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Certain modern painters, the ones who abandoned representation, offer us what I like to call "absolute form."

It's just form, brothers and sisters (I'm preaching the gospel here). Form for the sake of form. Aesthetic means sensual. Form for the senses. I can't help but relate Ellsworth Kelly to Webern, for instance, and also to Euler's identity. Absolute form is form reduced to its lowest terms. Absolute form is a cube root. That sort of thing. Does anyone relate to this?

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;141682 wrote:

Certain modern painters, the ones who abandoned representation, offer us what I like to call "absolute form."

It's just form, brothers and sisters (I'm preaching the gospel here). Form for the sake of form. Aesthetic means sensual. Form for the senses. I can't help but relate Ellsworth Kelly to Webern, for instance, and also to Euler's identity. Absolute form is form reduced to its lowest terms. Absolute form is a cube root. That sort of thing. Does anyone relate to this?

Clive Bell on Significant Form

@Reconstructo,

Pure precise form. What a relief from all the fog! Rorty is a cool as a cucumber. He's right, I think, to ignore many of the most famous philosophical quandaries. So many of them are quicksand. Unsolvable and yet treated as if solvable. So what we end up with is a mess of opinions, some more useful than others.

I see why Wittgenstein wanted to distance philosophy from psychology. To save it. Because otherwise, philosophy is just a branch of psychology. Who will swallow who? It's like that First Science thread. Do we want good advice? Tips from Mom? Well, opinions are good for that. Do we want something universal, drawn precisely, that is true as the days are long? Well, we better stick with Euclid, or whatever transcendental goodness we can round up. In other cases we are always just rounding off.

"Words words words"

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;141682 wrote:

It's just form, brothers and sisters (I'm preaching the gospel here). Form for the sake of form. Aesthetic means sensual. Form for the senses. I can't help but relate Ellsworth Kelly to Webern, for instance, and also to Euler's identity. Absolute form is form reduced to its lowest terms. Absolute form is a cube root. That sort of thing. Does anyone relate to this?

Well, I dont know.
I relate to the notion that earthly forms are aesthetic in so far as they conform to transcendent eternal perfect forms (along the lines of Plato).
I relate to the concept that most perfect forms have some sort of mathematical, proportional expression (along the lines of Pythagoras).
Forms, aesthetics and mathematics are all related.

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;141682 wrote:

Certain modern painters, the ones who abandoned representation, offer us what I like to call "absolute form."

It's just form, brothers and sisters (I'm preaching the gospel here). Form for the sake of form. Aesthetic means sensual. Form for the senses. I can't help but relate Ellsworth Kelly to Webern, for instance, and also to Euler's identity. Absolute form is form reduced to its lowest terms. Absolute form is a cube root. That sort of thing. Does anyone relate to this?

That is just another way of saying it is what it is...If Art is subject, it is the lense of the camera turned upon the camera...It does not represent, and instead it reflects...

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;142403 wrote:

I see why Wittgenstein wanted to distance philosophy from psychology. To save it. Because otherwise, philosophy is just a branch of psychology. Who will swallow who?

If psychology swallows philosophy I believe it will suffer from indigestion.

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;141682 wrote:

Certain modern painters, the ones who abandoned representation, offer us what I like to call "absolute form."

It's just form, brothers and sisters (I'm preaching the gospel here). Form for the sake of form. Aesthetic means sensual. Form for the senses. I can't help but relate Ellsworth Kelly to Webern, for instance, and also to Euler's identity. Absolute form is form reduced to its lowest terms. Absolute form is a cube root. That sort of thing. Does anyone relate to this?

Maybe you will find the root of modern painting in Bruno Leski's invention of perspective painting.

@PappasNick,

PappasNick;142759 wrote:

If psychology swallows philosophy I believe it will suffer from indigestion.

Physics should be cleaved from philosophy just as theology once was...It is true that philosophy may not contradict physics, but the problems humanity faces which are the proper focus of philosophy are moral problems, which is another way of saying spiritual problems whose forms are all meaning without the being, which distinguishes physics as dealing primarily with being and meaning... So, philosophy and psychology are really the same sport...

@Fido,

Fido;143144 wrote:

Physics should be cleaved from philosophy just as theology once was...It is true that philosophy may not contradict physics, but the problems humanity faces which are the proper focus of philosophy are moral problems, which is another way of saying spiritual problems whose forms are all meaning without the being, which distinguishes physics as dealing primarily with being and meaning... So, philosophy and psychology are really the same sport...

I don't think it best to say that psychology and philosophy are 'the same sport'. This is especially so if we are talking about what, for lack of a better word, I'll call normative psychology, which I take to be the dominant branch of psychology. Normative psychology is an object of examination or analysis for philosophy.

@PappasNick,

Speaking in strict terms of art/writing/creative expresion. I don't know that one can every achieve a representation of absolute form. I feel that this is one of those things in 'reality' that does fall under the ideal of platonic forms. No matter how primal our representation is, is it really and absolute representation of that emotion/idea/ideal within us?

@PappasNick,

PappasNick;143162 wrote:

I don't think it best to say that psychology and philosophy are 'the same sport'. This is especially so if we are talking about what, for lack of a better word, I'll call normative psychology, which I take to be the dominant branch of psychology. Normative psychology is an object of examination or analysis for philosophy.

