Kant and Aesthetics

[Jonathan13]

Jonathon and I have gone around on this before. He is correct that the definition Rand gave for art would exclude some things which she elsewhere identified as art.

This is an issue addressed in What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand by Torres and Kahmi. Torres and Kahmi put forward the theory that Rand's definition can work for the traditional "fine arts" of painting, sculpture, literature, music, dance and drama.

And Kamhi and Torres' position is that architecture does not qualify as art by Rand's definition and criteria.

They get over "the problem of music" for Rand's definition by identifying that the concretizations that artists produce can belong to the class existents rather than entities. Entities are distinct intelligible units whereas existents includes events and relationships and attributes. Music is composed of notes, sequences of notes and timing and tone relationships, many of which are highly correlated to predictable emotional responses in listeners.

Something's being merely "highly correlated to predictable emotional responses in listeners" isn't enough to make music objectively intelligible by Rand's standards. If it were, then abstract painting and sculpture would also qualify as art, as would architecture, since people "predictably emotionally respond" to the "events and relationships and attributes" in abstract art and architecture just as they do to music.

Music need not present us with fully formed entities as a visual art or a passage of text is able to do in order to qualify as a 'recreation of reality' because existents are real.

Then the same is true of abstract art and architecture. The Objectivist position amounts to saying, "But I don't want abstract art to qualify as art, and I want architecture to qualify, even though the expressiveness of the forms and relationships is exactly the same in both abstract art and architecture."

Ayn Rand would deny that some representative samples of the Modernist or Abstract schools of art were art at all, but that can only be justified on her normative theory of what art should do rather than an objective application of her definition.

I think that Rand's assertions would need proof to back them up, such as comparisons of people's abilities to identify "artists' meanings" (while being denied access to any "outside considerations") in works of music versus abstract paintings, and in works of architecture versus abstract paintings. From my own testing of Objectivists versus fans of abstract art, the fans of abstract art do much better at identifying meanings in abstract art than Objectivists do at identifying meaning in music and architecture. Not only that, but fans of abstract art often do better at identifying meaning in abstract art than Objectivists do at identifying meaning in realistic paintings.

The problem, as I see it, is that the Objectivist Esthetics makes no attempt to identify to whom a work of art must convey meaning, but instead begins with the unwarranted assumption that if it does not convey meaning to certain Objectivists, then it cannot possibly convey meaning to anyone (and therefore that anyone who claims to be as affected by it as Objectivists are by music or architecture is lying or delusional). In effect, Objectivism offers no means of testing the effects that various art forms may or may not have on people, but instead arbitrarily accepts certain Objectivists' lack of ability to be affected as the universal norm.

It should also be noted that in a draft of We The Living, Rand wrote of abstract art's “laughing, defiant broken lines and circles cutting triangles, and triangles splitting squares," and of "the new art coming through some crack in the impenetrable barrier.” In other words, she wrote of abstract shapes conveying the human attributes of laughter and defiance. So, at least at one point in her life, she appears to have recognized the ability of abstract art to convey meaning, just as she recognized the ability of the abstract shapes and relationships of architecture to convey meaning in The Fountainhead.

J

[Jonathan13]

I wrote:

And Kamhi and Torres' position is that architecture does not qualify as art by Rand's definition and criteria.

I think it's worth noting that Kamhi and Torres appear to be great examples of what I'm talking about when saying that certain Objectivists smuggle in their own personal lack of response as the universal standard for all mankind. They don't get much, if anything, out of architecture, so they arbitrarily establish themselves as the universal norm and imply that no one else can experience what they can't. In effect, they are saying that it is not possible that you and I and Rand experienced the same emotional impact and meaning in architecture that Kamhi and Torres assert that they experience in music -- their emotional responses to music are somehow real, valid and deep, but ours are not.

