Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
S4 Episode 14: Aesthetics
33 Plays3 months ago
Today John and Dejan are discussing aesthetics, the branch of philosophy which studies beauty and taste. In particular, watch the episode to hear them discuss art and what makes it beautiful. Please like and follow the podcast wherever you listen.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Summer Series
00:00:01
Dejan
Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Debatable Discussions podcast. It's been a while since we've recorded, but we're back, rested and ready for another sort of summer series of the podcast.
00:00:16
Dejan
What we talking about today, John?
00:00:18
John Gartside
So yes, as you mentioned there, Diane, we've got a very exciting series of summer episodes coming out. We're to have some very perhaps memorable and familiar guests, but also some ones who we've not had on the podcast yet before.
What is Aesthetics?
00:00:32
John Gartside
However, today we're going to encounter the branch of philosophy, which is aesthetics. Now, before we delve into this, Diane, I think I'll offer our listeners and ourselves a bit of a refresher on what aesthetics is.
00:00:44
Dejan
Yes.
00:00:49
John Gartside
So it is the branch of philosophy which studies art, beauty and taste, and importantly, how us humans respond to them. So it helps us to understand things such as why we create, what we value and why we are moved by artistic and seemingly beautiful things.
The Value of Art
00:01:09
John Gartside
There are a variety of key scholarly opinions from the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche that we'll also sort of use throughout. But firstly, Diane, I thought we'll jump straight into the fire.
00:01:22
John Gartside
and we can go with perhaps what is the value of art and what makes something work of art
00:01:32
Dejan
Okay, well, i think the value of art has got a couple of reasons.
Art as Communication
00:01:38
Dejan
Number one is a sort of historical maybe representation of how life was. if you look at artists such as Caravaggio, he depicted a lot of sort of real life people.
00:01:42
John Gartside
yeah
00:01:50
Dejan
If you look at Rembrandt's The Night Watch, I know that's one of your favorites.
00:01:56
John Gartside
Yeah.
00:01:56
Dejan
That is a sort of historically accurate representation. of a sort of a time period of a place of a sort of profession.
00:02:08
Dejan
But then there's also other reason, which is perhaps to send a political message. If you think about Picasso's Guernica, it's probably one of the most famous ones. And a lot more, especially modern art, has sort of these political undertones.
00:02:24
Dejan
of sort of showing something at at apart from what is visible, showing the invisible.
Is Art Unique?
00:02:31
Dejan
So think that's what art is, actually. It's showing the invisible through the visible.
00:02:38
John Gartside
Yeah.
00:02:38
Dejan
It's showing something bigger, deeper through a a simple picture.
00:02:44
John Gartside
Yeah, I agree. I agree with you there. And I think a sort of idea which encompasses what you said, which personally agree with, is that art is almost a means of communication.
00:02:55
Dejan
Thank you.
00:02:56
John Gartside
like with sort of language in a way, we make these sort of invisible, non not tangible ideas. We make them literal things by speaking them.
00:03:06
John Gartside
And I think art is the same. It expresses an idea in reality. And therefore, I think all arts by extension has meaning. There's things people will say things like, oh, is Duchamp's Fountain?
00:03:21
John Gartside
sort of, well, perhaps rather meaningless for many sculpture of a urinal. However, even that, in my opinion, is a work of art, because I think the point of art is it's just got to communicate something. got to communicate a message.
00:03:36
Dejan
Yeah.
00:03:36
John Gartside
What do you think about that, Dan? Do you think there's a threshold which something becomes art? Or can we just label everything as art?
Exclusivity in Art
00:03:45
Dejan
Well, I think it's difficult, right? Because some people may sort look at pen such as this.
00:03:52
John Gartside
Oh,
00:03:54
Dejan
Well, why isn't this a work of art? Well, because it's sort of mass produced. I think for something to be a work of art, has to have a sort of rather unique or at least exclusive notion.
00:03:58
John Gartside
yeah.
00:04:08
Dejan
So the reason why Picasso's paintings are Picasso's paintings because there's one, maybe two, maximum three in the world that look like that.
00:04:08
John Gartside
Yeah.
00:04:17
Dejan
There aren't billions. Same with sculptures, same with sort of other paintings, other...
00:04:29
Dejan
other than works of art, the the the main notion is that it's got to have something unique. It's not going to be mass produced because I think if something's mass produced, then that loses some of that meaning of art because it's not something you look at. It's more sort of usable item.
00:04:50
John Gartside
Yeah, I agree with you that.
