[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Andrew Frisardi

If only the great aesthetic theorists of the past had known it was so simple. Jeesh.

Exactly. In an odd way, some responses remind me of that old joke about the guy who is born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. Then he argues that any discussion of the finer points of batting is just silly.

Newton had a better view: we only see a little further because we have the benefit of standing on the shoulders of giants.

But the whole know-nothing position is curiously American. We even see it in our politics. One side says "I built my business all by myself." And when the other side says "You didn't build the roads to transport your goods, you didn't build the network you use to communicate, you didn't build the schools that train the people who work with you," they get really, really mad. And say unpleasant things.

Never mind that Keats' 'beauty is truth, truth beauty, and that's the end of it,' is just silly. If A *is* A, it can't also be B, unless of course everything is one, in which case it makes no sense to name A and B. Never mind that at best it's an undergraduate's view of Plato (if only Keats had lived longer!). It's especially ironic when formalists repeat it, since Plato believed beauty is form enough, and that 'the form F *is* F.' And that only beauty is *both* a form and a sensory experience.

You can tell I'm a little frustrated. I don't understand how we can draw such clear lines between learning, knowing, and doing. It seems to me they are interwoven and interrelated. I don't fully agree with Maritain's definition that art is "a virtue of the practical intellect that aims at making," but when he says 'since art is a virtue that aims at making, to be an artist requires aiming at making beautiful things,' I'm right on board. Maybe that's because I believe virtue can be taught, discussed, learned, and practiced.

Maybe that's the theological difference here. If one believes, with the Spartans, that virtue can not be taught, that it (like artistic ability) either exists or doesn't exist within the individual, then every discussion of the subject would be pointless. On the other hand, that would also mean workshops are completely pointless.

Best,

Bill