J

Edited February 29, 2012 by Jonathan13

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

I think we need a brief review: To Kant, that which we observe is not existence, but rather the phenomena, and it is dependent on human consciousness (see his "Copernican Revolution" stated above). Hence,that which we observe is not the real reality, but only the reality that conforms to our mind (our innate structures of the mind, such as causality, logic, form). To Plato, the real reality was the world of the Forms, which he held were static, and we only get motion or change due to the fact that the Forms didn't interact with matter very well. To Kant, the real reality is formless, due to the fact that our minds conform the reality that we observe. Real reality, according to Kant, would be formless and not immediately graspable to the human mind. And we do not get real reality via sense perception. The only way to comprehend real reality is to use Pure Reason -- reason not derived or dependent upon perception or that which we observe. Since it is this Pure Reason that conforms the reality that we observe, he held that the only way to grasp reality the way it really is was to disconnect the mind from the perceptually self-evident, and use Pure Reason. If we could understand the structure of Pure Reason, we might be able to figure out what the human mind does to the noumena and maybe have some grasp of reality the way it really is, but he held that this was impossible, since we are confined to awareness using human apparati (the sensory manifold) and Pure Reason, which is still dependent on being human. With this view of existence and our awareness of it, the rejection of art that presents the perceptually self-evident is naturally and logically rejected as having nothing to say about reality the way it really is (apart from human awareness and human distortions). Hence, briefly, this leads to art which is an offense to the imagination, as Kant held in his Critique of Judgement -- art that is not a depiction of the forms we observe with our senses, but rather a rejection of such forms in order to get to real reality, which we can only know by divining the structures of the mind.

His whole philosophy is really a form of subjectivism; saying reality (the phenomena we observe) is dependent on human consciousness for it's form and consistency. And it is only by rejecting this, that we can come to grasp existence the way it really is.

Edited February 29, 2012 by Thomas M. Miovas Jr.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

I may get to music and architecture as art, but I am going to have to look up specific passages from The Romantic Manifest by Ayn Rand to present her arguments. However, I do see in this thread too much of a focus on one's emotional response as definitional to art. A sense of life response is definitely involved,but it is not the emotional reaction per se that makes it art. One can have a positive response to a snowy day, but the snowy day is not art.

[Jonathan13]

I think we need a brief review: To Kant, that which we observe is not existence, but rather the phenomena, and it is dependent on human consciousness (see his "Copernican Revolution" stated above). Hence,that which we observe is not the real reality, but only the reality that conforms to our mind (our innate structures of the mind, such as causality, logic, form). To Plato, the real reality was the world of the Forms, which he held were static, and we only get motion or change due to the fact that the Forms didn't interact with matter very well. To Kant, the real reality is formless, due to the fact that our minds conform the reality that we observe. Real reality, according to Kant, would be formless and not immediately graspable to the human mind. And we do not get real reality via sense perception. The only way to comprehend real reality is to use Pure Reason -- reason not derived or dependent upon perception or that which we observe. Since it is this Pure Reason that conforms the reality that we observe, he held that the only way to grasp reality the way it really is was to disconnect the mind from the perceptually self-evident, and use Pure Reason. If we could understand the structure of Pure Reason, we might be able to figure out what the human mind does to the noumena and maybe have some grasp of reality the way it really is, but he held that this was impossible, since we are confined to awareness using human apparati (the sensory manifold) and Pure Reason, which is still dependent on being human. With this view of existence and our awareness of it, the rejection of art that presents the perceptually self-evident is naturally and logically rejected as having nothing to say about reality the way it really is (apart from human awareness and human distortions). Hence, briefly, this leads to art which is an offense to the imagination, as Kant held in his Critique of Judgement -- art that is not a depiction of the forms we observe with our senses, but rather a rejection of such forms in order to get to real reality, which we can only know by divining the structures of the mind.

His whole philosophy is really a form of subjectivism; saying reality (the phenomena we observe) is dependent on human consciousness for it's form and consistency. And it is only by rejecting this, that we can come to grasp existence the way it really is.

Wrong.

[Jonathan13]

I may get to music and architecture as art, but I am going to have to look up specific passages from The Romantic Manifest by Ayn Rand to present her arguments. However, I do see in this thread too much of a focus on one's emotional response as definitional to art. A sense of life response is definitely involved, but it is not the emotional reaction per se that makes it art. One can have a positive response to a snowy day, but the snowy day is not art.

