As for your comment: see my next excerpt.

Good to see you back … with another excerpt.
I’m gonna hafta start calling you ‘The Excerptor’ and put you right up there with the Philosopher and the Commentator….

Still, a fine choice to excerpt. Made me ponder the various ways in which power is understood today, and how these almost per se clash with the mode of power revealed in Christ. Beauty as power – now THERE is a reality worth contemplating….

Good insights/observations/questions…and I am going to respond despite knowing first hand the need to study for comps.

It’s almost unnecessary to note to you that I am approaching the issue metaxologically. However, it appears – for your sake and my own – that your questions indicate a need to express more clearly what this means. Admittedly, though, I don’t mind at all playing off the fact that you have knowledge of the metaxological and have read Desmond.

To your first question regarding an equivocation between taste and necessary reasons, I’ll assume (and you can correct me if my assumption is wrong) that by ‘equivocation’ you mean to say that I posit an unmediated difference between taste and necessary reasons. My response would be that while I am emphasizing the distinction in light of Ziz’s comments, I would not go so far as to conclude on any unmediated difference here. The metaxological approach is one that holds equivocities (distinctions) in place in order to push further between them. But the distinctions must stand in their distinguished integrities in order for this pursuit between them to open.

I don’t think it necessary to defend the idea that personal tastes are distinct from necessary reasons, but it may be necessary for me to explain that by ‘necessary reasons,’ I am invoking an overdetermined other, not the established a priori associated with, say, the necessary reasons of the natural law theorists. Again, I take a metaxological approach to ‘necessary reasons,’ which means that I recognize in their overdetermined character a porosity to their other (taste being one such other).

Another way to look at it is to go between rhetoric and dialectic. This seems to be the equivocity of our age, especially after Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite. In my understanding, both of these discourses are ways in which humans seek to understand and communicate truth. Rhetoric does so by appealing to emotion, playing on personal tastes and evoking the particularities of narrative. Dialectics aspires to demonstrate truth claims by appealing to discursive, abstract laws of reason that are necessary to all thought. In my view, and I believe mine is a properly metaxological view, one cannot dismiss either of these. Sure, both have advocates that univocally reduce these. But these univocal simulacra need not force us to abandon either of them. We need both because all dialectic harbors a hidden rhetoric (as Hart demonstrates) but all rhetoric is rooted in dialectics (as, e.g., Gilson demonstrates).

As Desmond has time and again found, when one approaches something metaxologically, one is always open to the criticism that he is equivocating precisely because the metaxological requires the differences ushered in by the equivocal. But a metaxological approach is one that moves beyond the equivocities by moving between them, not by eliminating one for the sake of the other (which is the dialectical move).

So to MacIntyre’s critique, I would respond by saying that MacIntyre himself is expressing an inchoate metaxology. As I read him, he does not deny the universal efficacy of reason. In fact, his whole argument presupposes that there is a communicability of truth claims. He certainly is no advocate of any sort of quotidian relativism (a fact which he often repeats). His position, and especially his theory of practices, go between (immanently and transcendentally) subjective relativism and bland objective universalism. I would situate my response to the Ziz excerpt on grounds very similar to his, which may redirect our whole conversation toward our readings of MacIntyre (and that would be fine with me).

To your comment: If anything describes the art world (and its current break down, I might add) better than that, I have yet to find it. I would say that it’s all there in Desmond.

To your second question regarding whether or not I commit the very mistake I am accusing Ziz of committing, I would respond in two ways.

First, as I noted in my response to Josh, the history of beauty and art and the ways they develop in the Western world are essential to any critique of technology. History as a phenomenon allows us to appeal to something more “universal,” though I prefer the term ‘communal’ since I am not invoking it as an established a priori (the way universals are often read). So I believe it is justified to view this principle as more of a universal truth than a position of personal taste. One could very easily argue that it is merely a point of personal taste, but one would necessarily have to collapse into a position that eliminates any common ground and hence any dialogue whatsoever.

