Nietzsche's suggestion that aesthetics should be the supreme value above truth...

So your entire response to my post is "Dostoevsky thought the opposite though!!!".

Again, I think you should unlearn the Great Man Theory.

I'm not saying Nietzsche made some sort of social change, I'm saying his philosophy of embracing the spirit of the age is cancer, and if you want to say, "Well it's not just Nietzsche's thought," that's true, it's the thought of an entire epoch still going on, but I don't see what your point is: that you can't fault any philosophy because all philosophers are influenced by their society?

...

Well, first off, because Nietzsche's philosophy has fuck all to do with what you actually imagine yourself to be railing against. "Modern art" if we use the popular definition of the phrase actually places truth above aesthetics, not the other way round as you bizarrely imagine. Picasso: "Art is a lie which makes us realise the truth". After the World Wars there was a great turn AWAY from "beauty" in art towards "truth", because "beauty" was revealed to be fundamentally amoral. Performances of Schubert being performed in Nazi concentration camps etc..

Secondly, my point is that one cannot understand WHY a philosopher believed what he did without understanding his particular social and historical context. So to attack Nietzsche for being evil simply because he"embodied the spirit of his age" is complete ignorance. One has to understand why and on what grounds Nietzsche believed what he did. But of course, it is very difficult, perhaps impossible for a narrow Orthodox understanding of this, because it would mean taking into consideration that each historical period may have its own aesthetics, and that aesthetics itself cannot be entirely divorced from cultural interpretation (which is completely fucking obvious to me at least, but would destroy any argument from "God did it").

Why should I care about any of this? We're all going to die a meaningless death anyway. Die quietly, OP.

cont.
In fact, in art, I would say that rather than truth passing "from subject to object", the historical record shows the opposite happened. All artists in the classical world created their works for a social or public function, that is an objective one. It was only with the Romantic revolution at the end of the 18th century (with the Enlightenment) that the idea of the individual artist creating from himself and for himself took hold.

The great distinction between Biblical verse and Biblical prose is the prose uses a much more limited vocabulary, since repetition is a key literary device for reflecting recurring themes, which conveys a continuity of action. Biblical verse, however, is more concerned with description than action, and therefore utilizes a greater vocabulary so as to convey detail. Yet both by far the most common style of both Biblical prose and Biblical verse is parataxis, which is optimal for conveying parallels and parables. In fact, Hosea 10:12 overtly names this Biblical style, saying God shows visions to his prophets and speaks through them through “parables”--the word here is a form of the word “likeness”, what God created man in. Indeed, man was created to become like God (most Church Fathers gloss that God is being sarcastic when he says Adam and Eve will become like him for eating from the Tree of Knowledge), but the Fall prevented that; God aims to restore the likeness (Zechariah 12:8). So Biblical aesthetic has blatant spiritual significance. Now that we have a rudimentary understanding of in literature, let’s examine this aesthetic in art and music.

In ancient times, the primary function of art was (according to Aristotle, but obviously not totally) catharsis (similar to blockbusters or tearjerkers today). But with the rise of Christianity, art took on a new purpose that was beyond the synthesis of the binary Dionysian-Apollonian or ever Socratic spoken of by Nietzsche; art became about expressing truth which could *not be expressed by reason*. This was not emotional truth (we will get to that), but a higher true which reason could not order properly. Art eventually became about materialist truth or emotion later on in the West (it started in the Gothic period Giotto's "The Massacre of the Innocents" is a good example). Materialist art. especially in the Renaissance, started to trend toward an extremely fleshy aesthetic in contract to the Christians aesthetic (Byzantine icon of Adam and Eve for illustration).
cont

Now it is not that Christian art did not have emotion in it, but that it was not about Catharsis (this is why Orthodox icons do not depict Christ suffering on the cross, but always already dead, they do not aim for some catharsis). The major difference between Christian literature and Christian pictorial art is that the former conveys constant action, whereas the latter is tries to convey a stillness for holy figures, an absence of action and total calm (sometimes contrasted with the less than holy figures); this utilizes the medium very well, since pictorial art is frozen, whereas text is active.

I think the basic understanding of how this ties with Biblical aesthetic can be shown in Christ's parables, literature within literature. Here we see the full purpose and dynamic of Biblical of aesthetic in the illustration of truth. Touching back on Aristotle's theory on the function of art, I contrast the pagan Aesop's literature to illustrate the same aesthetic as the Christian function of art.

It's not about catharsis, it is about expressing truth in a way reason cannot. This is why art ceased to be naturalist during the Christian period, because naturalism is a kind of rationalism of art (not naturalism couldn't be used, it occasionally was, but here it was an element employed to facilitate a particular truth of a particular piece of art, as opposed to something always employed for the sake of being considered more true in and of itself).