Do you also then think that Rand placed too much focus on emotional response as definitional to music?

Here are quotes from Rand [with my bolding]:

"Music employs the sounds produced by the periodic vibrations of a sonorous body, and evokes man’s sense-of-life emotions."

"The pattern of the process involved in music is: from perception—to emotion—to appraisal—to conceptual understanding."

"Music is experienced as if it had the power to reach man’s emotions directly."

"Psycho-epistemologically, the pattern of the response to music seems to be as follows: one perceives the music, one grasps the suggestion of a certain emotional state and..."

"Music cannot tell a story, it cannot deal with concretes, it cannot convey a specific existential phenomenon, such as a peaceful countryside or a stormy sea. The theme of a composition entitled “Spring Song” is not spring, but the emotions which spring evoked in the composer. Even concepts which, intellectually, belong to a complex level of abstraction, such as “peace,” “revolution,” “religion,” are too specific, too concrete to be expressed in music. All that music can do with such themes is convey the emotions of serenity, or defiance, or exaltation."

"Music communicates emotions, which one grasps, but does not actually feel; what one feels is a suggestion, a kind of distant, dissociated, depersonalized emotion—until and unless it unites with one’s own sense of life. But since the music’s emotional content is not communicated conceptually or evoked existentially, one does feel it in some peculiar, subterranean way."

-----

That's a lot of focus on emotion and "sense of life" for someone who said that emotions and "sense of life" are "not tools of cognition" and are "not a criterion of esthetic judgment."

What Rand says above about music is also true of the other abstract art forms, including architecture, dance and abstract painting and sculpture. They each follow the process of perception to emotion to appraisal to conceptual understanding. That's why people like you who have no emotional response to abstract art assert that it is "meaningless," and why people like Kamhi and Torres reject architecture while accepting music. Your denial that abstract art is art is like someone who experiences no emotion in a piece of music asserting that it is not art, and that anyone who thinks it is is an evil Kantian who is out to destroy man's method of cognition.

J

[Grames]

Actually the problem with architecture is its admixture with the utilitarian. It is the same with fashionable clothing design, furniture design and iphone design.

[Jonathan13]

Actually the problem with architecture is its admixture with the utilitarian. It is the same with fashionable clothing design, furniture design and iphone design.

Right, architecture present two serious problems for Objectivism. The first is that Rand stated that it "does not re-create reality" but yet can somehow be classified as art, which she stated "re-creates reality." The second problem is that architecture is utilitarian, and Rand said that utilitarian objects cannot qualify as art.

J

[Grames]

Jonathon, of the two problems you list the first can be gotten around and the second is not a problem.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

Actually, I went back and read The Romantic Manifesto with regards to architecture and music, and 13 is way off base with his conclusions or he is attributing things to Miss Rand that she did not say. She is very brief on architecture as an art form due to the fact that she wrote The Fountainhead on the subject and refers the reader to that book for further understanding of the artistic meaning of architecture. As to music, she realizes that mankind is still in a primitive state regarding his understanding of music, since there is no objective language for music, yet. She says it would require a thorough understanding of how certain notes played certain ways can evoke the suggestion of an emotion and the sense of life emotional response, which would require some knowledge of physiology. Until we have that, then the artistic value of music remains strictly personal (so long as it is not just random noise). So, if you have a beef with Ayn Rand on either architecture or music, then you need to think it through again and not just quote from The Romantic Manifesto. Much more work needs to be done with regards to music, and architecture is covered in The Fountainhead. And The Fountainhead makes it very clear that architecture is not just about utilitarian functions of a building; there are many, many options of stylizing a building such that it conveys a concretized abstraction. So, 13 is really arguing a straw man.

[Spiral Architect]

Wrong.

Why?

