mere display of its might in nature, but more by the faculty which is planted in us of estimating that might without fear, and of regarding our estate as exalted above it."

And I provide my own, condensed, Objectivist-style definition:

"The Sublime is the aesthetic experience of feeling the pleasure of exhilaration or exaltation through something which stimulates a sense of fear through its horror and/or immensity of magnitude."

Ninth provided examples from Kant of phenomena which stimulate the sense of Sublimity (our superior capacity to reason, our power of resistance, our courage to measure ourselves against seeming omnipotence, to adhere to our highest principles, and to regard our estate as exalted above the phenomena):

"Bold, overhanging, and, as it were, threatening rocks, thunderclouds piled up the vault of heaven, borne along with flashes and peals, volcanos in all their violence of destruction, hurricanes leaving desolation in their track, the boundless ocean rising with rebellious force, the high waterfall of some mighty river, and the like..."

I'll add, from Kant:

"...mountains ascending to heaven, deep ravines and torrents raging there...war...tempest...storm...earthquake..."

Let me stress that these phenomena themselves are not what Kant calls Sublime, nor are they what he values. The Sublimity, to Kant, is to be found in our reaction to the phenomena: The exaltation of feeling the power of our capacity to reason, resist, adhere to our highest principles, regard our estate as exalted, etc.

More to come...

There is nothing Oist like in your definition of sublimity. Fear is far from an Oist virtue. Mrs Rands perfect man was a man without pain fear or guilt.(Galt) Could you imagine Roark embodying the above?

I think to differentiate Oism from your conception of sublimity requires differentiating the virtues of prodictivity (as a creative process) and pride from your awe and fear laden sublimity. Im not sure yet if Kant imports this into his sublimity.

Productivness: http://aynrandlexico...uctiveness.html

"The virtue of Productiveness is the recognition of the fact that productive work is the process by which man’s mind sustains his life, the process that sets man free of the necessity to adjust himself to his background, as all animals do, and gives him the power to adjust his background to himself. Productive work is the road of man’s unlimited achievement and calls upon the highest attributes of his character: his creative ability, his ambitiousness, his self-assertiveness, his refusal to bear uncontested disasters, his dedication to the goal of reshaping the earth in the image of his values."

Those who fear ask,"Who is john Galt?". The one who has no fear declares,"I am John Galt".

I don't know. But I've watched them here for twenty years and I've seen the change. They used to rush through here, and it was wonderful to watch, it was the hurry of men who knew where they were going and were eager to get there. Now they're hurrying cause they are afraid. It's not a purpose that drives them, it's fear. They're not going anywhere, they're escaping. And I don't think they know what it is that they want to escape. They don't look at one another. They jerk when brushed against. They smile too much, but it's an ugly kind of smiling: it's not joy, it's pleading. I don't know what it is that's happening to the world." He shrugged. "Oh, well, who is John Galt?"

"He's just a meaningless phrase!"

She was startled by the sharpness of her own voice, and she added in apology, "I don't like that empty piece of slang. What does it mean? Where did it come from?"

"Nobody knows," he answered slowly.

"Why do people keep saying it? Nobody seems able to explain just what it stands for, yet they all use it as if they knew the meaning.''

"Why does it disturb you?" he asked.

"I don't like what they seem to mean when they say it."

"I don't, either, Miss Taggart."

She felt an eager impatience touched by the excitement of fear, as if he had leaped into an unknown danger. It was like the moment, years ago, when she had seen him dive first from a rock into the Hudson, had seen him vanish under the black water and had stood, knowing that he would reappear in an instant and that it would then be her turn to follow.

She dismissed the fear; dangers, to Francisco, were merely opportunities for another brilliant performance; there were no battles he could lose, no enemies to beat him.

What are you going to call it?"

She turned, startled. "What?"

"What are you going to call your company?"

"Oh ... Why, the Dagny Taggart Line, I guess."

"But ... Do you think that's wise? It might be misunderstood. The Taggart might be taken as—"

"Well, what do you want me to call it?" she snapped, worn down to anger. "The Miss Nobody? The Madam X? The John Galt?" She stopped. She smiled suddenly, a cold, bright, dangerous smile

"That's what I'm going to call it: the John Galt Line."

"Good God, no!"

"Yes."

"But it's … it's just a cheap piece of slang!"

"Yes."

"You can't make a joke out of such a serious project! ... You can't be so vulgar and ... and undignified!"

"Can't I?"

"But for God's sake, why?"

"Because it's going to shock all the rest of them just as it shocked you."

"I've never seen you playing for effects."

"I am, this time."

"But ..." His voice dropped to an almost superstitious sound: <as_186>

"Look, Dagny, you know, it's… it's bad luck.… What it stands for is …" He stopped.

"What does it stand for?"

"I don't know… But the way people use it, they always seem to say it out of—"

"Fear? Despair? Futility?"

"Yes ... yes, that's what it is."

"That's what I want to throw in their faces!"