So my appealing to the historical life of a term like techne or art is not an elevation of a point of personal taste to a necessary truth. Nor, secondly, am I arguing the superiority of classical views. I am merely saying that a position ought to be defended on more solid grounds than ‘I dislike technology because it is mechanical, metal, and denigrating of the human person.’ In contrast, Ziz’s rejection of ‘technology’ with no appeal to anything universal or ‘communal’ exposes his position as one of mere personal taste. Or, to be more generous, his appeal to a much smaller sense of community (a rejection rooted in a sort of anti-modernist prejudice that makes him as modern as the modernism he rejects) indicates his migrating much closer to the ‘personal taste’ side of the spectrum than the universal truth side of it. But the real thrust of my critique is still not that he is advocating a personal taste perspective, but that he apparently fails to see it as such.

All that said should indicate why I believe that starting with both beauty and art is important. But again, I am not so much interested in the fine arts but rather the whole metaphysics of human making. The fine arts, I would contend, are misunderstood unless they are cast within this broader, historical narrative.

When you write:
Maybe this gets at the difference we’re experiencing here, too. I’m less interested in grounding Art in beauty, again not because I don’t think that human experience of beauty isn’t important, but because I don’t see discussion of art in the last 100 years touching on Beauty as such.
it’s difficult not to see this as a mode of reasoning that allows a much smaller community (the Art world in the last 100 years) to set your agenda rather than a much larger community (to which you as a Christian, btw, have a much greater allegiance). As long as one is aware of the metaxology of beauty, one can start with it without collapsing into the bland objectivism that the contemporary world of art ostensibly rejects. I share that rejection, but I do not concede the reaction it generates. I still stand by the view that any rejection of beauty simply regenerates the same mistake that Cartesian and Kantian (and thus most modern) thought has already made with respect to being.

Some more thoughts, and thank YOU for the good discussion.

I wonder then if McIntyre’s critique applies here. Is there some universal reason that transcends the local and subjective?

In terms of art, have you, in criticizing Zizioulas’ supposed elevation of his own taste to universal criterion, done the same, favoring something like a classical art milieu (again, whatever that might be) over a modern, high art milieu, where there really is no possible definition of art?

The way I read McIntyre, he pretty much escapes the scylla of relativism and the Charybdis of Gilson’s critique of modern thought. An emphasis on local practice as the ground for reason (internal goods, rules of play, and all that) leads not to relativism but to polis, so to speak. If anything describes the art world (and its current break down, I might add) better than that, I have yet to find it.

Maybe this gets at the difference we’re experiencing here, too. I’m less interested in grounding Art in beauty, again not because I don’t think that human experience of beauty isn’t important, but because I don’t see discussion of art in the last 100 years touching on Beauty as such. Honestly, I’m not really that interested in defining “ART” either. I don’t think there’s a catch all definition, really. Sure, you can come up with one, but the likelihood of finding consensus, or even moving out of your head as you’ve cited Gilson above, is slim. So it’s all an academic debate as far as the art world is concerned. What’s more interesting, for me, is talking about the human reception of it all, the occasional moments when we touch “Beauty”, regardless of whether it’s art or not.

Anyway, just some rambling thoughts. Thanks for the good discussion.

Matt – I appreciate your introducing me to Yannaras’s thought as I have not read him. And I find the excerpts you provided very illuminating.

His thoughts made me dwell for a bit on the word technology itself along with all its cognates. And I think there is something to be learned here: technology is, when considered in its etymological form, a logos of the techne, a story or narrative of technique, of human making. As a narrative, it is only reduced when reified the way that Ziz seems to have done. In his analysis, technology is no longer a story but a thing. This is perhaps the ground of my reservations with his excerpt.