00:04:51
Dejan
Not that art can't be a usable item.
00:04:53
John Gartside
Yeah, I agree with you that.
00:04:53
Dejan
You know, I think if you look at sort of Montblanc pens, people would say they're art, but they're also usable.
00:04:54
John Gartside
Yeah.
00:04:59
Dejan
But the thing with Montblanc pens is that they do have that sort of exclusivity about them. They're very expensive. Very few people have the sort of exact same model as each other.
00:05:10
Dejan
And that's why they're a work of art. Because there's a complexity to it and it's not mass produced. I think that's the sort of two qualifiers for me.
00:05:19
John Gartside
Yeah, I agree with you in particular surrounding that idea of art has to be distinct in a way. It's got to be this idea of exclusivity, not in a sort of elitist manner, but rather in more of a physical sense.
00:05:34
John Gartside
that is that
00:05:34
Dejan
Yeah.
00:05:35
John Gartside
it's not a mass produced thing, but rather it's something individual that has been created to have a set purpose.
Is Aesthetic Judgment Universal?
00:05:43
John Gartside
Because I think in a way, everything you could say has a meaning.
00:05:47
John Gartside
However, art is something which deliberately, one creates it to have a distinct meaning. It can be a usable object, like a pen, I'm sure. Someone could could say this is a sculpture, but you have to distinctly and exclusively state that this pen is a sculpture.
00:06:05
John Gartside
And I think, yeah, it's a sort of difficult threshold to make and ah ah common critique amongst many for art that, well, anything can be art. But as you and me said there, Diane, no, not everything can be art, because art is the deliberate expression of ideas, which has to be done, as you said, in that more exclusive or distinct manner.
00:06:21
Dejan
Yes.
00:06:27
John Gartside
Following on from this, we've sort of talked about this idea of aesthetic judgment, and that is obviously how we judge art. So do you think aesthetic judgment is universal or personal?
00:06:46
Dejan
Well...
00:06:47
John Gartside
It's a bit of a loaded question, must say, yeah.
00:06:53
Dejan
Because I think there are objectively some things which are not beautiful.
00:06:56
Dejan
Objectively.
00:06:59
Dejan
But don't know if that's true, actually. think, you know, I think a spider, if you look at a spider, I think 99 people would say that's not a beautiful thing.
00:07:06
John Gartside
Yeah.
00:07:09
Dejan
But I'm sure there'd be one person who would disagree. So, no, I do think it's subjective. I think the subjectivity sort of differs. If you're asked, okay, which painting is better than yes, that's a fairly subjective thing.
00:07:23
Dejan
Which sort of dish do you like more? It's subjective thing. I think the subjectivity sort of fades away a little bit when it comes to comparing two different things, for example.
00:07:35
Dejan
Do you find
00:07:39
Dejan
a lion more beautiful than a cockroach?
00:07:43
John Gartside
yeah
00:07:43
Dejan
Do you find a sort dog more beautiful than an ant?
00:07:54
Dejan
You know, I think that's when the subjectivity fades a little bit because this sort of difference is quite big, but they're still there.
00:07:58
John Gartside
yeah yeah
00:07:59
Dejan
I mean, I'm sure some people prefer ants to dogs and that's completely fine.
00:08:05
John Gartside
Yeah, I think this is an interesting sort of debate that has been ignited throughout philosophy for quite a while. Plato, in his theory of forms, he said that beauty and the truth, they exist, but they exist in this sort of abstract realm that's detached from the physical world and that almost objects beauty we can't understand.
00:08:25
Dejan
Yeah.
00:08:28
John Gartside
Whereas someone like Kant, or actually, sorry, Nietzsche, believed that art's sort of a reflection of reality and that it is more objective, the meaning of art. I sort of agree with you, Diane, in the sense that I think there's an underlying subjectivity That's always there with aesthetic judgment.
00:08:46
Dejan
Yeah.
00:08:49
John Gartside
I think there are things which we can just class as beautiful, like a sunset, like, you know, a good
00:08:57
Dejan
But if you're which sunset is more beautiful, then that's decision.
00:09:00
John Gartside
but That's subjective thing. And also, I'm sure there is someone who doesn't find sunset beautiful as well.
00:09:03
Dejan
Yeah.
Critique of Mill's Naturalism
00:09:07
Dejan
Exactly.
00:09:08
John Gartside
It's this sort of subjectivity which underlines it all.