[Hairnet]

I think we need a brief review: To Kant, that which we observe is not existence, but rather the phenomena, and it is dependent on human consciousness (see his "Copernican Revolution" stated above). Hence,that which we observe is not the real reality, but only the reality that conforms to our mind (our innate structures of the mind, such as causality, logic, form). To Plato, the real reality was the world of the Forms, which he held were static, and we only get motion or change due to the fact that the Forms didn't interact with matter very well. To Kant, the real reality is formless, due to the fact that our minds conform the reality that we observe. Real reality, according to Kant, would be formless and not immediately graspable to the human mind. And we do not get real reality via sense perception. The only way to comprehend real reality is to use Pure Reason -- reason not derived or dependent upon perception or that which we observe. Since it is this Pure Reason that conforms the reality that we observe, he held that the only way to grasp reality the way it really is was to disconnect the mind from the perceptually self-evident, and use Pure Reason. If we could understand the structure of Pure Reason, we might be able to figure out what the human mind does to the noumena and maybe have some grasp of reality the way it really is, but he held that this was impossible, since we are confined to awareness using human apparati (the sensory manifold) and Pure Reason, which is still dependent on being human. With this view of existence and our awareness of it, the rejection of art that presents the perceptually self-evident is naturally and logically rejected as having nothing to say about reality the way it really is (apart from human awareness and human distortions). Hence, briefly, this leads to art which is an offense to the imagination, as Kant held in his Critique of Judgement -- art that is not a depiction of the forms we observe with our senses, but rather a rejection of such forms in order to get to real reality, which we can only know by divining the structures of the mind.

His whole philosophy is really a form of subjectivism; saying reality (the phenomena we observe) is dependent on human consciousness for it's form and consistency. And it is only by rejecting this, that we can come to grasp existence the way it really is.

I don't think he ever advocated the rejection of the use of the senses. He was just saying they may not be representative of what is real. Maybe I am reading to much pramgatism into him, but you make him sound like a Hindu.

I believe most critiques of empiricism by rationalists revolve around the problem of induction, not whether or not the senses are useful.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

Here are selected quotes from The Romantic Manifesto regarding the nature of art and the nature of architecture that I think is bothering 13:

“Metaphysics—the science that deals with the fundamental nature of reality—involves man's widest abstractions. It includes every concrete he has ever perceived, it involves such a vast sum of knowledge and such 'a long chain of concepts that no man could hold it all in the focus of his immediate conscious awareness. Yet he needs that sum and that awareness to guide him—he needs the power to summon them into full, conscious focus.

That power is given to him by art.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments.

By a selective re-creation, art isolates and integrates those aspects of reality which represent man's fundamental view of himself and of existence. Out of the <rm_20> countless number of concretes—of single, disorganized and (seemingly) contradictory attributes, actions and entities—an artist isolates the things which he regards as metaphysically essential and integrates them into a single new concrete that represents an embodied abstraction.”

“Bearing this in mind, consider the nature of the major <rm_46> branches of art, and of the specific physical media they employ.

Literature re-creates reality by means of language—Painting, by means of color on a two-dimensional surface—Sculpture, by means of a three-dimensional form made of a solid material. Music employs the sounds produced by the periodic vibrations of a sonorous body, and evokes man's sense-of-life emotions. Architecture is in a class by itself, because it combines art with a utilitarian purpose and does not re-create reality, but creates a structure for man's habitation or use, expressing man's values. (There are also the performing arts, whose medium is the person of the artist; we shall discuss them later.)

Now observe the relation of these arts to man's cognitive faculty: Literature deals with the field of concepts—Painting, with the field of sight—Sculpture, with the combined fields of sight and touch—Music, with the field of hearing. (Architecture, qua art, is close to sculpture: its field is three-dimensional, i.e., sight and touch, but transposed to a grand spatial scale.)”

She says that architecture does not re-create reality, but does convey his widest values -- an artist's metaphysical value judgements (what is important to him and his fundamental evaluation of existence and man's place in it, often held as a emotion that is not identified explicitly). Clearly, she thought that a good architect qua artist could convey this in his building designs that involve more than just functionality. But because she didn't go into details in The Romantic Manifesto and refers one to The Fountainhead, then one would have to get her basic view of architecture qua art from that novel.

