Aesthetics and Existentialism: fancy words appropriated to say something stupid
We're right in it now: philosophy- that guilded and crushingly-serious domain of white men in togas (and now hipsters in over-priced coffee shops). Before you shutter and decide to pass this post up in favor of dank memes, though, let me promise you I'll still try (and fail) to make you laugh. You'll just have to do some thinking as well ;)
Before we can even start, we've got to talk about both aesthetics and Existentialism. A chef has to understand its ingredients before it (notice the emphatic "it" instead of either "he" or "she"- it could be an animal doing the cheffing) can mix them together into something not quite as tasty as either, which is what I intend to do.
So what is aesthetics? Good question, rhetorical Bram. Aesthetics is the study of beauty. What is it that makes something beautiful? How do we percieve beauty? What is the effect of beauty on us? Okay, rhetorical Bram, you've done enough; let the poor audience ask their own questions for once. At it's core, aesthetics assumes that certain things are beautiful and certain things aren't (or at least, that certain things are beautiful for some people through the lens of their experience and some things aren't). I'm going to restrict rhetorical Bram for the time being and let you ask your own questions.
How about Existentialism? Dammit, can't keep that guy out of this. Existentialism is a movement led by such amazing thinkers as Jean Paul Sarte, Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, to some extent Friedrich Nietzche, and, of course, (the queen bee herself) Simone de Beauvoir. It seeks to tackle the question of free will. Operating under the assumption that we all have free will (or at least a perception of free will), it seeks to understand the implications for human existence. In a nutshell, for an existentialist "existence precedes essence" (thanks Jean Paul)- humans have no fundamental nature and are therefore free to decide for themselves what to do with their meaningless time on this rock in space. If it sounds depressing, read "The Myth of Sisyphus" by Albert or "The Ethics of Ambiguity" by Simone, and hopefully you'll realize that, rather than being a curse, freedom is a beautiful (from most lenses, in an aesthetic sense) thing.
So what happens when you merge the two? Well first (if you're bipolar like me), your mind melts and you experience a psychotic episode (albeit not a negative one). But after that, when the dust of your psyche has settled, you start to see an underlying contradiction.
One of the inherent properties of something beautiful is that it exerts a force of attraction. Ask anyone who's ever tried to have a conversation with their parents while there is an incredibly attractive person on the other side of the room. Your eyes wander, as if drawn by some magnetic force, to whatever you find beautiful. But physical things (in the loosest sense of the word- not trying to objectify that attractive person) aren't the only thing that have this property. Sometime we can be attracted to an idea. Just ask anyone who has ever been on a date only to realize there is a more physically-attractive person (or, in a nonsexual sense, pupper) in the room. We're able to fight the force of attraction in that case because not being a dick and making your date feel insecure by oggling that pupper seems more attractive than what lies in front of us.
I would argue that this is the nature of human (and pupper) existence. Recognition of beauty, by its very nature, forces us to pursue it. It's animal magnetism, except that usually it's not animals we're attracted to. Ideas (or to put it in language that more closely aligns with my thinking- narratives) are often far more beautiful than anything in the physical world. We're attracted to justice. We're attracted to compassion. We're attracted to Veganism, Liberalism, or any other type of ism you can find. We're even attracted to just putting the suffix "ism" on shit it has not place being put on (Bramism should never be a thing).
In fact, I would argue that at any point in time, if you want to understand why someone is doing what it (puppers are people too) is doing, you just need to ask what that someone recognizes as beautiful. Through this lens, it becomes very difficult to conceive that free will exists. We are just moths drawn to our respective flames due to the all-consuming nature of beauty.
This presents a problem to the existentialist. Should we just abandon existentialism forever and only read Simone as a foreward-thinking feminist who wasted her time on an outdated philosophical concept? (Fuck you, rhetorical Bram. Leave Simone out of this shit).
No.
We just need to get a bit more creative in the way we think. One of the problems of aesthetics is that it appears we can give no account of what the beautiful is. It seems highly-subjective. But here is where the existentialists come to the rescue! What our hero Simone (and her colleagues) so perfectly capture is the idea that the narrative of free will is one of the most beautiful things there is. Sartre's assertion that a person is in "bad faith" for denying their free will can just as easily be understood as an assertion that only a fucking idiot would want to live in a world where they didn't get to make choices. Where would the fun be?
Still, the nature of beauty continues to present a challenge. When we decide that free will is just a narrative that we think is beautiful that has consequences. How can there be justice in a world where free will doesn't exist, only the semblance of it? Where is the room for change? How can we overturn oppressive forces? How can you ever make me feel embarrassed for writing this blog post?
The answer is that beauty is not skin (or free will) deep. We all have a basic intuition of what the beautiful is. For Adam Smith it was the invisible hand- siphoning money from the poor to the rich under his nose. For Christians it is the guiding force of the holy spirit- siphoning money from the rich to the poor. For Marx it was the unstoppable force of dialectical materialism (fancy words for people obsessed with power and material comfort doing whatever they can to get it). We all must ask ourselves what this force is in the context of our own experience, because that that goes unnoticed will consume us. What narrative do we think is truly beautiful?
For me, it is Bramism- that elusive concept that is a mix of doing dumb things to seek attention (in order to make up for the unintentional neglect I experienced as a middle child) and masochistically trying to take care of those around me and failing at both in a way that is hopefully at least funny (it's an evolving concept. The Bramism of today is not what it was before). For you, it is anonymous reader of this blog-ism (although you might prefer to attach your identity to something else).
