From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sun Sep 07 2003 - 16:15:12 BST
Matt,
> Platt said:
> Incidentally, David asked, "What is the utility of beauty?" Looking
> forward to your answer.
Matt said:
> Like a good pragmatist, I don't think beauty has any use in and of
> itself because I don't think anything has any use in and of itself:
> everything is relational.
Platt says:
I have no use for any philosophy that has no use for beauty. Beauty,
not utility, is what makes life worth living. Imagine a world without
beauty, without art, to realize the wasteland given to us by a
philosophy that has no use for either beauty or art.
As for "everything is relative," the statement is self-contradictory. I
have no use for any philosophy that has no use for the rules of
rational discourse.
Paul once summed up the philosophy that I find not only useful, but
more importantly, beautiful:
"I think the emphasis on Dynamic Quality you detect among fans of
Pirsig may be a dynamic backlash against the western denial of its
existence when it is something we experience and "know" already. For
instance, it is impossible to describe the beauty of something we have
all experienced, such as a sunset, in terms of particles which we have
never seen and never will see. Yet our culture would have us believe
that particles are more real than beauty!"
I will go a step further and assert that what is the most real is the
most beautiful. Beauty shows us the spiritual force of the universe --
"the moral force that created this world in which we live."
In other words, when we feel the power of beauty, we come face to face
with Dynamic Quality
Platt
"Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the
utilities of the world." -- Emerson
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