The bright, sparkling anger in her eyes, her first look of enjoyment, made him understand that he had to keep still.

"Draw up all the papers and all the red tape in the name of the John Galt Line," she said.

He sighed. "Well, it's your Line."

"You bet it is!

Edited February 22, 2012 by Plasmatic

[Plasmatic]

One more beautiful expression of the above:

The recaptured sense of her own childhood kept coming back to her whenever she met the two sons of the young woman who owned the bakery shop. She often saw them wandering down the trails of the valley—two fearless beings, aged seven and four. They seemed to face life as she had faced it. They did not have the look she had seen in the children of the outer world—a look of fear, half-secretive, half-sneering, the look of a child's defense against an adult, the look of a being in the process of discovering that he is hearing lies and of learning to feel hatred. The two boys had the open, joyous, friendly confidence of kittens who do not expect to get hurt, they had an innocently natural, non-boastful sense of their own value and as innocent a trust in any stranger's ability to recognize it, they had the eager curiosity that would venture anywhere with the certainty that life held nothing unworthy of or closed to discovery, and they looked as if, should they encounter malevolence, they would reject it contemptuously, not as dangerous, but as stupid, they would not accept it in bruised resignation as the law of existence.

Edited February 22, 2012 by Plasmatic

[Jonathan13]

I see no evidence in Ayn Rand's writings that she was applying Kantian esthetics to the idea that the man of reason could rise above the chaos of his day.

Let's review the evidence for the two different claims that have been made.

First of all, what evidence have Objectivists given that Kant's Critique of Judgment makes him the "father of modern art"?

They have given none.

What evidence is there to suggest that "it would be closer to the truth to say that Kant's aesthetics makes him the father of Rand's art and her aesthetic 'sense of life,' and therefore of the Objectivist Esthetics"?

1) Rand claims to have read Kant's Critique of Judgment, and to have understood and analyzed its contents thoroughly enough to claim that it was a primary cause of "modern art." So, we at least know that she claimed to have been exposed to it in depth, where we don't know the same about the originators of "modern art."

If she actually did read the Critique of Judgment, she therefore read about Kant's views on the Sublime.

2) All of her art contains elements/events which meet the criteria of Kantian Sublimity -- it contains "formless," threatening forces which are of immense magnitude and which stimulate the characters' will to resist, as well as the readers'.

Is it being suggested that she rejected Kant's theory of Sublimity? Is it being suggested that Rand, a world-class novelist, accidentally and unknowingly presented Kantian Sublimity as her signature style in all of her novels? Is it being suggested that she was unaware of what she was doing -- she opposed the idea of Kantian Sublimity but didn't realize that it was the essence of all of her own art? I'm sorry, but if you believe that, then it sounds as if you have a vision of Rand in which she was incredibly unaware and stupid.

3) She was influenced by other writers, artists, musicians and theorists who were influenced by Kant (Helmholtz, for example, which is perhaps why she contradicted herself and allowed music to qualify as art despite the fact that it does not meet her definition and criteria -- perhaps Kant's evil influence trickled down to her through Helmholtz and tricked her into accepting blatant contradictions in her aesthetics?).

I'm sure that if she thought that was an

important part of art / novels that she would have mentioned it in The Romantic Manifesto, but she did not.

Rand never addressed the philosophical concept of the Sublime, Kantian or otherwise. Perhaps despite its historical, philosophical and aesthetic signigicance, she was unaware of the concept? And perhaps she never actually read the Critique of Judgment in its entirety?

I just don't see Kant as the initiator of that idea...So the idea of reason rising above chaos wasn't even begun by Kant.

I understand: You don't see Kant as the initiator of any idea that was good, even if he was, and you see him as the initiator of every idea that was bad, even if he wasn't.

But clearly, from the "romanticism" page on the Lexicon, she identified aspects of romanticism that had to do with the nature of man and the necessity of concretizing abstractions, which Kant certainly did not go into.

How would you know what Kant "did not go into"? You haven't read him. Why do you continue to make such claims?

She may very well have liked the idea of man rising out of the ashes via reason; but you would have to show me where she says explicitly that she got that idea from Kant and decided to use it in all of her major artworks.

You have double standards. You expect me to show you where Rand explicitly admits that she got the idea from Kant to make mankind's resisting formless, threatening forces her signature style, yet you accept the statement that Kant was the "father of modern art" despite the fact that no one has quoted the originators of "modern art" as saying that they got their ideas from Kant.

J

Edited February 23, 2012 by Jonathan13

[Jonathan13]

This position alone (his metaphysics and his epistemology) would logically lead to an esthetics from which modern art would stem strictly because non-objects painted on canvases and a-tonal music does not convey anything specific or intelligible to the rational mind.

No type of music conveys anything "specific and intelligible," and Rand said so herself! Architecture doesn't either. As Rand said, it "does not recreate reality." So, are you saying that Kant's ideas led to Rand's accepting architecture and music as valid art forms? Why are you still avoiding addressing these contradictions? Is Kant influencing you as well? C'mon, it's really not that difficult. The world is not going to end if you admit that Rand made a few mistakes in her Esthetics.

