Overview

Eagleton is a philosopher if nothing else. This work looks at the concept of the Aesthetic through Western (generally German) philosophy and ideology. He moves through a multitude of philosophers using each to push the aesthetic to an ultimately liberating Marxist concept. The Aesthetic is an interesting value, very human and essentially embodied.

Notes

Eagleton starts by looking at the liberal tryptych of class, race, and gender. He brings this with the centralized theme of the body, connecting it with the state. “I try in this book, then, to reunite the idea of the body with more traditional politics of the state, class conflict and modes of production, through the mediatory category of the aesthetic; and to this extend the study distances itself equally from a class politics which has little of significance to say of the body, and form a post-class politics which takes refuge from such rebarbatively ‘global’ matters in the body’s intensities.” (p. 7-8)

Aesthetics is about the study of bodily sensation, reaction, and experience. This is opposed to “reason”, essentially the dual of the aesthetic sense. Aesthetic relates to somatic perception. This compares with Clark and Alison Adam, on AI and embodied understanding. The aesthetic, like reason, is a bridge between the material and immaterial, and thus applies a similar abstraction between the conceptual and the world. In this regard, the pair of aesthetic and reason map to modeling and representation for simulation. (p. 13)

Eagleton discusses custom as perceived by Kant and Hegel: “This centrality of custom, as opposed to some naked reason, lies at the root of Hegel’s critique of Kantian morality. Kant’s practical reason, with its uncomprimising appeal to abstract duty as an end to itself, smacks rather too much of the absolutism of feudalist power.” (p. 20) In this morality, custom is aestheticized as moral. This puts a feudal motivator behind the means that customs emerge to maintain the cultural values of a society.

The aesthetic as applies to law and morality: Judgment, character, virtue, morals are seen as aesthetic values. A utopian state focuses on internal aesthetics: the law is embodied and internalized. This relates to simulation and the embedding of values and laws. Simulated societies do not usually operate on the sense of aesthetics, though. “A sound political regime is one in which subjects conduct themselves gracefully — where, as we have seen, the law is no longer external to individuals but is lived out, with fine cavalier insouciance, as the very principle of their free identities.” (p. 37)

Another approach: Mimesis and the grounds for social foundation: The law is built on reflected imitation. From this perspective, laws are learned values. But, Burke believes that aesthetic values are universal. This pulls back again to explicit and implicit customs as discussed by Goffman. (p. 53)

Some dizzying takes on “the subject”. Modern independence is defiant and isolating. Kant tries to repair the damage to the subject wrought by Hume. The subject is undefinable and unidentifiable. It *exists* in as much as it is *not* an object. Derrida: it is a kind of nothing. Embodiment is reduced to an aesthetic phenomenological thing. (p. 73)

On representation: A sparring between Kierkegaard and Hegel. The Hegelian system cannot be lived, it is purely conceptual. “Reality is an organic artifact, but it cannot be spontaneously known as a whole through aesthetic intuition. Wisdom for Hegel is finally conceptual, never representational: the whole can be grasped through the labor of dialectical reason, but not figured there. Art and religious faith are the closest approximations we have to such concrete imaging; but both involve sensuous representations which dilute the clarity of the concept.” (p. 150)

This seems to relate to sociology again: The conflict between lofty cereberalism and embodiment. Schopenhauer seems like an interesting base for looking at simulated models. “If humor and hopelessness lie so close together, it is because human existence for Schopenhauer is less grand tragedy than squalid farce. Writing in the toils of the voracious will, driven on by an implacable appetite they relentlessly idealize, men and women are less tragec protagonists than pitiably obtuse.” (p. 155)

The role of the subject in morals and compassion. The matter of the subject leads to a paradox: “Moral action, like aesthetic knowledge, would thus appear to be an unthinkable paradox. For there can be no practice without a subject; and with subjects come domination and desire. To speak of a compassionate subject would seem oxymoronic: even if a purely contemplative benevolence were possible, it could only realize itself in action at the cost of falling prey to the voracious will.” (p. 165)

Through history, morality originates in compulsion, and then becomes custom, and finally it becomes gratifying virtue or instinct. (p. 236)

Self identification and nature. Sentimentalism aestheticizes nature as benign. Nature is made to seem like mankind and is anthropomorphized. This seems to relate to simulation very nicely. Eagleton is discussing Nietzsche and his reaction to sentimentalists who project their values onto nature. “Such thinkers merely project their own arbitrary values onto reality and then, in an act of ideological consolation, unite narcissistically with their self-image. In a subtle gesture of dominion, philosophy always fashions the world in its own likeness.” This resembles naive modeling, and in simulation has the capacity to reflect varied understandings of value systems. (p. 249)

On Freud, and the self-thwarting nature of the superego: “But this social order inevitably entails a renunciation of instinctual gratification; so that part of our aggressiveness is driven back upon the ego to become the agency of the superego, source of law, morality and idealism essential to the operations of society. THe paradox, then, is that the more civilized we become, the more we tear ourselves apart with guilt and internal aggression. Every renunciation of instinctual satisfaction strengthens the authority of the superego, intensifies its brutality and so deepens our guilt. The more admirably idealist we grow, the more we stoke up within ourselves a culture of lethal self-hatred.” (p. 270-271) Now, Freud should not be taken as “correct” in any sense, but this is a beautiful system of torment that would be excellent to address via simulation. Simulation allows us to say things like “suppose Freud is right about this, what would happen?” and go! Many works of literature do use these foundational concepts , but rarely do they give us the capacity to explore their procedural complications.

Adorno may find himself in agreement with Weizenbaum. Rationality and thought are violational. Rationalism relates man to object and serves to oppress. To Adorno, thought is inherently pathological. Calculated rationality and the reduction of the self to reasoning machine deprives us of our humanity (hence Aushwitz). “Emancipatory thought is an enormous irony, an indespensable absurdity in which the concept is at once deployed and disowned, no sooner posited than surmounted, illuminating truth only in the dim glare of light by which it self destructs.” (p. 347) This analysis is highly evocative of the self-destructive impulse of humanity and is the nucleus of post-nuclear anxiety.