Art and Reason

What is the "inherent" (intrinsically-holding, or assumed, or 'automatic'-structural) relationship between art (aesthetics, beauty, passion) and reason (logos, ethics, inference and imagination)? Is there such an inherence of relation here? Is art ethical? Does the play of art fall upon the passions, the moralisms and thus exclude itself from an ethical purview and possibility -- is it the (social, psychological) morality that is the being of art, must we, like Kant, understand art to be an activity outside of a direct relevance and necessity to/for the ethical?


Or does art become ethical, reasonable (reason-ably motivating, intended, purposeful) through a process of subjective (re-)creation and valuing-application? Does the rational-conscious being draw art within itself to lend to art some quality of its own reason and ethical possibility? Is art a medium through which the ethical of the subject draws forth and gathers to itself its own possibility while the "animal"-psychological of the subject finds instead therein a passional release, respite and higher synthetic apprehension? Does art gather the subject at all levels of its being?


What is the ethics of art?

Capable

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What is the "inherent" (intrinsically-holding, or assumed, or 'automatic'-structural) relationship between art (aesthetics, beauty, passion) and reason (logos, ethics, inference and imagination)? Is there such an inherence of relation here?

I'm not sure if there is an 'inherent' relationship between art and reason...


Inherent:
1.Existing in something as a permanent, essential, or characteristic attribute: "inherent dangers".
2.Vested in (someone) as a right or privilege: "the president's inherent power

You used the word 'imagination' above. I might say that it is our imagination that connects the two but is there anything inherent within it?

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Is art ethical?

No, it only appears to be ethical because it is endowed with the values and morals of the artist creating it - with or without intention or to the one perceiving it as such. It may change us in such a way that we become more ethical or moral beings as a result of it. So, in that sense, can art be considered ethical?

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Does the play of art fall upon the passions, the moralisms

Are the artist's passions and morals responsible for and influence what he/she creates - yes, at least in part they are. They are the real material for creating. But perhaps real art must also be in the moment simply according to what one perceives, without the play of passions and morals. Our emotions do enter into our creative flow but there are degrees of difference between one's emotions and passions. You use the word 'passions' which may also mean something that we desire/crave which goes beyond reason - but our emotions must necessarily be a part of the creative process - since the connection between the seer and the seen lies in the human being.


That might be a much more difficult kind of art to create - a more subdued emotionally but yet reasonable kind of art based on the desire to reflect the truth of the human experience in all of its reality.

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and thus exclude itself from an ethical purview and possibility

I suppose that would depend on what one would call art and again, the artist's intentions. Some looking at The Rape of the Sabine Women might think it gross and anathema and that it came about as a result of the inner, out of control passions of the artist. Perhaps how we view art, tells us more about our own psychological selves than about the artist himself. I may be digressing here.

Some might consider and feel that The Declaration of Independence is also a written work of art - thereby it would be purviewed as within the realm of ethics, not excluding it ...just as much as a wonderful painting would depict the truth of the human experience or the beauty, reality and truth of something in the universe.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness........

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-- is it the (social, psychological) morality that is the being of art, must we, like Kant, understand art to be an activity outside of a direct relevance and necessity to/for the ethical?

In part, yes. We are social, psychological beings. But I would hope that art is so much more than that. It is also the creative freedom which draws itself from an inexhaustible source within our own personal spirits, our cores - as Nietzsche has said that "love is beyond good and evil" --- art must necessarily go far beyond our social, cultural and psychological selves - I hope.

If i understand you correctly, or Kant, that is, and perhaps I am not, yes, art has great relevance and necessity, but must extend far beyond the ethical scope if it is to depict reality. It must be free to soar and to become, it is an expression which is in the moment and ever-changing in one's imaginaton. That may include ethics but must reach beyond it to show the world and the human being in its reality and its illusion. In order to do that, ethics must sometimes fail.

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Or does art become ethical, reasonable (reason-ably motivating, intended, purposeful) through a process of subjective (re-)creation and valuing-application?

