[lit-ideas] Re: Beauty, anyone?

  • From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 16:05:45 +0900

On 2/21/07, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:


'But it is just a Socratic sophistry to argue that a proposition may
not be accepted as plainly true unless the terms in it are
defined--let alone "rigorously" defined. "Define your terms" is a
regular move for political hecklers, for writers of letters to
newspapers, for idle tosspots who argue inconsequentially over their
beer; after bedevilling philosophy for centuries, the Socratic
argument has found its proper level; let us keep it there.' [Peter
Geach, 'Intentionality,' in Logic Matters.]


A round of applause for Peter Geach.



My advice is to not accept the hecklers' challenge in the first place.


Good advice that. Sometimes, however, one simply becomes profoundly
annoyed at perpetual juveniles who have never outgrown the
self-absorption of their kind, especially when they use this kind of
tripe to stop interesting conversations before they have a chance to
start.

I was rather hoping to hear from Walter or Robert or Phil some
thoughts on Kant's distinction between the beautiful and the sublime
and whether Nehamas has produced an interesting alternative view.
Instead I got pink wallpaper.

P.S. Buddhist sand mandalas and Navajo sand paintings are both fine
examples of the beautiful in Nehamas' terms as I understand them. Each
instance is transient, but their beauty is attested by their
continuing recreation, the time and energy spent on trying to
understand them, and the quality of the thinking some of that time and
energy is spent on.

The same might be said of Japanese cherry blossoms,  well-executed
martial arts moves, great performances of Shakespeare or Beethoven.
Not, I suspect, of pink wallpaper, chain saws, or well-formed turds
(though, in the last case, I can point to at least one moderately
famous Japanese potter, who describing his passion for working
directly with coils of clay....)

John

--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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