00:09:12
John Gartside
Another ethical theory, which I've actually studied at school, but sort of comes into play here is John Stuart Mill, perhaps known as the creator of rule utilitarianism.
00:09:23
John Gartside
But also he came, he sort of articulated a theory called naturalism. And this is the idea that things such beauty or good, we objectively know what they are from the natural world.
00:09:30
Dejan
Yes.
00:09:36
John Gartside
And that is because we can see and we can understand what beauty or good is clearly by looking at the natural world. Beauty, perhaps a a sunset or, I don't know, nice plant.
00:09:48
John Gartside
What do you think of that, Diane?
00:09:50
Dejan
Well, you know, and Mr. Nell don't usually agree.
00:09:54
John Gartside
Yeah.
00:09:55
Dejan
And that's this is another case of that. I don't think you can objectively naturally call something. I mean, yes, do you call something beautiful? Yeah, but i i don't think that's universal rule.
00:10:07
Dejan
I think, you know, if you and me were raised completely on two different islands by by o ourselves, you know, magically raised.
00:10:14
John Gartside
yeah yeah
00:10:17
Dejan
And that you have no interaction from anyone, but somehow you just have food and everything you need, right? And we grow up.
00:10:24
Dejan
And for example, we're we're at our ages now. And say, i really like this tree.
00:10:31
Dejan
because I've lived on the island and like that tree because of the memories I had in that tree, you know, that is, I don't know, something, whatever, there was a big rain and i i I hid under that tree from the rain. And that's why I like that tree.
00:10:44
Dejan
You who lived in a completely different place from me would not have the same aesthetic judgment and say that tree is beautiful. You'd say it's a tree. It's not a really good tree.
00:10:51
John Gartside
yeah yeah
00:10:52
Dejan
On the other hand, if you lived in Fiji, for example, you would say, I really like the sand. I lived in the mountains, I said, no, I don't like the sand, just gets in your feet, I don't like it. So I don't think... The problem with Mill's naturalism isn't the fact that it's a sort of instinctual choice.
00:11:10
Dejan
Although that's partly the problem, because apart from that instinctual choice, you also have the sort of memories and nostalgia that comes from thing. But it's more this universal aspect of it, because beauty can never be universal due to our different sort of, frankly, geographical backgrounds.
00:11:28
Dejan
So as I've given that example, I'm on a completely different sort of island from you.
00:11:31
John Gartside
Yeah. Yeah.
00:11:36
Dejan
We don't have the same object. Therefore, we don't classify the same things as beautiful and not beautiful. Apart from that, Mill also forgets to mention this aspect of, for example, I don't know, why do people find some things beautiful?
00:11:50
Dejan
Well, they're not beautiful instinctually. You know, I'm sure there's many examples. For example, you're getting gifted a bracelet, right?
00:11:58
John Gartside
yeah
00:11:59
Dejan
Now, if you're anything like me, I hate bracelets. I don't like them at all. But if that bracelet comes from loved one and has a memory behind it, that suddenly becomes a beautiful bracelet, even though
00:12:13
Dejan
It would never have been a beautiful bracelet without the sort of emotional baggage, if I can say that, in a non-pejorative way, the emotional baggage that that bracelet has.
00:12:14
John Gartside
Yeah.
00:12:25
Dejan
So I think Mill's somewhat there, but there's two big issues.
00:12:32
John Gartside
Yeah. And yes, I do agree with what you said there. And that is that one's own subjective experience of the natural world does make Mill's sort of objective idea of naturalism quite wrong.
00:12:38
Dejan
Yeah.
00:12:46
John Gartside
Similarly, the philosopher G.E.
00:12:48
John Gartside
Moore also critiques Mill's naturalism. And actually, he lent his name to his own naturalistic fallacy, which he said Mill committed. This fallacy is similar to what you said there, Diane.
00:13:01
John Gartside
And basically says that in every sort of natural realm, there's ultimately subjectivity and that we can't compare the natural world to the world, to morals, for example, like good or bad, which we want because it's ultimately subjective.
00:13:19
John Gartside
One cannot agree on what is good or bad.
00:13:20
Dejan
Yes.
00:13:22
John Gartside
These things cannot be deduced from the natural world. And yes, that's what he said, Mill, commit.
00:13:28
Dejan
Yes. Yes.
00:13:29
John Gartside
Because it's, as you said there, everything's sort of down to a situation. It's down to an upbringing. We cannot create one sort of overarching thing. Another key question which we can next encounter is the question of AI.
Can AI Create Meaningful Art?
