Everyday Aesthetics and 9/11
By Michael Pankrast
mikepankrast@gmail.com
San Jose State University, California
Abstract: In my paper, I ask the question: what can our aesthetic experience tell us about an event, particularly one with profound ethical significance. I begin by exploring a paper written by Emmanouil Aretoulakis in which he argues for a Kantian analysis of the 9/11 tragedy in order to reveal non-rational elements that are essential for understanding it in its entirety. He defends avante-guard artists Hirst and Stockhausen and their comments describing 9/11 as the greatest work of art ever. I explore Kant’s theory of aesthetic appreciation and Aretoulakis’s application of it in the 9/11 event. I counter it with a contextualist analysis of everyday aesthetic experience, elucidating both a strong and weak form of it. I detail the epistemology grounding the contextualist’s theory. I demonstrate the value of both the Kantian and Contextualist theory, the Kantian analysis being rich phenomenologically and the Contextualist analysis being rich metaphysically. I then make the argument, against Aretoulakis’s thesis, that the Contextualist analysis of aesthetic experience provides the best way to understand a complicated and ethically significant event like the 9/11 tragedy for any group of situated knowers.
Everyday Aesthetics and 9/11
Introduction: The “Aesthetic Attitude”
In “The Nature of Everyday Aesthetics,” Tom Leddy discusses the “problem” of Zen Buddhist Monks and their relation to everyday aesthetic experience. To put it briefly, it would be nice to successfully distinguish the aesthetics of everyday life ordinarily experienced (like the “neatness” of a recently weeded, well-organized vegetable garden) and the aesthetics of everyday life extraordinarily experienced (like some spiritual dimension associated with such a vegetable garden). However, Zen Buddhist Monks can allegedly transform any ordinary experience into a spiritually significant experience (an extraordinary experience). For example, in the famous Japanese novel, Heike monogatari (The Tale of the Heike), the narrator says, “The sound of the Gion shôja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sôla flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind” (McCullough 1988). Such an experience of sound and color attests to the Zen Buddhist’s ability to transform ordinary experiences into extraordinary experience. It’s this capacity that blurs the distinction between the two, or at least founds the distinction not in the object experienced, but in the subject experiencing it.
Bearing this in mind, it’s difficult to say that some object is or is not fit to be experienced in an aesthetically significant and extraordinary way. It seems that adopting such an “aesthetic attitude” is essentially to adopt an attitude of seeing everyday life as if it were art. Leddy accounts for this, saying “(w)e see art, at least partially, in terms of everyday aesthetics, and we see everyday aesthetics, at least partially, in terms of art” (Leddy 4). Some uncontroversial examples can be discussed to support such a claim, including the “dancing plastic bag” captured in the film American Beauty, an image Leddy describes as an example of
“extraordinary beauty,” judged under the aesthetic attitude (and not, for instance, the environmentalist attitude that might see an un-recycled piece of trash left out on the city street) (Leddy 5). The bag itself, just a piece of trash, carried away by whirls of wind which manipulate its form and position in space, can be seen as if it were art. But what if we were to take a controversial case that can likewise be viewed under an aesthetic attitude? What if this case had profound ethical significance? What would such a case tell us about everyday aesthetic experience? And what might the aesthetic attitude tell us about it? This paper will make the argument that we can learn a lot about an event by coming to understand the various ways it can be approached aesthetically. One way, inspired by Immanuel Kant and elucidated by Emmanouil Aretoulakis, is that we can approach an event dispassionately, and this will reveal non-rational aspects of the event that are important in developing a fuller understanding of it. Another theory, known as contextualism, argues that our aesthetic evaluations draw from a matrix of emotional states, attitudes, interests, values, cognitive styles and background beliefs, all stemming from a viewer's particular embodiment. It likewise claims that looking at an event aesthetically will reveal important aspects of the event, but will do so with resort to this matrix. The event that will be dealt with here is the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I will begin with the Kantian approach, as developed by Aretoulakis’ article, “Aesthetic Appreciation, Ethics, and 9/11.”