One last assertion to make sure I get something wrong in this blog: for every person (and pupper) the beautiful we are seeking is actually inside us. We are the beautiful. To ask a person what they view as beautiful is to ask that person what they want to be in their ideal world. Do they want to be rich? Do they want to be in control? Do they want to go to heaven? Do they want to be a person that acts like their blog posts aren't good out of a false sense of humility so that people will listen without judgement? Bam, rhetorical Bram strikes again! But this time he has struck the "real" Bram by dismantling his rhetorical strategy... Oh well... I had no say in the matter, because some things are more beautiful than free will...
Good talk.
Before we can even start, we've got to talk about both aesthetics and Existentialism. A chef has to understand its ingredients before it (notice the emphatic "it" instead of either "he" or "she"- it could be an animal doing the cheffing) can mix them together into something not quite as tasty as either, which is what I intend to do.
 |
| Simone de Beauvoir- the face of existentialism and one hell of an aesthetically-appealing badass. I call this look "staring down both the void of your own radical freedom and the patriarchy at the same time and showing Sartre up" |
How about Existentialism? Dammit, can't keep that guy out of this. Existentialism is a movement led by such amazing thinkers as Jean Paul Sarte, Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, to some extent Friedrich Nietzche, and, of course, (the queen bee herself) Simone de Beauvoir. It seeks to tackle the question of free will. Operating under the assumption that we all have free will (or at least a perception of free will), it seeks to understand the implications for human existence. In a nutshell, for an existentialist "existence precedes essence" (thanks Jean Paul)- humans have no fundamental nature and are therefore free to decide for themselves what to do with their meaningless time on this rock in space. If it sounds depressing, read "The Myth of Sisyphus" by Albert or "The Ethics of Ambiguity" by Simone, and hopefully you'll realize that, rather than being a curse, freedom is a beautiful (from most lenses, in an aesthetic sense) thing.
 |
| puppers are beautiful. Good luck keeping your peepers off this little guy. |
So what happens when you merge the two? Well first (if you're bipolar like me), your mind melts and you experience a psychotic episode (albeit not a negative one). But after that, when the dust of your psyche has settled, you start to see an underlying contradiction.
One of the inherent properties of something beautiful is that it exerts a force of attraction. Ask anyone who's ever tried to have a conversation with their parents while there is an incredibly attractive person on the other side of the room. Your eyes wander, as if drawn by some magnetic force, to whatever you find beautiful. But physical things (in the loosest sense of the word- not trying to objectify that attractive person) aren't the only thing that have this property. Sometime we can be attracted to an idea. Just ask anyone who has ever been on a date only to realize there is a more physically-attractive person (or, in a nonsexual sense, pupper) in the room. We're able to fight the force of attraction in that case because not being a dick and making your date feel insecure by oggling that pupper seems more attractive than what lies in front of us.
I would argue that this is the nature of human (and pupper) existence. Recognition of beauty, by its very nature, forces us to pursue it. It's animal magnetism, except that usually it's not animals we're attracted to. Ideas (or to put it in language that more closely aligns with my thinking- narratives) are often far more beautiful than anything in the physical world. We're attracted to justice. We're attracted to compassion. We're attracted to Veganism, Liberalism, or any other type of ism you can find. We're even attracted to just putting the suffix "ism" on shit it has not place being put on (Bramism should never be a thing).
In fact, I would argue that at any point in time, if you want to understand why someone is doing what it (puppers are people too) is doing, you just need to ask what that someone recognizes as beautiful. Through this lens, it becomes very difficult to conceive that free will exists. We are just moths drawn to our respective flames due to the all-consuming nature of beauty.
 |
| "What if I told you your conceptions of what the beautiful is are not useful for understanding the world?" Go home, rhetorical Bram, you're drunk. |
No.
We just need to get a bit more creative in the way we think. One of the problems of aesthetics is that it appears we can give no account of what the beautiful is. It seems highly-subjective. But here is where the existentialists come to the rescue! What our hero Simone (and her colleagues) so perfectly capture is the idea that the narrative of free will is one of the most beautiful things there is. Sartre's assertion that a person is in "bad faith" for denying their free will can just as easily be understood as an assertion that only a fucking idiot would want to live in a world where they didn't get to make choices. Where would the fun be?
Still, the nature of beauty continues to present a challenge. When we decide that free will is just a narrative that we think is beautiful that has consequences. How can there be justice in a world where free will doesn't exist, only the semblance of it? Where is the room for change? How can we overturn oppressive forces? How can you ever make me feel embarrassed for writing this blog post?
The answer is that beauty is not skin (or free will) deep. We all have a basic intuition of what the beautiful is. For Adam Smith it was the invisible hand- siphoning money from the poor to the rich under his nose. For Christians it is the guiding force of the holy spirit- siphoning money from the rich to the poor. For Marx it was the unstoppable force of dialectical materialism (fancy words for people obsessed with power and material comfort doing whatever they can to get it). We all must ask ourselves what this force is in the context of our own experience, because that that goes unnoticed will consume us. What narrative do we think is truly beautiful?
For me, it is Bramism- that elusive concept that is a mix of doing dumb things to seek attention (in order to make up for the unintentional neglect I experienced as a middle child) and masochistically trying to take care of those around me and failing at both in a way that is hopefully at least funny (it's an evolving concept. The Bramism of today is not what it was before). For you, it is anonymous reader of this blog-ism (although you might prefer to attach your identity to something else).
One last assertion to make sure I get something wrong in this blog: for every person (and pupper) the beautiful we are seeking is actually inside us. We are the beautiful. To ask a person what they view as beautiful is to ask that person what they want to be in their ideal world. Do they want to be rich? Do they want to be in control? Do they want to go to heaven? Do they want to be a person that acts like their blog posts aren't good out of a false sense of humility so that people will listen without judgement? Bam, rhetorical Bram strikes again! But this time he has struck the "real" Bram by dismantling his rhetorical strategy... Oh well... I had no say in the matter, because some things are more beautiful than free will...
Good talk.
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