In and of itself, as we all seem to agree, viewing technology from a narrative perspective means that it cannot be easily cordoned off from a broader conceptualization of human making, at least if the historical “life” of the term is taken into account. But it does reveal that the substance that the name technology signifies carries in its very essence the danger of elevating the technique to a problematic status, where the human replaces the divine; where the technique becomes the end of the story rather than the story itself that speaks to the end as a communion between human and divine. I think in light of Yannaras’s thoughts, the Ziz comment makes more sense in this regard.

This way of looking at it seems not to indict technology as such, but rather a particular use and direction it has the potential to carry us. What may in fact prevent us from flying too close to the sun is our rapport with the natural world, which must be understood as a manifestation of the divine itself.

Dwade –

If only you weren’t flashing that diplomatic immunity badge you call, … *ahem* ‘Comps’ … the stream that would follow would be of epic length. But allow me to add just a bit to the preface…

First, if I came across as asserting that Ziz is “making a turn to individual subjectivity and taste” let me clarify: I believe that taste and subjectivism does constitute a great deal of the excerpt. But my real critique is that he is actually mistaking his own taste for what aspires to be a line of argument based upon necessary reasons. I have no problem with taste and subjectivity and its mode of argument (rhetoric) per se, especially inasmuch as it seeks to persuade others to one’s vision. But to dress rhetoric in the clothing of dialectics one has either to be rather devious or ignorant. The excerpt you provided is only a sample, so I won’t pass judgment. However, my past reading of Ziz would justify my suspicions to an extent (e.g., his own criticisms of Aquinas, whcih are entirely misdirected and guided by a prejudice against metaphysical thought, is another example…).

Second, in regard to the comments regarding high art and the role of beauty in understanding high art, I share much of your concerns. And your reasoning is certainly solid in terms of being sensitive to the pedagogy that is necessary. But my concern is not with the art world so much as it is with the faithful; less with art and more with faith. Thus, beauty will always be the starting point. I think if we begin to concede the art world’s (however that may be defined) disdain for beauty, then we abandon beauty for taste.

And I am far from willing to abandon, or even distance myself, from beauty as an integral component in any starting point. To me, abandoning beauty for taste is no different from abandoning the Good for preference, or Truth for perspective. Now certainly, these latter are modes that communicate the former, but they are posterior and as such require the former. In fact, I think it possible to hold both beauty and taste in a harmony and that one’s starting point need not choose one over the other.

My concern of starting with taste is best articulated in Gilson’s concern that described the whole of modern thought: ‘when you begin philosophizing in the head, you can never get out.’ When one begins with taste rather than beauty, it seems, one commits the very mistake that Ziz seems to decry; that is, one begins with the human, the created, the posterior. Consequently, all subsequent phenomenon will have to be filtered by this beginning and one ends up in the same conundrum alluded to in Gilson’s insight and will suffer the wrath of Ziz’s condemnation.

But, that’s all for another conversation after you finish your comps….

Let me say this: the quote from Zizioulas should be representative only of a very particular deployment of a notion of personhood that he believes to be from the Cappadocians (that’s a chunk of text not quoted above). So, I want to be careful not to judge his ideas too quickly, keeping in mind the limitations of these kinds of selective quotes.

I do wonder, however, at Brendan’s wariness of adjudicating Art vs. Machine on the bounds of taste alone. Taste, I think Brendan and I would agree, is not an individual matter. I’m sure Zizioulas would heartily affirm this, given his insistence on human being as a communal affair, yea, event even, and not a matter of individual essence or an abstracted human nature. So, taste, whatever is, is something one can only develop in the milieu of human connectivity. Yes, we talk insistently about our tastes as if they’re something we can distinguish from the taste of others. We also talked about tastes as developing, changing over time. Is it possible that we educate our tastes? I think Brendan would agree with this.