Only within our own minds perhaps…but I may be wrong. I think my issue is with the word “become”…

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Does the rational-conscious being draw art within itself to lend to art some quality of its own reason and ethical possibility?

Is art a medium through which the ethical of the subject draws forth and gathers to itself its own possibility while the "animal"-psychological of the subject finds instead therein a passional release, respite and higher synthetic apprehension? Does art gather the subject at all levels of its being?

Perhaps a better way of looking at it is that art shows us or reminds us of who we are…art is the ‘lender’ or the giver. We are the receivers. We can only see what we already are. Art is more like a mirror which reflects our inner selves.

Art is also like a dream. Perhaps it can only gather in those parts of ourselves in which we have some conscious awareness – enough to at least listen to what the work wants to tell/show us. Then perhaps it may flow through more of our being.

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What is the ethics of art?

My first thought is something which I read somewhere.

A Always
R Respect
T Truth

So for me the ethics of art in part is to always respect and to bear witness to the truth....

Another part of its ethics would be discipline, sacrifice and hard work...struggling to complete, out of love and the desire to go beyond ourselves, to create something hopefully which becomes a revelation, a dropping of some veils of the world surrounding us...which remained hidden and mystery before that time...and which perhaps will remain in part still hidden. If that makes sense.

...ad continuum...

Edited: On March 31th

VaerosTanarg wrote:

Capable

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What is the "inherent" (intrinsically-holding, or assumed, or 'automatic'-structural) relationship between art (aesthetics, beauty, passion) and reason (logos, ethics, inference and imagination)? Is there such an inherence of relation here?

I'm not sure if there is an 'inherent' relationship between art and reason...


Inherent:
1.Existing in something as a permanent, essential, or characteristic attribute: "inherent dangers".
2.Vested in (someone) as a right or privilege: "the president's inherent power

You used the word 'imagination' above. I might say that it is our imagination that connects the two but is there anything inherent within it?

I mean inherent as in structural, structural to either art or ethics. I am not assuming there is such a relationship, but I am interested in determining if one can be identified. To do so would require of us that we first know both what 'ethics' is as well as what 'art' is.

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Is art ethical?

No, it only appears to be ethical because it is endowed with the values and morals of the artist creating it - with or without intention or to the one perceiving it as such. It may change us in such a way that we become more ethical or moral beings as a result of it. So, in that sense, can art be considered ethical?

Art can stimulate change in one's ethical stance, then. Or stimulate new ethical awareness. Art as one means toward ethics. If this is true, then art possesses something inherently ethical, at least on the level of possibility.

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Does the play of art fall upon the passions, the moralisms

Are the artist's passions and morals responsible for and influence what he/she creates - yes, at least in part they are. They are the real material for creating. But perhaps real art must also be in the moment simply according to what one perceives, without the play of passions and morals. Our emotions do enter into our creative flow but there are degrees of difference between one's emotions and passions. You use the word 'passions' which may also mean something that we desire/crave which goes beyond reason - but our emotions must necessarily be a part of the creative process - since the connection between the seer and the seen lies in the human being.

True. Art (is able to) reach up from all levels of subjective being.

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and thus exclude itself from an ethical purview and possibility

I suppose that would depend on what one would call art and again, the artist's intentions. Some looking at The Rape of the Sabine Women might think it gross and anathema and that it came about as a result of the inner, out of control passions of the artist. Perhaps how we view art, tells us more about our own psychological selves than about the artist himself. I may be digressing here.

Some might consider and feel that The Declaration of Independence is also a written work of art - thereby it would be purviewed as within the realm of ethics, not excluding it ...just as much as a wonderful painting would depict the truth of the human experience or the beauty, reality and truth of something in the universe.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness........

I separate moralism from ethics. Ethics is strictly-speaking anti-moral, non-moral (this does not mean it cannot and indeed will not have moral consequences, however).

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-- is it the (social, psychological) morality that is the being of art, must we, like Kant, understand art to be an activity outside of a direct relevance and necessity to/for the ethical?

