Contemplation

The dispute over beauty is a manifestation of the dispute over what the purpose of a person is.  For Bentham, it is to create a happy stable politeia where everyone is fed and warm and happy and amused so we don't get bored or angry and start killing each other.  For Pater, it is pleasure:  art is useful because it provides pleasure and then we contemplate our own pleasurable experience and so don't notice that our life is passing away.

For Aristotle, which is whom Pater is most distorting, what is "peculiarly human" is to be "a being-at-work in accord with reason" formed by virtue so that we can choose right actions, and this is what is most beautiful.  Virtuous action in accordance with reason is most beautiful because it is most fitting to what a human being is.  The next questions then, will involve the nature of virtue (in brief, the mean between two extremes) and of contemplation.  I am so excited about this, because it cuts down Pater and modern emoters right at the root:  life, and art, are NOT about our own feelings or experiences.  This is a good place to begin to know reality, but a terrible place to end.  Contemplation is NOT about one's own self, and it is NOT sterile.  Rather, contemplation is the ultimate action of which a properly formed human being is capable.  It is not some sissy irrational thing, or even something to which the elite few are called.  It is the fulfillment of our existence, and seeking beauty is the shortest way there.

Utilitarianism and Epicureanism

It all started when . . . 

When Bentham said that the highest good is pleasure, and the way to create an ethics, morality, and social structure is to promote pleasurable things that will keep people warm, fed, clothed and happy, thus preventing wars and death.  There is no concept of developing the self, or striving for higher things, because the world is only physical.  John Stuart Mill takes evolves this further:  he admits to a realm of imagination, which is the reason that religion and poetry are useful.  This is not the ideal outlet, however.  In Utility of Religion, Mill claims that the best route to happiness is to be able to accept and be content with the fact that all we have is this physical existence, and, since pleasure is the highest good, we should take care to fill each moment with pleasure so that we will have nothing to regret or wish for at the end of life.  A moment filled with pleasure, he says, is never wasted, and a life filled with pleasurable moments is the highest good we could possibly desire.

Where does this leave poesy, then?

Pater's Aesthetics

and how he's influenced the rest of the world.  Structure:  The Renaissance, Appreciations, Marius.  Wordsworth is key because he is the most immediate launching point.  The Romantics are also the splitting point:  Byron  & Shelley opposing the founders, Wordsworth & Coleridge, and Keats teetering somewhere between, trying to reconcile the points.  Pater's misreading of Wordsworth is one of his foundational claims:  here it is that he asserts contemplation is sterile (Appreciations).  Slowly, slowly building the foundations for this work--the culmination of my fling with academia, unless an MA in philosophy begins to woo me.

*

Let it be hereby known, that in this blog, the term "poetry" or "poesy" is used with the understanding of including all forms of fine arts, including the visual, musical, and prosodic.

Rationale of Reward

The basic premise of Jeremy Bentham's treatise is that mankind needs to be rewarded, or have some sort of incentive, to accomplish anything, and that, as just punishment is commensurate with the offense, a reward ought to be commensurate with the virtue done.  (There is also a Rationale of Punishment, but that is not pertinent here).  What is virtue, though?  "Virtue is sometimes considered as an act, sometimes as a disposition: when it is exhibited by a positive act, it confers a service; when it is considered as a disposition, it is a chance of services.  Apart from this notion of service, it is impossible to tell wherein virtue consists.  To form clear ideas concerning it, it must altogether be referred to the notion of utility:  utility is its object, as well as its motive . . . it is fostered by, and perhaps depends upon, esteem; but this is a secret which it seeks to hide from itself" (125-6).  He establishes one first premise:  all of every person's actions are limited to the object of utility.  In this lies embedded the presumption that forms his famous attack on poetry*:  namely, that all our actions, desires, motives, and interests are limited to concrete, human, material ends.  Our intellects are purely in the interest of tangible goods, and the reward should be immediately satisfying.  In these terms, he presents his argument on poetry:  it is too difficult and too dangerous to be truly useful.

Perhaps one of Bentham's best known ideas is that of poetry being equal, perhaps even lesser, than the game of push-pin, for the simple reason that push-pin, requiring little intellect and no discipline, affords a more immediately available form of pleasure to a greater number of people than poetry.  The outrageous ideas in this are multitudinous.  First, he supposes that all pleasures are equal; then, that there is no merit or obligation to develop the so-called higher faculties because the pleasure of poetry is incommensurate with the pains it requires to appreciate it.  For, if all our actions lead only to material aims, then man is not truly an intellectual being; that is, he is not a contemplative being.  And herein lies the greatest outrage of all, for to deny the contemplative nature of man is to deny not only his nature, but the nature of the Creator, as well.

There is more on this.  John Stewart Mill introduces the idea of refinement of pleasure, but with the exception of a few deliberately ignored thinkers, the utilitarian premises of art have been accepted whole-scale even now, and we are content, even eager, to promote the idea that art is, by and large, useless.

On "Prospectus"

Wordsworth presents here all his fundamentals:  the beauty of nature and man working on the imagination, "recollected in tranquility," leading to that sense of awe and wonder that comes from contemplating something greater than one's self.  The poet, or any artist, has the unique privilege of seeing more than the ordinary--the ancient concepts of poet as creator (poiema) or prophet (vates).  The poetic imagination is able to take the materials of the surrounding world and realities, and move beyond them.  Here is one key point:  the poet must go beyond the world, beyond himself, or he loses his role as creator and prophet--or at least denigrates them by trapping them in himself.  As "Prospectus" shows just as clearly, the poet must unite the sense impressions with the actions of the intellect, and be honest with himself:  he must write what he truly perceives, not how he wishes things to be, or exaggerating one element over another, or sacrificing intellect for emotion or vice versa.  Creating art is process that requires the involvement of the whole person:  senses, heart, mind, soul, and that extra creative "something" that belongs to the poet alone.

Because of this transcendent and objective element, it is essential that art not be a rule unto itself.  Wordsworth speaks "Of moral strength, and intellectual power" and "the law supreme Of that intelligence which governs all."  The work of art must be in accord with the natural moral order so that the audience can receive that "blessed consolation in distress" that the poet has found in his imaginative contemplations.  The highest art is that which heals by revealing new truths and perspectives, by portraying the pathos of the human condition without submitting it to the banality of mere self-expression or out-pouring of some unmitigated or unbalanced emotion.  The poet is not an autonomous rebel, not a Manfred, but a priest, one with heavy obligations to the gift which has been given to him.

The Starting Point: from "Prospectus"

On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life,

Musing in solitude, I oft perceive

Fair trains of imagery before me rise,

Accompanied by feelings of delight

Pure, or with no unpleasing sadness mixed;

And I am consicous of affecting thoughts

And dear remembrances, who presence soothes

Or elevates the Mind, intent to weigh

The good and evil of our moral state.

--To these emotions, whencesoe'er they come,

Whether from breath of outward circumstance,

Or from the Soul--an impulse to herself--

I would give utterance in numerous verse.

Of Truth, of Grandeur, Beauty, Love, and Hope,

And melancholy Fear subdued by Faith;

Of blessed consolations in distress;

Of moral strength, and intellectual Power;

Of joy in widest commonalty spread;

Of the individual Mind that keeps her own

Inviolate retirement, subject there

To Conscience only, and the law supreme

Of that Intelligence which governs all--

I sing:--"fit audience let me find though few!"

          --Wordsworth