00:13:45
John Gartside
And I think this has thrown a major curveball into this philosophical field of aesthetics. So many view AI as a threat to art.
00:13:55
John Gartside
I do not personally. believe that it's sort of threat which people say is quite sort of over pronounced and overestimated.
00:13:58
Dejan
Neither.
00:14:02
John Gartside
However, Diane, we'll firstly encounter the question of can AI generated art be beautiful and can it be meaningful in your opinion?
00:14:11
Dejan
Well, I think there's a couple ideas there. The number one is can AI create something meaningful? Yes, definitely.
00:14:23
Dejan
There's no question about that, I don't think. Can AI create something beautiful? Yes, again, no question about that. Can AI create art? I don't think so. Because it comes back to the idea of something being unique, distinct, and sort of exclusive.
00:14:39
Dejan
And ChatGBT isn't either of those things. If I put the same... If I said, create me a painting with a donkey, and you a painting with a donkey, and AI produces the same exact picture, then that's not art.
00:14:54
Dejan
Right. Because it's a mass produced readily available. And yeah, that's that's sort of where I'm at. I think it can create beautiful, meaningful things, but they're not necessarily art.
00:15:09
John Gartside
Yes, I agree.
00:15:09
Dejan
Unless the AI is sort of your custom personalized AI. And then, you know, we've got a different sort of game.
00:15:13
John Gartside
Yeah.
00:15:17
John Gartside
Even with that, i agree with you there. I don't believe AI actually is a threat to art, simply because when I think of art, art is an element of the human condition.
00:15:28
John Gartside
Art has to be produced by humans, in my my opinion, be art. And the reason for that is because we value human creativity. And following on from this idea of art being a language, we value this human creativity which expresses emotions, emotions which AI cannot express in the same manner.
00:15:40
Dejan
Yeah.
00:15:49
John Gartside
AI cannot express the emotions which Picasso felt when he painted Guernica amidst the Spanish Civil War, right?
00:15:55
Dejan
Yeah.
00:15:57
John Gartside
And I think simply will never be a threat to art because we value human creativity. We value how humans can do things wholly unpredictable with art, wholly abstract, but still portray a meaningful idea.
00:16:03
Dejan
And
00:16:12
John Gartside
A comparison I have, for example, in how we value human creativity is photography.
00:16:12
Dejan
Yes.
00:16:19
John Gartside
When photography taking a photo came to sort of be an art form in the ah ah early 20th century, artists at the time felt threatened and rightly so. They said, well, these photographers can take a picture of something that's even more realistic than realism, for example.
00:16:37
John Gartside
However, they started to realise that people still value human creativity and the human ability to express ideas in a way ah photography cannot, but art can.
00:16:51
Dejan
Yeah, I think there's another aspect of art which we have sort ignored and that art is handmade.
00:16:56
John Gartside
ah ah yeah.
00:16:58
Dejan
In order for something to be art, I do think it has to be handmade. I think again, thinking back on basically everything, what's the difference between this pen, who's a a normal sort of dick pen, and to sort of Mont Blanc pen, is that this is mass produced by a robot in a factory.
00:17:19
Dejan
And that one is sort of hand painted, handmade and hand assembled. Same things with clothes.
00:17:25
John Gartside
Yeah.
00:17:27
Dejan
What's the difference between this T-shirt and a sort of designer dress, whatever that someone wears on a red carpet the Oscars? It's that this is made en masse, probably a factory somewhere.
00:17:43
Dejan
And that one is made specifically, it's handmade, hand done so that it's for one person.
00:17:50
John Gartside
And people would identify...
00:17:50
Dejan
Same with shoes, same with everything.
00:17:53
John Gartside
I see people would identify that dress as a form of art, as you said there. People commonly say that.
00:17:57
Dejan
Exactly.
00:17:57
John Gartside
Yeah.
00:17:58
Dejan
But no one would identify this plain T-shirt as a form of art. Why? Because it's mass-produced, it's not handmade, and it's not exclusive. So I do think we've overlooked that aspect slightly.
00:18:14
Dejan
But coming to AI, I do think AI won't produce art because it can't be handmade, can Hmm.
00:18:20
John Gartside
yeah yeah Yeah, and it links to this idea that I said of it can't result from humanity in a way.
Is Experiencing Beauty Rational or Emotional?
00:18:26
John Gartside
can't result from the human condition or people.
00:18:30
John Gartside
Perhaps a final question to sort of delve into is this idea of experiencing beauty again. Do you think this is a rational instinct, Diane, so based upon reason, or is this emotional, based upon instinct and feeling?