Edited March 1, 2012 by Thomas M. Miovas Jr.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

I don't think he ever advocated the rejection of the use of the senses. He was just saying they may not be representative of what is real. Maybe I am reading to much pramgatism into him, but you make him sound like a Hindu.

Obviously, a man cannot live in existence by ignoring it, so no, Kant didn't come right out and say one ought to ignore that which is available via the senses. He just came up with a philosophy that said it wasn't real reality and that if one wanted to understand real reality (the noumena) then one couldn't get there via perception. Now, is he a Hindu? No, but certainly Miss Rand would put him in the class of Witch Doctor that she discusses in For the New Intellectual. And she would say this precisely because Kant never gave any evidence for the existence of the noumena any more than Plato gave evidence for The Forms and the Christians give evidence for Heaven and God.

[Hairnet]

Did he ever state that understanding noumena was an actual goal of his philosophy?

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

Did he ever state that understanding noumena was an actual goal of his philosophy?

He's actually more concerned about how the human mind conditions that which we observe, but he does say the noumena (or things in themselves) does exist and is real, only it is unconditioned by the human mind, and in context, means that the noumena is formless, since the human mind is what gives form to that which we observe.

From Kant's very long introduction to his Critique of Pure Reason

[**emphasis added**]

http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/cpr/prefs.html

"This tribunal is no other than the critique of pure

reason.

I do not mean by this a critique of books and systems,

but of the faculty of reason in general, in respect of all know-

ledge after which it may strive **independently of all experi-

ence**. It will therefore decide as to the possibility or impossi-

bility of metaphysics in general, and determine its sources,

its extent, and its limits -- all in accordance with principles."

"If intuition must conform to the constitution of

the objects, I do not see how we could know anything of

the latter a priori; but if the object (as object of the senses)

must conform to the constitution of our faculty of intuition,

I have no difficulty in conceiving such a possibility. Since I

cannot rest in these intuitions if they are to become known,

but must relate them as representations to something as their

object, and determine this latter through them, either I must

assume that the concepts, by means of which I obtain this

determination, conform to the object, or else I assume that the

objects, or what is the same thing, that the experience in

which alone, as given objects, they can be known, conform to

the concepts. In the former case, I am again in the same per-

plexity as to how I can know anything a priori in regard to

the objects. In the latter case the outlook is more hopeful. For

experience is itself a species of knowledge which involves

P 023

understanding; and understanding has rules which I must pre-

suppose as being in me prior to objects being given to me, and

therefore as being a priori."

"For we are brought

to the conclusion that we can never transcend the limits of

possible experience, though that is precisely what this science

is concerned, above all else, to achieve. This situation yields,

however, just the very experiment by which, indirectly, we

are enabled to prove the truth of this first estimate of our

a priori knowledge of reason, namely, that such knowledge

has to do only with appearances, **and must leave the thing

in itself as indeed real per se, but as not known by us**.

For what necessarily forces us to transcend the limits of

experience and of all appearances is the **unconditioned**,

which reason, by necessity and by right, demands in things

in themselves, as required to complete the series of con-

ditions."

In other words, the noumena is completely unconditioned by the human mind -- i.e. no form and no regularity. But, no, he doesn't say he is trying to understand the noumena, but rather how man's mind conditions that which he observes.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

Kant gave a list of categories that are the primary conditioners (a priori mental constructs governing) of that which we observe (the phenomenal world). Notice that he includes causality as one of these conditioners, which means that the noumena would be utterly causeless (i.e chaotic and formless).

For a contrary understanding of causation and how we develop the concept of causality from observation, see my essays on causality.

Edited March 1, 2012 by Thomas M. Miovas Jr.

[Jonathan13]

Actually, I went back and read The Romantic Manifesto with regards to architecture and music, and 13 is way off base with his conclusions or he is attributing things to Miss Rand that she did not say.