The problem, I imagine, is not with taste, but with the definition of Art, and Brendan points this out aptly. But, as I see it, this is an interminable problem, and Duchamp might (unintentionally) isolate and chasten the effete character of high art in its divorce of Beauty as such from the products of human making. But such is the way of taste – in the case of high art and its world, a very particular and anemic education in what is and isn’t art. But as far as I can tell, Duchamp isn’t interested in chastening the world of high art as much as he is in destroying it. Maybe that’s a reactionary read to Duchamp – not that I don’t enjoy it – but his view of art seems nearly as flat as his high art contemporaries at the time.

I wonder about a view of contemporary art that relies on a robust notion of Beauty, not because I don’t have such a concept of beauty, but because the art world is so allergic to using the term beauty. I think deep understanding of taste IS the place to begin if only because it emphasizes the pedagogical aspects of the conversation – and the importance and current absence of education in the arts is something nearly everyone in the conversation is concerned with.

That said, I don’t think Zizioulas is making the turn to individual subjectivity and taste quite like Brendan thinks he is, but that’s for another conversation…. AFTER COMPS.

“A eucharistic use of the world certainly does not preclude technology, the use of technical means: on the contrary, any form of ascetic art always requires highly developed technical skill … But the problem begins as soon as this ‘rationality’ is restricted to man’s individual intellectual capacity and ignores or violates the principle of the intrinsic beauty of the natural material; as soon as man’s use of the world serves exclusively to make him existentially autonomous, and proudly to cut him off from the rhythm of the life of the world …”

What does Y mean by a ‘eucharistic use of the world’?:

“The ontological content of the eucharist—eucharistic communion as a mode of existence—assumes that the communal reality of life has a cosmological dimension: it presupposes matter and the use of matter, which is to say art [techne], as the creative transformation of matter into a fact of relationship and communion. Man’s art, the way he takes up the world and uses it, is a basic element in life, whether it brings about the alienation of life, or makes it incorruptible and raises it to an existential fulness of personal distinctiveness and freedom.”

In the full article from which I’ve excerpted these quotes, I like how Y. kind of punts on the question of high vs. low art, and makes art something at once very low and very high: the very manner of our interaction with materiality. An odd definition of art, and not one I’d care to defend, but a stimulating thought nonetheless: a vision–at once moral and ontological–of harmonious engagement with material reality. Of course, this hearkens to St Maximos, who speaks of humans as, by nature, mediators b/t the heavenly and earthly, bringing each to each. Fr Schmemann, following suit, speaks of us as ‘priests of creation’, each and every one of us. At least, this is our high calling in Christ. Interestingly, there is much resonance with this vision of ‘art’ and the theology of Church bells (natural materials must be used for theological reasons–bringing earth to a new mode of praise of God), of the use of natural materials in the Church (real candles, real flowers, etc.), even of the rules regarding the treatment of ‘holy trash’ (i.e., dead flowers, etc. that have been used in the chapel–i.e., in a sacred manner). And of course this all relates to the theology of icons, as well.

Your fine observations have prompted a few other thoughts for me.

Before responding to your final question regarding the truth of beauty and art independent of personal taste, I want to reiterate what I see as part of Ziz’s problem. When he constructs a line of thinking such as the one articulated in this excerpt, he runs into the problem of distinguishing where exactly the line should be drawn with respect to the ‘ugliness’ of human technology.
For instance, the very chisel used by the sculptor is a kind of technology, as is the paint brush of the painter and the instrument of the musician. In effect, these are types of instruments just as a machine is a type of instrument, designed to extend the human creative capacity in its effort to respond and integrate itself in the world.

Or, to put it another way, these instruments are types of machines.
The canvass and the easel are ‘machines’ of sorts.

So the problem that Ziz faces relates significantly to your final question: if he is making an argument that stands merely on his own personal taste, why should anyone bother to hearken to it? In such a case, it becomes little more than another art critic assuming a position of authority he does not have. At the very least, he would have to supply us with the credentials as to why his personal taste ought to be more influential than another’s.

