Ethics and aesthetics;
In most systems of morality happiness is important;
philosophers thought saw happiness as a supreme good. Though Kant challenged
this and said that duty is the supreme ethical motive.
But those who believe in happiness having supremacy in ethics
differ from the thoughts of Bentham, despite his idea of the greatest good for
the greatest number. Bentham believed happiness (a sensation) and pleasure are equivalent
and that maximising either one maximises the other.
Aristotle made a distinction and refused to identify
happiness with the pleasures of the senses. He identified pleasure with the
activity, whereas Bentham saw it as cause and effect and that all pleasure has
the same value; Aristotle believed the value of pleasure was the same as the
activity.
This brings us to the ‘qualification of pleasure and pain.’ It
is an important concept for utilitarian authority as it establishes an
estimation of the pleasure or plain a policy or action may cause to the people.
Bentham believed that A is more pleasurable
than B if it is more intense or lasts longer. Judging actions must consider fecundity
and purity; fecund pleasure is likely to produce pleasure in subsequent senses.
Pure pleasure is unlikely to produce a subsequent series of pains. Also when
considering public policy ‘extension’ must be considered – how widely the
pleasure/pain will be spread across the population and brings up a questioning of
utilitarianism ‘the greatest number of what?’ in Bentham’s thinking it is
likely that he was talking about humans.
Modifications of utilitarianism;
John Stewart Mill
toned down Bentham’s utilitarianism, in his treatises of utilitarianism recognises
that people had always thought that life has no higher end than pleasure. He believed
this to be a doctrine of a dirty swine.
By distinguishing between different types and qualities of
pleasure utilitarianism can out distance between himself and of a swine –
happiness involves a sense of dignity and contentment. Though there are some
objections to utilitarianism as it can be considered to be too strict because
it asks that a single action should take into account universal happiness. It’s
also thought to be too lax – there could be times when the abolition of banning
actions causes moral representatives to think they can do outrageous things in
justification.
Mill offers a defence for both by distinguishing between
moral standard and a motive of action. Utilitarianism may offer universal
happiness as a moral standard, but it does not feature it to be the aim of
every action.
He also suggests a preference for practical over justice – it’s
important to make a connection between justice and moral rights. He emphasises
that there can be legal rights which are unjust and just claims conflict with
laws.
Schopenhauer on renunciation;
Schopenhauer’s ethics are related to metaphysics and the
theses that the world of experience is illusory and that the true reality, the
thing in itself, is the universal will.
Life is just a gift and the loss of that gift is death – to find
the will we need to consider life philosophically. The thing in itself in all
phenomena, is unaffected by life or death and death should not trouble us. It is
just a sleep in which we forget our individuality. It’s only as phenomenon individuals
are distinct.
Schopenhauer believed
that morality is a matter of training character, but this can only be
understood if Kant’s reconciliation of freedom with necessity is accepted. The will
is free from eternity to eternity. Everything in nature is determined by
necessity.
We would be able to predict a person’s future like and
eclipse if we had knowledge of a person’s character and motives that are
presented to them. We believe that we
have a choice between alternatives because we have no knowledge of how the Will
is going to decide.
Schopenhauer rejects the idea that there is only one
character by distinguishing several kinds of character;
-
Intelligible character; underlying reality,
determines response to situations in the world.
-
Empirical character; what we learn in experience
of nature of our intelligible character.
-
Acquired character; achieved by those who have
learnt the nature and limitations of their own individual character.
Our will can never change but there are many degrees of awareness
of will. We are all creatures of will and will of it. Nature is insatiable.
He believes that the basis of all willing is need and pain;
we suffer until our needs are satisfied, but once the will lacks the object of
desire, once it is satisfied, life becomes boredom – all happiness is essentially
negative, never positive.
Nietzsche;
Nietzsche believes that history shows two kinds of morality,
that of the rich and of the poor. This lead to a system called ‘A Tansvaluation
of Values’ which he blamed on the Jews.
He believed Christianity had led to the degeneration of the
human race because it is rooted in weakness, fear and malice. Christians exalt
compassion as a value – when they assist the affected it is because they enjoy
exercising power over them. Pity is a poison that infects a compassionate
person with suffering of others.