In part, yes. We are social, psychological beings. But I would hope that art is so much more than that. It is also the creative freedom which draws itself from an inexhaustible source within our own personal spirits, our cores - as Nietzsche has said that "love is beyond good and evil" --- art must necessarily go far beyond our social, cultural and psychological selves - I hope.

If i understand you correctly, or Kant, that is, and perhaps I am not, yes, art has great relevance and necessity, but must extend far beyond the ethical scope if it is to depict reality. It must be free to soar and to become, it is an expression which is in the moment and ever-changing in one's imaginaton. That may include ethics but must reach beyond it to show the world and the human being in its reality and its illusion. In order to do that, ethics must sometimes fail.

I believe that ethics emerges from a totality of view, from a more comprehensive and dispassionate reason. What is ethical emerges of necessity. Contrast this with the passions: they emerge out of arbitrariness, out of an evolutionary mandate which (largely) no longer (for us) exists. Or: ethics is the necessity of moving beyond the 'evolutionary mandate' of the moral-social being, it is the becoming-arbitrary of this being and the subsequent elevation of sociality to an entire new realm of possible utility and value-power.

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Does the rational-conscious being draw art within itself to lend to art some quality of its own reason and ethical possibility?

Is art a medium through which the ethical of the subject draws forth and gathers to itself its own possibility while the "animal"-psychological of the subject finds instead therein a passional release, respite and higher synthetic apprehension? Does art gather the subject at all levels of its being?

Perhaps a better way of looking at it is that art shows us or reminds us of who we are…art is the ‘lender’ or the giver. We are the receivers. We can only see what we already are. Art is more like a mirror which reflects our inner selves.

Art is also like a dream. Perhaps it can only gather in those parts of ourselves in which we have some conscious awareness – enough to at least listen to what the work wants to tell/show us. Then perhaps it may flow through more of our being.

Yes, I believe art can and should reflect parts of ourselves back to us. The more we bring to artistic experience, the more we get out of it. Art potentiates being.

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What is the ethics of art?

My first thought is something which I read somewhere.

A Always
R Respect
T Truth

So for me the ethics of art in part is to always respect and to bear witness to the truth....

Another part of its ethics would be discipline, sacrifice and hard work...struggling to complete, out of love and the desire to go beyond ourselves, to create something hopefully which becomes a revelation, a dropping of some veils of the world surrounding us...which remained hidden and mystery before that time...and which perhaps will remain in part still hidden. If that makes sense.

...ad continuum...

Yes, creation and the "truth of creation", what is true about the creative act. Art is an unveiling, a dis-closing of (the) being (for whom art is art).

As I experience the creation process, art sometimes transcends my moral notions, surprises me in showing what also can be included in the good. It is a way to allow the passions to flow out into ethical form, I might say, so as to reflect on morality and show how fragile the cherished and protected judgments are. By the use of beauties, harmonies, symphonies, aesthetic relations and arrangements, elements that by themselves would be condemnable can be perceived as part of a structure that causes such a joyful experience that it myst be considered at least in part, or potentially part of, good. So, for me art has the power to be at once a-moral and towards higher ethics. But not all art does this. Mainly art that carries what I have come to call in the past weeks a "Luciferian" element, a playing-with-evil, which means a subjecting of evil. I say "not all art" but I mean hardly any art. Art is as yet too timid to play around with morality in this way. Whether art is tragic (condemning-liberating) romantic (idealistic-comforting) or nihilistic (condemning-comforting), what is lacking is a true affirmation. Hitherto, only in comedy, such affirmation has been attained, but this works on a very superficial level, which also means that it is instantly rejected as a pleasant moment of relief/oblivion, away from reality. What would be required for art to become truly transformative and empowering, in the sense of driving to surpass the deplorable state of the tool-wielding ape towards full being-hood of self-consciousness, a state of which "man" is but a precursor, is that the perspectival method that is exclusive to comedy, the "playful malice" that looks as if god-like from above and yet profoundly, un-hypocritically involved, is expanded in its application also to "serious" narratives. The subject needs to be forced to identify with more, needs to be deepened, made to feel more responsible, more real.