To give you a visceral contrast between these two aesthetics, Here is a Roman Catholic hymn, followed by an Orthodox hymn, follow by a Roman Catholic hymn, follow by an Orthodox hymn. The Roman Catholic hymns embody the modernist aesthetic, whereas the Orthodox hymns embody the Christian aesthetic.

youtube.com/watch?v=u0iOBOIwQ2o

youtube.com/watch?v=AE1FzSC8DBs

youtube.com/watch?v=1mgn2Y1Yvhs

youtube.com/watch?v=Y8r5r4R2yuE

With the onset of modernity, truth ceased to be expressed in this unique, Biblical way (the Bible is also not about catharsis). Instead truth was expressed either rationally or trough catharsis, the return to the Apollonian-Dionysian synthesis. This is why modern variants of Christianity have difficulty reading the Bible, everything in is read as either cathartic or rational truth. This is also why scientism is increasingly marginalizing the humanities where they are not cathartic, since they are seen as inadequate to expression rational truth. We have lost touch with the use of art and philosophy as expression of truth in a way unique to art, that isn't about either rationalism or being an emotion junkie.

The Renaissance eroded truth as subjective before the Enlightenment. If you want to see art as subject, go to any Orthodox Church.

Pic related is art as subject

By "naturalism" by the way, I don't mean the movement, I mean emphasizing realistic anatomy and dimension.

Define catharsis and its teleology.

Protip: you can't.

I want to add here by the way, that the rebellion against the aesthetic that you mention is the destructiveness I mentioned at the end of the OP. It is often manifested by intentionally mutilating the human form in art, like Picasso did (with great genius and talent).

Catharsis is to vent a frustrated emotion, such as grief or anger. Someone who "needs a good cry" watches something for catharsis, to get that cry, like someone who "needs a good wank" and so they watch porn.

>Catharsis is to vent a frustrated emotion, such as grief or anger. Someone who "needs a good cry" watches something for catharsis, to get that cry, like someone who "needs a good wank" and so they watch porn.
That's extremely debatable, read 'Aristotle’s Poetics: The Aim of Tragedy' by Paul Woodruff

I've read Aristotle himself, can you summarize Woodruff's argument?

>each person has his "own truth"

is he rejecting the idea that subjective truth approaches the limit of objective truth (lel calc1). fo example, each personn, when they meditate, go to the same place. "love", when you say you love someone, youre assuming they feel the same emotion towards you if they declare they reciprocate that emotion.

i havent read nietzsche, only plato and aristotle. but he seems to be, with
>taste itself, merely a servant of taste

talking about the /idea/ of taste. so hes rejecting the idea of truth, while accepting the idea of taste. which seems a bit oxymoronic. the problem with subjectivity is this accepting of the whole while rejecting parts. which i content with for obvious reasons.

tl;dr truth is real and worth striving for, even if its just another form to be filled. the purpose is in contemplation not absolute empirical existence.

>modern art is bad
you might prefer to circlejerk about this with your reactionary readdit buddies this is not a board for neckbeard engineers

POOOOOOOOOOOOO
AAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

>it's a Constantine hates modernism thread

>is he rejecting the idea that subjective truth approaches the limit of objective truth (lel calc1).
Yes

Modern art often involves immense talent, that doesn't mean it isn't "bad" as in its teleos. It's well constructed destruction.

ughhh

>There are people who still consider Nietzsche to be anything other than a hack who rode upon the coattails of Schopenhauer

well that seems a bit ignorant, but ill explain further and say it seems he was unwilling to accept a more complicated view of reality than the one he so wanted to advocate. and again, im arguing from ignorance here and want to read nietzsche, im just not there yet.

there is empirical evidence of subjective truth becoming objective truth. any emotion, any purely subjective experience expressed, implicitly declares the objective reality of the expressed. this i suppose might be platonic forms. youve ignored my examples, and im assuming youre just memeing here and posting one guy's ideas and just spreading the word, yourself not believing them, or at least not able to defend them, on authority of the guys name, in this case nietzsche, which is pitiable. it seems a bit scientismic. technocratic, im not sure of the word here. but dont assume every question has an answer, because youre clearly assuming you can logically debase modern art while rejecting the idea that modern art can be logically supported equally against the debasement.

i dont like this reality, but it is. and if it isnt, prove it; pleb.

Nietzsche is a maestro of imagery and prose

Nietzsche conceives of truth as a woman, as he says at the outset of Beyond Good and Evil. To understand how Nietzsche sees truth, one only need understand how he sees women.

I see what you're saying, but philosophers after a certain point, like mathematicians, are arguing with logic based on successions of thoughts, often with little to no respect or engagement with the outside world beyond books of others who did the same.

Yes context is important, but someone like Nietzsche shouldn't be passed off because he was a part of an era we can't understand.

[Politics 1341b 38] "what we mean by “katharsis” we will leave plain for now"

Although Aristotle had the intention to define the term, the definition is assumed to pertain to a now lost treatise called 'On Poets'. So we're left with:

1. Aristotle himself doesn't define 'katharsis'
2. Aristotle doesn't explain the end to 'katharsis'

That leads to two fundamental inquiries:

1. Does the katharsis phrase belong in our text at all?
2. What's the end to katharsis?

A recent study by Gregory Scott helps to corroborate the positive of the first question. As to the second one, Woodruff lists the five proeminent approaches:

1. Didactic
2. Ethical
3. Therapeutic
4. Intellectual
5. Dramatic

You adhere solely to one approach (the most common, therapeutic), dismiss the others and don't explain why. If you want to read a summary of all the five, read the essay; to go more in depth, read Halliwell's commentaries of Poetics.