No, I'm not off base. Apparently you didn't read closely enough. Rand said exactly what I've quoted her as saying. She defined art as a selective "re-creation of reality" and stated that architecture "does not re-create reality." She also stated that "utilitarian objects cannot be classified as works of art," and she recognized that buildings are utilitarian objects, but she classified them as art anyway!

She is very brief on architecture as an art form due to the fact that she wrote The Fountainhead on the subject and refers the reader to that book for further understanding of the artistic meaning of architecture.

Rand's referring her readers to The Fountainhead is a cute comment, but her doing so does not explain how architecture can qualify as art by her definition and criteria (which requires that art be a "re-creation of reality"). As Kamhi and Torres note, "Contrary to her implication...a fictional treatment cannot take the place of a philosophical analysis."

In The Fountainhead, Rand presents fictional people having fictional reactions to fictional buildings and finding deep aesthetic meaning in them, and she does so without explaining how the characters have managed to find such meaning despite the fact that, by Rand's own admission, architecture "does not re-create" reality, and despite the fact that architecture's forms are abstract.

If one is going to accept such fictional portrayals as a valid replacement for philosophical analysis and logical explication, then I hereby present the following short piece of fiction:

"Once upon a time, a man named Harold Rark unveiled his latest abstract painting on national television, and everyone who saw it recognized it as a great work of art which powerfully expressed heroism. It was austere and simple, with a severe, mathematical order, and the relationships of its forms expressed variations on a single theme: the heroic human spirit. The entire population of the world unanimously voted it to be the greatest, most expressive and profoundly meaningful work of art ever created. The end."

There. Now, like Rand, I will simply state that, to any who has any questions about how abstract paintings can qualify as art by Objectivism's criteria, I refer you to the above work of fiction that I've created. My doing so answers no fewer philosophical problems than did Rand's referring her readers to The Fountainhead. Abstract art is therefore art.

As to music, she realizes that mankind is still in a primitive state regarding his understanding of music, since there is no objective language for music, yet.

So, are you saying that Rand could predict the future? Are you saying that there must be an objective "conceptual vocabulary" for music because Rand said there will be one? It's not even a possibility in your mind that no one has discovered such a vocabulary because no objective vocabluraies are applicable to subjective phenomena?

She says it would require a thorough understanding of how certain notes played certain ways can evoke the suggestion of an emotion and the sense of life emotional response, which would require some knowledge of physiology.

Then in the name of consistency, the same leeway should be given to all art forms, including abstract art. I therefore declare, as I have in the past, that someday someone will discover how all colors and forms in abstract art evoke the suggestion of an emotion and sense of life response. In fact, abstract art theorists have already done a better job of it than anyone has in regard to music. See the quotes (in post 113) from Kandinsky that I've frequently posted in Objectivist fora. Therefore abstract art is already more qualified to be an art form than music is.

Until we have that, then the artistic value of music remains strictly personal (so long as it is not just random noise).

No. That is false. Rand did not say that music remains "strictly personal." She said that it must be treated as a "subjective matter." Why did you change her statement to "strictly personal" when she said "subjective"?

So, if you have a beef with Ayn Rand on either architecture or music, then you need to think it through again and not just quote from The Romantic Manifesto.

No, you need to read more carefully, and you need to stop altering what Rand said.

Much more work needs to be done with regards to music, and architecture is covered in The Fountainhead. And The Fountainhead makes it very clear that architecture is not just about utilitarian functions of a building; there are many, many options of stylizing a building such that it conveys a concretized abstraction.

The point that you're apparently not grasping is that The Fountainhead does not explain how a building can convey anything when it "does not re-create reality." It doesn't explain how the abstract forms of architecture can convey meaning. Nor does it explain how anyone could take the illogical position that the abstract forms and relationships of architecture can convey deep meaning, but the exact same forms and relationships in an abstract painting cannot.

She says that architecture does not re-create reality, but does convey his widest values -- an artist's metaphysical value judgements (what is important to him and his fundamental evaluation of existence and man's place in it, often held as a emotion that is not identified explicitly).

