Philosophy - Aesthetic Experience, Part 1: General Thoughts

Aesthetic Experience as an Alternative to the dichotomy of Reason and Emotion

The history of western philosophy is a history of our understanding of thought. In the process of undergoing this journey from the Pre-Socratics to the present day, one of our most recurring themes is the objectivity of rational discourse. This objectivity is usually understood as a contrast between reason and emotion, privileging reason and disparaging emotion. This has, of course, been challenged by a number of voices in the history of western philosophy. My understanding of contemporary philosophy is lacking, but I suspect much of the conversation has shifted to meta-ethics and studies on consciousness.

This post is more a reply to the tradition of rationalism, which is not a current mainstream project. However, some of these thoughts relate to a theory of experience which I think is relevant to contemporary projects, especially theories of consciousness (discussions of which will follow later). For the moment, consider this a general reflection on a reaction to rationalism in the history of western philosophy.

What I propose is that the dichotomy between reason and emotion is a red herring; the conflict between reason and emotion has become something of a smoke-screen that obscures the role that aesthetic experience plays in philosophy. I'm thinking in particular of the manner in which aesthetic experience shapes how practice philosophy and, by proxy, how we live the rest of our lives.

Emphasis on the aesthetic itself is not new, but I appeal to a smaller tradition that places aesthetic experience in the foreground of personal experience. This tradition includes Vico, Cassirer, James, Thoreau, Dewey, and others. Each of these thinkers regard aesthetic experience slightly differently, but they all regard aesthetic experience as being primary to human experience. In this light, I contend that the manner in which we develop attachments to different kinds of aesthetic experience is related to the kinds of philosophical system to which we found ourselves most attracted - which in turn, affects the manner in which we interpret and understand the world.

This is different from Emotivism, because emotivism claims that all meaning is ultimately reducible to emotion. This doesn't mean subjectivity is an infinite downward spiral of self-recursivity. It means that we, as active subjects within the world, are constantly interacting within the world. We are in constant conversation with the world, speaking to the world via a variety of mechanisms.

Philosophy - Language, Desire, and Society

One element I like about east Asian philosophy in general (and here I'm thinking in particular of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism), is the recognition of a complex relationship between language, desire, and social performance.

In the case of the Zhuangzi, the Zhuangzi clearly recognizes how human behavior involves making distinctions that are not initially based in rational reflection. According to the Zhuangzi, men's spirits are constantly trembling, moving in the directions of their desires, and becoming entangled in strife and conflict. Desires actually lead to discriminations, and these discriminations are then unified under a term (an action performed by the heart-mind, which is responsible for "tallying" together the distinctions of the sense-organs). These words then become markers for not only what things are, but how they are useful to the speaker. They function as demonstrative expressions, pointing out something from its environment; as representations (often seen in the ideograms), and finally also as significations of meaning, where meaning is often codified according to how the object is supposed to be used, or how the object functions within a system of relations. These categories agree with Cassirer's distinctions on symbolic form, which provides a useful method for looking at how Chinese language is used.

This does not mean that language is simply emotivistic: rather, it means that language functions in a complex set of relationships, relationships that are in part shaped and understood through language. So, instead of simply saying "tree good!" language *often* (but not always) is used to identify objects and make use of objects within a habituated network of relations. I suspect that further reading in semiotics would help articulate this model more accurately, and I should probably look at the writings of Charles Pierce. In any case, the idea of structure doesn't require that these structures be permanent; but it doesn't mean they simply happen overnight, either. Language, as a complex system of meaning, is a complicated set of relationships that develop over long periods of time, and is passed (or replicated, depending on your view) not only from generation to generation, but from conversation to conversation.

So, where does that leave us? If language isn't simply emotivism, then is it deterministic? Are we doomed to surrender to the network of utility relations as described in words and habituated through living practice and social habits? I should hope not, based simply on the fact that the above theory relies on an unstated assumption: that meaning occurs through usage. And because of this, we are able to identify how we use language, how we use words in individual contexts, and to change. As discussed by the Zhuangzi, words are not simply blowing breath, they have something to say. This is despite the fact that words are not fixed, nor is it always clear what words depend on for their saying anything. However, at least with the Zhuangzi, it seems clear that wordplay, puns, jokes, and unfamiliar uses of language are all part of disrupting established habits of language.