There are no pipes in this post.

[porphyry]

Not that there is any reason to mention it, but I never got the hang of smoking a pipe. I am, however, a voracious devourer of cigars--I proceed at about 1/20 the pace of Freud.

Comments

[george-sand.livejournal.com]

Would you be so kind as to put those pictures behind a cut? They are of a cumbersome size.

Regards

George

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I don't like your icon. Could you change it to a picture of Anthony Burgess? Also, the color scheme in your journal is...well that orange is jsut hideous. Would you mind changing it to a nice olive green for me?

[george-sand.livejournal.com]

Sorry I gave offence there. I was being a bit brisk, and not as polite as I might have been. What I was trying to say is that large images make the rest of the page difficult to read. Please accept my apologies for the supercilious tone of my previous comment.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Personally I have never understood the disturbance supposedly caused by large images on friends pages since I have never seen it. Neverthelss I would have cut it on a group to avoid comments of this kind. But my own jounral is something else. I am sure the issue is several screens in the past by now, anyway.

Incidently, my comments, as walways, were mostly to amsue my wife, so please don't take offense.

What is 'otherness' anyway?

[george-sand.livejournal.com]

I understand that many people don't see "lj cuts" as a big deal, or indeed anyone else's business. I should have said so. The other embarrassing thing is that only now do I realise that i'd assumed your post to be on refinement, when all along it was of course on your own journal. So perhaps when you say that you would have cut the images on a community, it shows that we are of the same mind after all.

Your comments are a little tongue in cheek? That's a relief, now I think about some of your comments over on classical_music. I no longer fear for your blood pressure (!)

Otherness, I remember mentioning that. I didn't want to go into it because it felt pompous to do so at the time. But since you ask . . . 'Otherness' is the main theme of this thesis that I never seem to get around to finishing. The central suggestion is that Hegel's aesthetics unites beauty with reason and ethics, whereas the artistic Decadence of the 19th century contrasts beauty with reason and ethics.

By way of explanation: Hegel reduces the other to the same. He does this in at least three ways. Firstly, in regard to reason, through his theory that the history of German idealism is the development of infinite subjectivity. Secondly, in regard to consciousness, through the sublation of all exteriority into consciousness. Thirdly, in regard to dialectical method: the Phenomenology works through certain modes of consciousness in the course of the development of its argument. Examples of this would be his working through of hedonism in the section "Pleasure and Necessity" and of unconscious ethical action in the section "The true Spirit. The Ethical Order." These examples show Hegel's view to be that the conclusions which are to be drawn from each section of the Phenomenology cannot be acted upon with the assumption of the adequacy of the premises under which these conclusions first became apparent.

The Decadence, on the other hand, explores otherness in three ways. These ways are refinement, opulence and neurosis, each of which demonstrates that beauty, from the Decadent point of view, is given by a contrast with reason and ethics, rather than by a revolt against reason and ethics.

The relation of otherness in Decadent art and otherness in Hegel's thought shows (or so I hope) that although they run counter to one another, they can be methodically oriented to one another.

That was good practice!