I finished the book last week. I sensed the theme of the book might be captured in Simone Weil's observation in ‘Waiting for God’: "It may be that vice, depravity, and crime are nearly always, or even perhaps always, in their essence, attempts to eat beauty, to eat what we should only look at." Cf. her last section: On Beauty and On Being Wrong. Eros drives us to consume that thing we desire. Yet, in the consumption we lose the object of desire, and are unhappy. Like Plato in ‘The Phaedrus,’ it is the longing for the true, good, or beautiful (or for Augustine, the divine) that we must be content with. The quest of philosophy and literature and theology is more about desire and the journey, than the arrival. We are repulsed by those who 'have arrived' seeking to impose upon us their visions of eternity or truth. And, perhaps, to in the appreciation beauty is the consumption.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Beauty and Consumption
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5 comments:
In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, he refers to the "quality" of objects. There's the subjective, the objective, and the "quality" we strive for when we ascribe these actions to our ideal search. I believe that Zadie Smith, like Phaedrus, searches for the truth, but what I disliked about it was the journey - she tries to create this heterogeneous solemnity through appreciating beauty through the experiences of the character's lives, and her "homage" to what Forster did in dividing the struggle for class identification. We are forced to subsume this "quality" of beauty that Smith has ostensibly laid out for us, but there is no rhyme or reason in accepting that this hierarchy is the construct of looking at beauty (i.e. how the characters look at beauty.) because beauty has already been placed in front of us to acquiesce to. For me, I believe that beauty is truth, and for each character, they loath their own ordained level of predestination, which, in essence, can be true, but highly unlikely, when it comes to finding beauty. We all have a facade, but to reach our truth, we have to "be" true, not "attempt" to be true or "seem" true, as Hamlet put it.
i don't see a synonym between attempt and seem. And the Idea of "be" true then brings up what Smith is talking about a lot in the novel: What it means to "be" who you are. And if what it means to be who you are is constantly under question, or 'interrogation" to use a term Howard would use, then what is true is also under question, which in turn brings beauty under interrogation as well. Sure Keat's truth is beauty and beauty is truth is all i need to know, but that does not give an eternal definition to truth or beauty; in fact, it places it firmly into the subjective realm.
Isn't beauty beyond both the objective and subjective? To reduce it to either one is to diminish it. Like Gadamer's horizons, isn't it about the intersection of those? People are drawn to ugly things all the time. Beauty is NOT in the eye of the beholder. Communities must evaluate and judge. Yet, communities can be hegemonic. There remains the subjective. Is not beauty always on the move...it exists but can never be pinned down?
Yes, beauty is always on the move. I just felt like the propulsion of this beauty was based on false pretenses, thus reaching a contrived definition of beauty. For example, if I were to write about my experiences teaching at Concordia as an Ethics professor, you would say, "Okay, but I don't think you have any real experience as this professor," so I went to Carl's classes, videotaped his lectures, borrowed his notes, and wrote in such an elegant prose that you believed me, and you were so convinced that I was a professor - do you accept my writing as "truth" or the "attempt at truth?" I believe that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I just don't see her path to finding this beauty as plausible. Her codification to beauty makes great strides, and I buy it in certain areas, but in the end, it is not my "personal" idea of how to relate to her theme.
By the way, loving this discussion. I know that, speaking for myself, my donations will deteriorate since school is starting up, so I'm putting in as much time as possible.
Excellent point, Steve. Why do we desire one thing over another? The mystery, no?
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