00:18:48
Dejan
I do think it's an emotional instinctual thing. Again, going to come back to the fact that do think beauty is instinctual to some extent.
00:19:00
Dejan
But that extent all changes due to your experiences. for example, you may have found...
00:19:10
Dejan
don't know, the sea very beautiful. But then someone you know has had a boat accident at sea and received serious injury. And you may hate the sea now.
00:19:20
Dejan
You think it's far from beautiful, it's dangerous, and it's a dark place.
00:19:21
John Gartside
Yeah.
00:19:25
Dejan
Again, some people, you may have found cars to be amazing, may have loved cars, but then someone's in an accident. And then again, you have that sort of change. So I do think it's an emotional sort of reason.
00:19:38
Dejan
I think you look at your experience, experience your positive experience, and most likely you will associate positive things that have happened in your life with the sort of surroundings.
00:19:51
Dejan
So for example, if you got married on a sunny day, you might love sunny days.
00:19:51
John Gartside
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:19:55
Dejan
If, again, you sort of got your dream job on a Tuesday in the Bahamas, you might love the Bahamas.
00:20:09
John Gartside
yeah
00:20:10
Dejan
If, on the other hand, if you've liked something a lot, but then something negatively has happened, you're very likely to associate that negative thing to... to the surroundings again. So the accident with the sea, the car accident as well.
00:20:25
Dejan
All of these things, I think, lead clearly to the fact that it cannot be a i i rational choice because these things are not rational.
00:20:28
John Gartside
Yeah.
00:20:34
Dejan
I find it, I'm still hoping that someone is going to explain to me how you look, you having sort of, you receiving a phone call saying you've got the job.
00:20:46
Dejan
ah whilst in the Bahamas, when you've hated the holiday, suddenly it turns into the best holiday of your life. You know, it has to be that sort of emotional thing that beats the rational.
00:21:00
John Gartside
Yeah, and that ties into Immanuel Kant's idea of disinterested pleasure, which is known by many to be his sort of perhaps greatest contribution to the field of aesthetics.
00:21:11
John Gartside
And in this idea of disinterested pleasure, he said that we find something beautiful not because we want to, but simply just because of how it appears. Beauty is something that is by instinct, it just comes to
00:21:21
Dejan
Yes.
00:21:24
John Gartside
If we have to sort of go down this journey of understanding or trying to reason with beauty, it won't appear beautiful. However, I think the best art is the art which doesn't need to be explained.
00:21:35
John Gartside
You sort of see it and you're like, that's beautiful. I like that. And I think any manner of explaining it sort of means that it loses its meaning to an extent.
00:21:40
Dejan
I fully agree with you there.
00:21:47
John Gartside
So yes, I do.
00:21:47
Dejan
I do think that takes me to Slavoj Žižek, contemporary philosopher. Some of you may be aware of him. He said a very interesting thing, and that's that why do you love me is a very good question, because the moment you have an answer to it, that's not love.
00:22:05
John Gartside
Yeah. Yeah.
00:22:07
Dejan
because love is something that cannot be explained. I think it's the same as beauty. If someone asks you, why do you find the sea beautiful? You can't really explain it.
00:22:17
Dejan
You can't really say, i find the sort of waves appealing. It doesn't really work. It's a thing beyond
00:22:26
Dejan
your mind. It is. It's there or it's not. It's not something that can be sort in the middle.
00:22:32
John Gartside
No, yeah, I totally agree with you there.
Episode Summary and Future Insights
00:22:35
John Gartside
And so to summarise the episode, today me and Diane have encountered and delved into this branch of philosophy, which is aesthetics.
00:22:43
John Gartside
Therefore, we've sort of challenged ideas, whether that's rational, subjective, objective, intuitive, surrounding art and beauty, and whether art is something that we have an emotional response to and whether it has meaning.
00:22:58
John Gartside
So yes, we hope you enjoyed the episode. Please do check out some of our past episodes. We've got many on philosophy, also many on art with Matthew Olivier. We did a a very good episode on Picasso and several other leading art figures in art.
00:23:15
Dejan
Thank you very much. And as always, do ah ah leave us comment if you liked the episode. Do leave us five-star review and be ready for the future episodes of the podcast. Some very interesting guests, very interesting topics.
00:23:31
Dejan
I'm sure everyone will enjoy them. So thank you see next week.
00:23:35
John Gartside
See you then.