Nietzsche suggested a reversal of the values of Christianity
to save the human race by creating a second tranvalutation of values.
He believed that humans fell into two types – ascending and descending;
people who represented the upward and downward track of human evolution.
Nietzsche thought that it wasn’t only Christianity that
needed to be overturned. We must go beyond the opposition between good and
evil. We shouldn’t object to judgement because they are false. We must affirm life and bring it to a new
level – the ubermensch – humanity is only a stage before reaching it. It will
not come about through evolution but through the exercise of will. Its arrival
will be the perfection of the world and give it meaning.
Aesthetics;
The point of beauty is to give pleasure and arouse desire –
the finest beauty is to be found in nature and therefore the highest aim of art
is to imitate nature.
Burke introduced sublimity alongside the concept of beauty. The
sublime can be the aim of art. To feel something as sublime is to feel
astonishment without fear. He sought to explain what qualities inspire these
feelings.
-
Sublime; the fears and horrors implicit in the
original instinct for self preservation.
-
Beauty; appreciation for female perfection,
derives from the need for social contract and from instinct to continue the
race.
Kant’s ideas in his treatise dominated aesthetics. Human beings
possess a third faculty- the capacity for judgement, the judgement of taste which
is the basis of aesthetic experience.
He suggested two kinds of satisfaction; gratification –
sensual delight. And pleasingness – the notion, disinterested enjoyment of
beauty.
Judgements of taste are singular in term. Judgements of
value are related to purpose. Similarly are judgements of perfection of
perfections. However, judgements of beauty are not like either because they do
not bring objects under concept. This becomes clearer with Kant’s different
types of beauty.
-
Free beauty; no concept of what the object ought
to be.
-
Derivative beauty; supposes a concept and
perfection with the object. It is ascribed to objects with a particular
purpose.
‘Analytic of Sublime’ the sublime is large, overwhelming and
mathematical. It is too great to be taken in by our senses and our perceptions
become overwhelmed. Resisting it would be in vain but allow us to remain
without fear in a state of security.
Nature can be both beautiful and sublime, but only art can
be beautiful and we must be conscious that art is artificial not natural. Production
of beauty is the purpose of art, but is only a representation of beauty. Three kinds
of art are outlined; speech, namely rhetoric and poetry. These are formative
arts. There is a third class of art which are sensations. The most important in
this class is music, though poetry is most important of all.
Schopenhauer;
Aesthetic pleasure consists in the disinterested
contemplation of nature or of artefacts. When we view something and admire its
beauty without thought of our desires and needs that we are treating it as a
work of art and enjoying aesthetic experience. Disinterested contemplation,
liberates us of tyranny of the will and may take one of two forms.
1.
If the scene I am contemplating absorbs my
attention without effort then it is my sense of beauty that is aroused.
2.
If the scene is a threatening one and I have to
struggle to escape from fear and achieve contemplation- then what I am
encounter is something that is sublime rather than beautiful.
The sublime impression produced in an awareness of two fold
consciousness (individual and eternal) is called the ‘dynamical sublime,’ though
the same impression may be produced by meditation. This impression of sublimity
can be produced also by closed spaces and monument of age.the sense arises from
the a contrast of our smallness and insignificance as individuals and vastness
of creation of ourselves as pure knowing subjects.
The charming;
The charming is a lower bound of beauty; it turns upon the
object of contemplation into something which attracts the will. They nullify
the aesthetic purposes and are altogether to be condensed.
In every encounter of beauty has two elements; a will-less
knowing subject and an object which is the idea known. The purpose if art is to
represent not a particular individual, nor an abstract concept, but a platonic
end.
Nietzsche on tragedy;
He sees the origin of art in human need to mask life’s
misery from themselves. There are two escapes from reality – intoxication and
dreaming. These illusions are personified as Apollo and Dionysus.
Music is the supreme expression of the Dionysiac spirit, and
epic of Apolline. Tragedy is the offspring of Apollo and Dionysus combining
poetry and music, though Euripides killed tragedy by injecting it with
rationality; the fault of Socrates as he rejected Dionysus and destroyed
tragedians’ synthesis.
