Mats Norrman replies to me:

>The Baeutiful Arts then, reflect these movings in the society, but what is
>important to realize is that the chain is tied in the other end too: art
>affects society.  Therefore, Mr Schwartz, it can very well be so that it
>does matter where you start listen to Music; at Beethoven or Schoenberg.
>Or Spice Girls or Anouhar Brahem.

This is essentially a neo-Platonic or Augustinian view of art -- one, I
add, which has had rather dangerous political fallout.  If art affects
society in any way other than to reflect it or to transcend it, then
one can understand that society or government would want to control it.
Indeed, we see this happening all the time, and not just in Nazi Germany or
Soviet Russia or any other obviously thuggish dictatorship, but in elective
democracies as well.  Therefore, I would be extremely careful about making
such a statement.  It's by no means an obvious point.  For example, what's
the harm of Beethoven? Schoenberg? the Pop Icon du jour? What are the
benefits? How does classical music -- listened to by a definite minority,
if sales figures mean anything -- affect society at all?

>>You contend it gives you the advantage of establishing a paradigm of the
>>good. I've never seen such a paradigm, so I tend to doubt this.
>
>No, becuase you are more interested in winnign a discussion than even
>keep honest to yourself.  Ever read art history? Ever heard of Baroque?
>Classicism? Romanticism? Let go models, of course Romanticism started with
>C.P.E Bach's "Sturm und Drang".  Of course classicism still showed its face
>in 1860.

I wish you would read more carefully and think a little longer before you
type something onto your screen.  Yes, I have heard and even read of these
things.  All of them are historical categories under which one can list
certain works of art.  Now tell me how any of them establishes a paradigm
of good art, which is, after all, what the paragraph was about.

>>Far more important to me, at any rate, is to try to understand what's
>>before me in its own terms.
>
>Please allow me to tie back to an old discussion I had with you on the
>list long ago: With the above sentence you state that there is objective
>beauty?

No, I do not.  In fact, I have always said the opposite.  How you get
that from what I've written mystifies me.  If you bother to read carefully
the context of what I originally wrote, you might see that what I meant was
that, to be brief, it makes no sense to try to understand a Debussy prelude
as a classical sonata.  You try to apprehend the composer's architectural
principles for a particular piece rather than force it into a Procrustean
bed of predetermined categories.  Again, how you get from this to
"objective beauty" would tax an understanding much finer than my own.

>>The argument is that the permanence of the canon guarantees something
>>about the truth of the paradigm.  It seems to me that the paradigm is only
>>historically, rather than Platonically, true, and only for a brief moment.
>
>Her I temporarly agree on what I find to be an observation similar to
>my own.  Also here is though different levels.  Consider the Hellinstic
>Litterature of the Roman period.  Different writers went in and out, up
>and down: Julius Kaisars sparesome style of "De bello Gallico" or "bello
>civil" is something ratehr different from the Voluptousness of Catullus or
>take Vergilius or Emperor Nero.  Then we have the Christian influence, and
>after Plotinos certainly there were other or at least other favoutrties
>added on top to Catullus and the Augustinian cradle.  Still the period from
>long before Romes Empire can be tied together with even uttrances of the
>Byzantine Empire as a tradition.  Like we consider Monteverdi and Mahler
>both part of Western Classical Music, both part of Wests cultural unity.
>Persian Carpets, however contrasts to Chagalls paintings, or Aztec
>scultptured heads of Jade with Michelangelos "David".  (I have said nothing
>about that one of those should be better beauty than the other).  Do you
>see my point?

Probably not.  I see that there's something called a Western European
tradition of art.  However, I also note that Shakespeare differs from
Sophocles and Shaw differs from Shakespeare.  I myself would contend that
perhaps this tradition changes with new art, that there might not be such
a thing as eternal aesthetic principles (although I can't be sure), and
that this says absolutely nothing about a paradigm of artistic goodness.

>>The Hardwired Brain is terra incognita -- we don't have the schematics
>>for the brain, let alone the mind, which is what apprehends art.
>
>This is a hard argument to crack, that we don't know enough about the brain
>yet to explain everything.  I could shabble away your question here with
>some proto-intellecual schick-schack or hocus-pocus, but this time, let me
>ask how the squirrel know that it shall jump in trees.  How does the little
>bird know that it shall fly? How does the worm recognize another worm? Why
>do sucklings recognize mother and mothers breats, and draws to warm, and
>repels cold? Are there treejumpingschools for squirrels, or?

I have no idea how any of this happens.  After all, I haven't been able
to get much info from squirrels and worms.  These do seem to me simpler
questions than how the human mind apprehends art, however.  If I can't
answer the easy questions, how can I answer the more difficult ones?

Steve Schwartz