>Tragedy is, then, a representation of an action6 that is heroic and complete and of a certain magnitude—by means of language enriched with all kinds of ornament, each used separately in the different parts of the play: it represents men in action and does not use narrative, and through pity and fear it effects relief to these and similar emotions.

Why can't people recognize that Nietzsche was an intelligent and interesting individual but trying to tabulate the whole of his work into some sort of religious doctrine has disastrous consequences?

ive actually been thinking of this myself. the depth of human understanding.

so socrates was the wisest man in athens, yet he was so because he knew he knew nothing. he was aware of his ignorance.

so it would seem, and im beginning, albeit begrudgingly, to come to a point where the depth of human understanding is nil. there is no separation between high and low. its the same point. the line has /no/ Y value.

if there was a separation between high and low, there would be an infinite spectrum between the two. yet if there is no space between, a literal naught 0 nada, they are equivalent.

which is strange because you seem to be arguing that modern art is awful while simultaneously asserting that there is no absolute difference between good and bad art.

"Aristotle’s definition of tragedy in the opening of Chapter 6 seems to offer this as the
aim of tragedy: “through pity and fear achieving the katharsis of such experiences”
(1449b27), where the “experiences” are usually taken to be the emotions themselves.
Aristotle does not say what he means by this, and the more plausible readings of the
Greek in the phrase I have just quoted do not seem consistent with other comments he
makes on tragedy. Hence the problem of this essay."

Don't make yourself a fool and go read the fucking essay.

Oh boy its this exact same thread again....

We're talking about the crux of his work here, not some side opinion of his

Socrates said he was wise because he did not think he knew more than he did. He said other men knew more, but they also overestimated their knowledge, and so were less wise.

Alright, but it's really not material to the rest of this one way or the other.

youre still memeing. he said that of the artisans, which you clearly only read apology and not the republic, for youd know that the whole fucking point youre trying to make has nothing to do with techne and everything to do with arete you fucking pleb. youre worse than a sophist.

I thought you were referencing "le only thing I know is that I know nothing"

*Stirner

By the time Nietzsche was writing, Stirner's ideas were old hat. Hence they appear in Dostoevsky, when Dostoevsky likely never even heard of Stirner.

didn't read the OP but I'd say our biggest problem is that we treat aesthetics as unimportant
physical beauty is considered shallow (and I have yet to see a reason why)
I think it's a symptom of the egalitarian disease

not all modern art was about destruction, only that immediately influenced by dadaism, which lay dormant for about three decades during the 20th century. early modern art, such as neo-impressionism, cubism, expressionism, neo-plasticism, were concerned with restoring art

but all modern art really just came from the idea that art should stimulate the mind rather than the eye. it saved art from the mire of academicism. bland, photorealistic art that denied everything that actually made art great

>didn't read the OP
Did you at least read the first sentence?

The destruction of truth as the principle value is why art degenerated into merely a matter of pleasing the eye. It was due to the aesthetic movement, which was manifested in very different ways, such as Nietzsche and Oscar Wilde, but was overall a larger movement of rebelling against the value of utility as paramount.

yeah but that was enough for me
my theory is way better

The reason aesthetics are so disregarded is because the fixation on them during WWI, caused intense nausea.

Hey, you're the same namefag from Veeky Forums! Having fun with your new cool internet persona yet?

>new

I'm a Christian and am deeply involved in theology and philosphy related to it and I think I've reached a point where Constantine annoys me more than butters.
Butters was bloody retarded, but at least her posts were short.
Constantine reads like a 16 year old evangelical who just read Kierkegaard and think he understands the whole historical dialectic.
My respect for the Orthodox church built up by Russian literature somehow becomes smaller every time I read one of her awful posts.

>Nietzsche is an empiricist
dude, have you even read Nietzsche?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Truth_and_Lies_in_a_Nonmoral_Sense

*facepaw*

Kierkegaard is awful. Or rather, not his writing or his thought, but what he represents, his solution is thoroughly modernist. Christianity is not, nor ever was, a reaction to the absurd, and Kierkegaard's ideas on that presage liberal theologians like Paul Tillich

I never said he was a empiricist, I said he derived his idea of truth as a dialectical response to empiricism: "it is the contaminated conception of truth that he rebels against." (from the OP) Empiricists are the realists, the materialists, the utilitarians.

Nietzsche explains his idea of truth in the Will to Power
>Presupposition of this hypothesis: that there is no truth, that there is no absolute nature of things nor a "thing-in-itself." This, too, is merely nihilism-even the most extreme nihilism. It places the value of things precisely in the lack of any reality corresponding to these values and in their being merely a symptom of strength on the part of the value-positers, a simplification for the sake of life.
For Nietzsche, truth is not "witnessed", it is *produced* by power..