You know that it is true of philosophy that it has looked for norms and challenged a few as well... What they have in common is the focus, which is mankind... Science looks a actual being, the stuff of nature...Human nature is harder to discern, because it is purely an abstraction... We presume such a thing, like the mind, like the emotions, like all our moral forms...All the soft sciences have exactly the same goal, of understanding man, as if that were possible since mankind is an infinite, like all moral forms...We presume it, and act as though it exists, but it is meaning without being...Again, the opposite, really, of physics which seeks the meaning of being, of matter, or reality, of nature...Science and philosophy are working on two different subjects with two different methods.

@prothero,

prothero;142428 wrote:

Well, I dont know.
I relate to the notion that earthly forms are aesthetic in so far as they conform to transcendent eternal perfect forms (along the lines of Plato).
I relate to the concept that most perfect forms have some sort of mathematical, proportional expression (along the lines of Pythagoras).
Forms, aesthetics and mathematics are all related.

Yes, the forms in the pure state are arguably non-material. But to communicate them from human to human requires sound/image/text. I agree quite a bit with your last line. We've got loose logos (discourse) on one side, with its useful but blurry metaphorical nature....and stiff mathema on the other side, with visual ration center stage...except the non-spatial number has come into its own these days. I'm reading this book on that strange number "e."

---------- Post added 03-25-2010 at 02:45 PM ----------

Fido;142432 wrote:

That is just another way of saying it is what it is...If Art is subject, it is the lense of the camera turned upon the camera...It does not represent, and instead it reflects...

Some of the super simple art is maybe more valuable as a reminder than as art proper. It it's a poke in the eye reminded us that painting is made of color first, symbolic representations second. Personally, I think symbolic representations are the peak of visual art. But some of the modern painters off a reduced but rarefied Portrait of the Camera, as you say.

You are probably familair with the Black Painting, of which there are several. This reminds me of the number zero, which was of course an invention, and one that took a while to catch on. It seems to have come from the East.

---------- Post added 03-25-2010 at 02:48 PM ----------

PappasNick;142759 wrote:

If psychology swallows philosophy I believe it will suffer from indigestion.

I agree. They are uncomfortable neighbors. And philosophy spawned psychology in the first place. We don't want the son to eat the father.

Really, psychology could make invasive claims on any subject, as the mind is involved in everything human.

---------- Post added 03-25-2010 at 02:48 PM ----------

HexHammer;143010 wrote:

Maybe you will find the root of modern painting in Bruno Leski's invention of perspective painting.

I don't know that guy in particular but the perspective point is a good one to make.

---------- Post added 03-25-2010 at 02:50 PM ----------

Fido;143366 wrote:

..All the soft sciences have exactly the same goal, of understanding man, as if that were possible since mankind is an infinite, like all moral forms...

Well said. not only is man an infinite form, but he's also a changing form, as his evolution is primarily cultural, including the technology that makes him a miniature god.

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;142403 wrote:

I see why Wittgenstein wanted to distance philosophy from psychology. To save it.

Have you considered the possibility that Wittgenstein separated philosophy from psychology because he believed that philosophy is not psychology, and conversely?

@Fido,

Fido;143144 wrote:

So, philosophy and psychology are really the same sport...

Well yes. In this sense of pragmatism and prudence..absolutely. The ethics and politics side of foolosophy is essentially psychology. And maybe aesthetics is as well, arguably.

One difference occurs to me. Psychology is empirical. Philosophy is logical.

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;143690 wrote:

One difference occurs to me. Psychology is empirical. Philosophy is logical.

Yes, that certainly is a difference!
There is a joke about a preacher who suddenly realized that there was a difference between God and the Devil because God is good, and the Devil is wicked, but I forget how it went. But keep that difference between psychology and philosophy in mind. It is a good one.

@Reconstructo,

K, if you are replying to me, please answer that question first, else I will never see your posts. And if you did leave that anonymous comment, then......no comment.

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;143690 wrote:

Well yes. In this sense of pragmatism and prudence..absolutely. The ethics and politics side of foolosophy is essentially psychology. And maybe aesthetics is as well, arguably.

One difference occurs to me. Psychology is empirical. Philosophy is logical.

I think they are the same in respect to each dealing with infinites as human lives and psyches are...

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;143681 wrote:

I don't know that guy in particular but the perspective point is a good one to make.

Bruno Leski was a selftaught genious.

He was both a master architect, engineer and to some degree a painter.

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;143690 wrote:

Well yes. In this sense of pragmatism and prudence..absolutely. The ethics and politics side of foolosophy is essentially psychology. And maybe aesthetics is as well, arguably.

One difference occurs to me. Psychology is empirical. Philosophy is logical.

Logic in philosophy is limited to physics, and the application of it to all moral forms is useless... We still need to think clearly and speak clearly, so we should be logical in our thoughts and use of words, but the subject is not one given to logical method, no psychology, nor history, nor sociology, and it is not because people do not try; but because we are infinite, both complex, and individually irrational...People only bear as much reason in their lives as they need to achieve their irrational goals... And philosophers starve to death trying to define the logical man while advertizers celebrate with every dollar the many myriads of irrationals...

@HexHammer,

HexHammer;143772 wrote:

Bruno Leski was a selftaught genious.

He was both a master architect, engineer and to some degree a painter.

The advantage to being your own teacher is the impossibility of reaching your own ass with a swift kick...

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