What I do not mean is satyrical art. This is cold, distant and hypocritical, stands only above. "Luciferian" art makes it at once impossible to condone and to reject. It is thus beyond morality, addresses something deeper, or perhaps just greater, more difficult and more valuable. Its effect would be paralyzing to the traditional moralist, activating to the one who seeks to become free, and in general very difficult to deal with but also to resist. At this point our "God" is still "Evil", as this is what we consider to be above us, beyond our reach. Whatever amounts to this need to be incorporated into an ethical realm. Art can do this, but can the artist?

To Capable...

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I mean inherent as in structural, structural to either art or ethics. I am not assuming there is such a relationship, but I am interested in determining if one can be identified. To do so would require of us that we first know both what 'ethics' is as well as what 'art' is.

Well, barring morality, or our subjective ideas of what is good and bad, for me ethics is concerned with making careful and logical decisions, depending on particular situations and circumstances, where the greatest 'real' good may be achieved and where the idea of 'to do no harm' is always paramount in a person's actions. Although emotions are important in these decisions, since we are human - at times, at least for me, I feel that emotions may get in the way of portraying stark reality, truth and fairness. But ethics has to be grounded in justice and fairness and what it means to be truly human - and I'm not sure that emotions can be taken out of that equation.

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Art can stimulate change in one's ethical stance, then. Or stimulate new ethical awareness. Art as one means toward ethics. If this is true, then art possesses something inherently ethical, at least on the level of possibility.

But not of itself alone though. I think that there has to be within the individual a conscious awareness to begin with, or at least a growing awakening of consciousness. Then, art may stimulate ongoing ethical awareness (as you say) if that individual is indeed aware, to begin with, how art may teach and instruct and if they are open to it. For any kind of art to be ethical, for me, it must ALSO teach and instruct, it must be a mirror of the human condition and of one's own inner condition.

'Inherently ethical' - as in structural again? For me, 'possibility' lies within the relationship between the individual and the object of art, if you understand my meaning here. Art alone, in and of itself, is nothing, without the observer. But much depends on the artist and the observer and his/her consciousness, essence, core and spirit. It is the individual who makes it come alive, just as it is the individual who, in actuality (where it counts) makes nature and the universe come alive. Okay, I'm digressing.

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True. Art (is able to) reach up from all levels of subjective being.

Do you mean that we ourselves draw out from within ourselves the expressions and interpretions which our own inner world and external world create?

Would there also be something called 'objective being' wherein no emotion is at play but simply reason and the desire to interpret the world in its true essence and reality? I may not have expressed that well.

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I separate moralism from ethics. Ethics is strictly-speaking anti-moral, non-moral (this does not mean it cannot and indeed will not have moral consequences, however)

Well, I don't necessarily see ethics as anti-moral. For me, they do flow within the same waters, but I may be wrong here. For instance, the Ten Commandments can be viewed as being ethical in nature if one values them as standards of behavior or as a guiding compass in which one makes choices in particular moments and situations, and which lead to responsible decisions to 'act accordingly' where no harm is done - which may also be one's own moral mandate - 'to do no harm'. Would you consider The Ten Commandments to be moral - in that they implicitly deal with what is right and wrong? But I suppose I see your point since what is moral can become so blurred depending on one's own religious and otherwise beliefs and what is also a matter of economics at times. Look at the abortion issue - at one time the taking of a life - as in abortion was considered illegal, immoral but it would seem that financial gain and the belief that a woman is entitled to own her own body, (which of course she is) and to do with it what she will, even at the expense of and having the choice to destroy the little life growing within her (which is separate from her own). I'm digressing here...