"As a re-creation of reality, a work of art has to be representational; its freedom of stylization is limited by the requirement of intelligibility; if it does not present an intelligible subject, it ceases to be art."

Rand admitted that music does not present intelligible subjects, so therefore by Objectivist standards, it should "cease to be art." She also said that architecture "does not re-create reality," and therefore by Objectivist standards, it also should "cease to be art."

So, Kant's view that one could only experience sublimity via chaos and disruptions to human endeavors and rising above that means that he held chaos and formlessness as being important in art, when they are not.

False. It means that Kant believed that rising to face challenges is important in art.

Rand portrayed chaos and disruptions within her art. Her heroes rise about it. Therefore, by your reasoning, she held that chaos and formlessness were important in art. It's really kind of embarrassing when you take a swing at Kant and end up punching Rand.

That's why I thought the two of you were Kantians. If you are not, then stop supporting Kant, who set about to destroy reason as an absolute.

We're not "supporting Kant" by arguing that you're misrepresenting his ideas and telling untruths.

Now, if you're opposed to the destruction of reason, then please quit avoiding the issue of Rand's aesthetic contradictions. Apply reason to them.

J

Edited February 23, 2012 by Jonathan13

[Jonathan13]

There is nothing Oist like in your definition of sublimity.

First of all, I wrote that it was an Objectivist-style definition. In other words, its style is condensed to essentials. Secondly, even though I wasn't referring to the content of the definition as being Objectivist, it nevertheless is Objectivist, contrary to your opinion.

Fear is far from an Oist virtue.

Nor is fear a Kantian virtue. How did you manage to misinterpret what I've written so as to believe that I was presenting anyone as claiming that fear is a virtue?

Mrs Rands perfect man was a man without pain fear or guilt.(Galt) Could you imagine Roark embodying the above?

I've alread stated that Rand's fictional heroes embody Sublimity -- in other words, they embody rising above that which is threatening!

J

[Plasmatic]

Jonathan, would you agree then that Rands art portrays her characters as being motivated by value rather than fear and that she called this productivity? Would you also agree that the man who does this is considered virtuous?

If so do you maintain that sublimity for Kant is synonymous with productivity for Rand?

[Ninth Doctor]

2) All of her art contains elements/events which meet the criteria of Kantian Sublimity -- it contains "formless," threatening forces which are of immense magnitude and which stimulate the characters' will to resist, as well as the readers'.

How about this: Rand set her protagonists in opposition to forces that can be overcome by reason, but not reasoned with. This resonates better with Kant’s formulation than that of Pseudo-Longinus or Burke. I don’t know if that makes things clearer or not.

I can’t help wondering if the reflexively condemnatory attitude to anything coming from Kant shouldn’t lead Objectivists to reject seismology, since he’s credited with originating the field.

[DonAthos]

Jonathan, would you agree then that Rands art portrays her characters as being motivated by value rather than fear and that she called this productivity? Would you also agree that the man who does this is considered virtuous?

If so do you maintain that sublimity for Kant is synonymous with productivity for Rand?

I've been trying to follow along with the discussion, and Jonathan (or whomever) can correct me if I'm wrong, but...

I believe that this "Kantian sublimity" is meant to be an effect produced in the reader of a given work (in this case, let's say Atlas Shrugged)... not something which, in itself, motivates the characters.

[Ninth Doctor]

I believe that this "Kantian sublimity" is meant to be an effect produced in the reader of a given work (in this case, let's say Atlas Shrugged)... not something which, in itself, motivates the characters.

No, ideally it’s both. Take the Friedrich painting I posted earlier. The idea is that you identify with the character as he experiences the Sublime.

[DonAthos]

No, ideally it’s both. Take the Friedrich painting I posted earlier. The idea is that you identify with the character as he experiences the Sublime.

Ahh. If that's the case, then I'm not certain how much Kantian sublimity (is it really meant to be capitalized?) is truly in Rand's works, though I'm open to arguments.

Going back to the definition that Jonathan proffered:

"The Sublime is the aesthetic experience of feeling the pleasure of exhilaration or exaltation through something which stimulates a sense of fear through its horror and/or immensity of magnitude."

I'd take it then that, say Galt or Roark (to take two of Rand's most readily identifiable heroes) are meant to have experienced this "sense of fear" through, at least, a contemplation on the "horror and/or immensity of magnitude" of the obstacles against which they struggled.

But, for instance, when Roark was asked by Toohey what Roark thought of him, Roark answered that he didn't think of Toohey. And I believe him.

So, yeah... I'd buy an argument that a reader of Rand's fiction might experience the sublime as we're discussing it; after all, the reader certainly is forced to consider the scale of the evils against which the heroes struggle (even if we ultimately decide that this evil is actually toothless). But I'm not convinced that the characters spend any time worrying about the power of their opposition, or thereby experience the requisite fear/terror.