Yes. In other words, in order to accept architecture as a valid art form, Rand had to abandon her definition and criteria! She accepted something as art which uses non-representational, abstract forms and relationships, and which evokes a subjective, emotional response which is, as you yourself say, "not identified explicitly." It therefore does not present objectively intelligible subjects or meanings as Rand required. It is subjective and abstract.

Clearly, she thought that a good architect qua artist could convey this in his building designs that involve more than just functionality. But because she didn't go into details in The Romantic Manifesto and refers one to The Fountainhead, then one would have to get her basic view of architecture qua art from that novel.

There is nothing in the novel which explains how something which "does not re-create reality" and which relies only on abstract forms and abstract spatial relationships can qualify as something which by definition must "re-create reality."

Anyway, I wonder what you think of this:

We implied in What Art Is that either Binswanger or Rand (or both) had fully recognized the contradiction presented to her concept of art by her one major nonfiction statement regarding architecture (cited above) and had therefore decided not to include it in the Lexicon. That supposition was recently confirmed by Binswanger's response to a question following a talk he gave on Objectivism to the Ayn Rand Discussion Group at Columbia University, in the Roone Arledge Auditorium, on November 14, 2000. When asked by Frank Giallombardo--an Objectivist visitor (not a student) who had read What Art Is, and to whom we owe the account of this event--why there was no entry on architecture in the Lexicon, Binswanger replied that, though he had urged that one be included (in view of the importance placed on the subject in The Fountainhead), Rand had answered that it would be better to omit it because on reflection she had decided that architecture is primarily "utilitarian." Binswanger's account suggests that when Rand was faced with the choice of either contradicting her theory of art by including her statement on architecture or, in effect, rejecting her prior claim that "architecture combines art with a utilitarian purpose," she chose the latter.

J

[Jonathan13]

Why?

Read this thread, and follow the links.

J

[Hairnet]

If his goal was not to understand any direct ways of dealing with noumena (I would interperet that as a form of mysticism), then I have to see him as a kind of rationalist.

[Jonathan13]

Jonathon, of the two problems you list the first can be gotten around and the second is not a problem.

Rand didn't seem to think so (see the end of my post 118).

The only solutions to Rand's contradictions and inconsistencies are to eliminate art forms which don't meet her criteria (architecture, music, dance, etc.) or to alter her definition and criteria so as to eliminate the requirements that art must "re-create reality," and that it must objectively communicate objectively intelligible subjects and meanings.

J

[Grames]

Rand didn't seem to think so (see the end of my post 118).

The only solutions to Rand's contradictions and inconsistencies are to eliminate art forms which don't meet her criteria (architecture, music, dance, etc.) or to alter her definition and criteria so as to eliminate the requirements that art must "re-create reality," and that it must objectively communicate objectively intelligible subjects and meanings.

J

The solutions are to include as recreations of reality existents (relations, attributes, etc) rather than expecting strictly entities, and to cast architecture out of art. Rand did not opine on the first, and apparently did opt for the second.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

If his goal was not to understand any direct ways of dealing with noumena (I would interperet that as a form of mysticism), then I have to see him as a kind of rationalist.

Well, yes, he was a rationalist insofar as he discussed ideas and abstraction apart from the evidence backing up those ideas -- that is, he argued from idea to idea without a reference to reality. However, he went beyond that in claiming that the human mind created the phenomenal world (that which we observe) and held that the thing-in-itself (or the noumena) was not graspable to the human mind via sense perception, a form of mysticism. Plato is the arch-rationalist in his epistemological method, but he never claimed that the human mind created the world of the Forms.

From the Lexicon: "What is mysticism? Mysticism is the acceptance of allegations without evidence or proof, either apart from or against the evidence of one’s senses and one’s reason. Mysticism is the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifiable means of knowledge, such as “instinct,” “intuition,” “revelation,” or any form of “just knowing.”"