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I believe that ethics emerges from a totality of view, from a more comprehensive and dispassionate reason. What is ethical emerges of necessity. Contrast this with the passions: they emerge out of arbitrariness, out of an evolutionary mandate which (largely) no longer (for us) exists. Or: ethics is the necessity of moving beyond the 'evolutionary mandate' of the moral-social being, it is the becoming-arbitrary of this being and the subsequent elevation of sociality to an entire new realm of possible utility and value-power

I agree that an ethical person would necessarily want to see as much of the entire picture as is humanly possible before judging and assuming or presuming to know the right way to go, but I disagree with you here that that would come about from a totally dispassionate reason. The passions do emerge out of arbitrariness but are you actually saying here that there is no more necessity for them? Is it just our dry reason and logic which create the beauty of the world through art, paintings, poetry, books? Don't be throwing the essential human baby out with the bathwater.

I don't know - I may be wrong here or misunderstanding you, but if we move beyond the moral-social being, what is the point of ethical behavior? Maybe you can clarify what you mean. I'm probably missing your point. And what do you mean by possible utility and value power - does that pertain to the value of the human being or the power which some might exercise and control over the human being? Words don't always explain much.

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Yes, I believe art can and should reflect parts of ourselves back to us. The more we bring to artistic experience, the more we get out of it. Art potentiates being

By instructing and teaching.

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So for me the ethics of art in part is to always respect and to bear witness to the truth....

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yes, creation and the "truth of creation", what is true about the creative act. Art is an unveiling, a dis-closing of (the) being (for whom art is art).

It also unveils what is real and hopefully shows what is illusion. Even art that is fanciful in nature may be rich in disclosing a deeper meaning and reality of self - such as in the fairy tale, which points to something that cannot yet be gleaned until first going beyond what is on the surface, deeper and deeper into the story and allowing it to teach and instruct and reveal itself.

Having ENTIRELY NOTHING to do with fairy tales but ...

I recently saw the movie "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" about two young boys who's paths cross and who secretly spend time together and become friends. The one is a little Jewish boy, Schmael, who is emprisoned in a concentration camp and the other is Bruno, the son of a nazi commandant(?) who lives nearby this concentration camp. At some point, Bruno, out of curiosity, decides that he wants to sneak into the concentration camp, not really knowing nor understanding the reality of it. Bruno had recently seen in his home a Nazi-propagated film which was set up by his own father in order to perpetrate and continue the Lie, in order to hide the true purpose and reality of the concentration camps. So the boys plan this 'adventure' and eventually Bruno manages to get under the barbed wire and into the camp. While walking through the inner camp, Bruno asks Schmael to take him to the 'cafe' (which was mentioned in the Nazi film) and Schmael looks quizzically at him, telling him that there is no cafe there.

Suddenly the Nazi soldiers come, herding a large group of these human beings, including the two boys, into the 'showers'. (No words can describe my emotions here). At this point, through tell-tale signs, Bruno's father and mother had already finally realized that Bruno is missing and discover just where he is, running frantically to save him in time. But they are too late. And the father is left staring at the door into which his son entered and met his fate with his little friend. And the father stared and he stared into what must have been the gaping mouth of hell for him when he saw and smelled the putrid smoke rising in the chimney above.

I was sadly aware throughout this madness to save Bruno that I too wanted Bruno to be saved. At first I never considered the full extent of what that actually meant because I was so caught up in the happy ending...the underlying, 'unconscious' feeling was that Bruno just did not BELONG there...but it could never be a happy ending but I didn't consider that until later on. Afterwards, I reflected on it and realized that if this movie was truly to be 'ethical art' - to reflect Truth and the tragic human condition - if Art was to respect Truth, and not give way to illusion, and if this movie was to be a true mirror of the terrible consequences of fear, hate and bias, then there could be no happy ending. The only ethical and real conclusion to this movie was that Bruno could not be saved, as difficult as it is for me to say this because the saving of even one human life, especially that of a child, is the most important thing I feel, above all. But to make one life as more valuable and important than another, especially that of an innocent, and a child's, under these circumstances, at least for me, not only dehumanizes us, but hides the awful truth.

For the writer to have done this, would have been to totally dis-value each and every human being everywhere and within that camp and within any concentration camp. So this to me is where ethics and art meet - and truth and reality triumph over illusion and the big Lie.

A Always
R Respect
T Truth