And this relates significantly to your final question. Here is what an approach would look like that didn’t elevate personal taste to the level of truth:

First, there would be a great deal of critical engagement with the theories of the past, the evolution of these theories and the current form they take in contemporary thought. For instance, a critical analysis of the distinction between poesis and techne, as well as between nature and art would be necessary to the kind of analysis represented in the Ziz excerpt.

Second, there would have to be included a demonstrated understanding of the following principles:

1) that the truth of beauty and art exceeds any one particular view of it, but it remains in itself an integrity. The kind of relativism generated by personal taste is a fiction – there is no absolute relativism (indeed, even the term itself is a contradiction). Even Kant discussed beauty and art within the perspective of a communal taste, realizing that no one individual generates taste from a vacuum. All personal taste is formed and given from a broader community of taste. True, Kant’s figure of the genius is about as close as he came to relative, personal taste, but even this required normativities embedded within the broader community/culture.

2) that history communicates a great deal of the substance of beauty; in other words, that although beauty as such exceeds any reduction to definition or singularity, it has communicated and continues to communicate itself in and through the history of human thought/act/creativity. Consequently, any analysis of the goodness of beauty requires that the aforementioned historical distinctions (poesis/techne, nature/art, art/fine art etc.) be brought into any analysis.

3) That a metaphysics of some sort is indispensable to any analysis of beauty and art. Ziz tends to view metaphysics from the rather cliche view associated with the so-called ‘death of metaphysics’ perspective. This prejudice impedes any real insight into beauty, art, personhood, making, creating, etc. from being expressed. And it is a metaphysical mistake that Ziz makes when he assumes certain kinds of technology to be pernicious without making any attempt to distinguish or define this mode from other modes. In effect, his arguments are similar to someone who says, “I don’t like cars because they come from factories that are not person centered and they isolate us on the streets.” These are truisms that don’t penetrate the matter very deeply.

And here is the real danger of this kind of reliance on personal taste: in elevating one’s personal taste to the status of a truth, it no longer serves as personal taste. The effect is to disable others’ personal tastes from serving as a position of authentic judgment. Ziz’s claim is that the modern world of industrialization is ugly and in some way opposed to true personhood. Consider his statement:

The ‘creation’ of a machine requires man’s individualization both in terms of his seizing, controlling and dominating reality, that is, turning beings into things, and also in terms of combination of human individuals in a collective effort, that is, of turning himself into a thing, an instrument and a means to an end.

Here, Ziz imputes motive and intention upon action with no real evidence. Moreover, his description, intended to evoke an emotional response, could just as easily be applied to the fine arts. So it is not a matter of a truth appearing, but of a mood being generated in order to rhetorically evoke a response.

Now, sure, given our sympathies with his overall point, we won’t object too much. But my problem is that this sort of thinking will generate unthought animosity toward the modern world of industrialization and machinery. Rooted in Ziz’s rhetoric and responding on emotion, the judgments generated by Ziz’s view will not be rooted in something more solid and necessary.

I think of someone like Marcel Duchamp and his “Fountain”. I would be willing to bet that Ziz would deride such a piece as garbage, as an idolization of the very technological world he decries. But Duchamp’s fountain, in many ways, allows one to recapture a vision of the beauty of human making. There is something beautiful about the ability of the modern world to order human waste so that our fecal and urinary products aren’t laying around on the streets. Duchamp’s piece appeared at a time when the western world was beginning to take such creative power for granted, failing to see the beauty in it. Hence, it was shocking to common sensibilities since it challenged the idea that a urinal cannot be a thing of beauty.

So the major problem with Ziz’s position is that in elevating personal taste, he actually smuggles in an objective absolutism. For while he may deride the mechanization of society, there are many others who may see its beauty (as you pointed out). It seems that polemics in the realm of the aesthetic can only really take the form of illuminating the beauty of something; not in deriding the immorality of it.

It seems to me that Ziz is making an argument better suited to moral thought than to aesthetic. Yes the two are related, but there is a great purpose in distinguishing them as well.

Anyway, this is a nutshell presentation, but I think it suffices for now.