How does Kant know the noumena or things-in-themselves exist? He doesn't point to evidence, he just knows it; making him a mystic of the mind.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

By the way, I never said that metaphysical values could not be expressed in terms of explicit words, I said that most people hold onto their fundamental evaluation of existence and man's place in it in terms of an emotional sum of their sense of life. From the Lexicon: "A sense of life is a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence. It sets the nature of a man’s emotional responses and the essence of his character." This does not imply that a conceptual metaphysics or a conceptual evaluation of existence is not possible. All forms of art convey this abstraction, some more explicitly (as in a novel) some more implicitly (as in dance, for example). I would claim, as would Miss Rand, that architecture qua art does convey the nature of reality and man's place in it, even though it is not a re-creation of reality. It does this by the shape and stylization of the building as a whole.

I wish it were possible to post a picture here without having to draw it from a website, since I think one can definitely make the case that Frank Lloyd Wright's "Falling Water" conveys an openness to existence and a type of rational exuberance for embracing the earth and what it has to offer. It does this by having the balcony extend out horizontally without any visible means of support at the corners (the way it thrusts into space), and has a crisp clean look to it. And some buildings are just a downright mess, conveying the idea that reality is confusing and self-contradictory.

A beautiful building that is stylized conveys that the universe is open to man's understanding, a downright ugly building (self-contradictory in its stylization) conveys that reality is chaotic and not open to reason.

[added on edit] And notice that I talked about the stylization of the building and not the emotional reaction it conveys.

In the Lexicon, Ayn Rand identifies "beauty" as harmony: "Beauty is a sense of harmony. Whether it’s an image, a human face, a body, or a sunset, take the object which you call beautiful, as a unit [and ask yourself]: what parts is it made up of, what are its constituent elements, and are they all harmonious? If they are, the result is beautiful. If there are contradictions and clashes, the result is marred or positively ugly."

Edited March 1, 2012 by Thomas M. Miovas Jr.

[Hairnet]

Well, yes, he was a rationalist insofar as he discussed ideas and abstraction apart from the evidence backing up those ideas -- that is, he argued from idea to idea without a reference to reality. However, he went beyond that in claiming that the human mind created the phenomenal world (that which we observe) and held that the thing-in-itself (or the noumena) was not graspable to the human mind via sense perception, a form of mysticism. Plato is the arch-rationalist in his epistemological method, but he never claimed that the human mind created the world of the Forms.

From the Lexicon: "What is mysticism? Mysticism is the acceptance of allegations without evidence or proof, either apart from or against the evidence of one’s senses and one’s reason. Mysticism is the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifiable means of knowledge, such as “instinct,” “intuition,” “revelation,” or any form of “just knowing.”"

How does Kant know the noumena or things-in-themselves exist? He doesn't point to evidence, he just knows it; making him a mystic of the mind.

A bad argument isn't the same thing as faith. I have known plenty of Christians who honestly think that the idea of God is a reasonable proposition, and I wouldn't call them mystical until they get backed into the corner of "I just know blah blah". I don't think Kant was ever backed into that corner, and until then there isn't any evidence that supports the claim that he was that kind of person. Kant gave an argument for the existence of noumena, all though it is fallacious, and there isn't any evidence that he did so in bad faith.

Beyond this even if his system does mention an otherworldly realm of formlessness that man can not access directly, it doesn't matter because he never said that one can or should attempt to access it directly. If he had said something that ammounts "I have faith in noumena" or, "Noumena, and the facts of its nature is revealed to us through X", then I would accept him as a literal mystic.

The rationalist mistake of taking abstractioins and putting them before anything is unremarkable.The special evil that Ayn Rand thinks he is special for is him arguing to the effect that; The mind makes an irrational and uknowable universe rational by imposing built in abstractions on it. So she takes from this that the idea that the universe is uknowable and irrational, and sees him as the source of this in modern western thought, even though he is also the source of why many raitonalists still argue to this day that even our subjective inner world is governed by logic.

I see this as serious error, but it does not make Kant the most evil man in history. Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Max Stirner, and so on, were all grown men responsible for their own philisophical works, and their implicaitons in Aesthetitics. Kant isn't responsible for Dadaism, or Futurism, or any of that trash.