9/11, Aesthetic Appreciation, and Beauty
The thesis of Aretoulakis’s article is as follows:
“There is a need for aesthetic appreciation when contemplating a violent event such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks. What is more, appreciation of the beautiful, even in case of a 9/11, seems necessary because it is a key to establishing an ethical stance towards terror, life, and art. It should be stressed that independent aesthetic experience is not important in itself but as a means of cultivating an authentic moral and ethical judgment.”
It should first be noted that the aesthetic attitude adopted here by Aretoulakis is Kantian in nature. Therefore, appreciating “the beautiful” in the 9/11 attacks refers to very specific criteria argued for in Kant’s theory of aesthetic experience. Let’s begin by giving a brief summary of Kant’s theory.
Aesthetic experience, for Kant, involves a judgment of taste. A judgment of taste is marked by “a free and joyful play of our powers of cognition” (Wenzel 9). Kant asserts that there will be four “moments,” or categories, that form any aesthetic contemplation.
The first moment is “disinterestedness.” Kant argues that “(o)ne must not be in the least biased in favor of the existence of the thing, but must be entirely indifferent in this respect in order to play the judge in matters of taste” (Kant 91). To experience the “Beautiful,” for Kant, means that one is free of desires or purposes, and they are not attending to social, moral, or intellectual considerations (Wenzel 19).
The second moment is “Universality.” Judgments about beauty, for Kant, are subjective in the sense that they refer to a subject judging (for example, I say “The 9/11 attacks were beautiful.”). But they are universal in the sense that “we reserve the word ‘beautiful’ to say things about how persons qua persons respond to certain things” (Eaton 41). In Kant’s words, “The beautiful is that which, without concepts, is represented as the object of a universal satisfaction” (Kant 96). This is how judgments of beauty are universal: they certainly require a subject having the experience, but something that is beautiful will be beautiful for all subjects who view it without personal bias (or, with reference to personal taste).
The third moment is “purposiveness.” A judgment of taste is marked by its ‘purposiveness,’ which is to say that, a priori, an object we encounter aesthetically will be found suitable for an aesthetic contemplation. Such a contemplation will be “in the form of a free and joyful play of our powers of cognition” such that it will feel like it was designed for such an experience, even when an individual can’t trace back exactly how it was that she found this object beautiful (Wenzel 9).
And the fourth moment is necessity. There are two things that can be thought to be necessary in a judgment of taste:
i) The agreement of others to my judgment
ii) My own satisfaction with the object
If the first three conditions are met for a judgment of taste, one cannot help but feel, demand, and assent to the experience of ‘the beautiful’. Kant describes this moment as “a necessity of the assent of all to a judgment that is regarded as an example of a universal rule that one cannot produce” (Kant 121). That is, one cannot produce the felt rule that all must understand this object as beautiful because it’s grounded in an attitude, not a logical ‘necessary relation’ (like “All human beings are mortal”) and not as a practical necessity either (like the Categorical Imperative). Aesthetic experience is different. It involves the free play of the faculties of cognition, but not the faculties associated with reason. It involves the faculty of the imagination, whose rules cannot be articulated in the way practical and logical rules can be. Nevertheless, if an experience satisfies the first three moments outlined here, one cannot help but feel that a universal rule is at work which requires the recognition of beauty (See Wenzel 57).
With this very technical use of the word “beautiful” in mind, let’s explore Aretoulakis’s argument. His paper comes as a response and defense of two artists who publicly praised the 9/11 attacks as a great work of art. The artists, Damien Hirst and Karlheinz Stockhausen, both gave critical acclaim for the attacks as art. Stockhausen said the attacks were “the greatest work of art ever.” Hirst said, “It’s kind of like an artwork in its own right... it’s visually stunning and you’ve got to hand it to them on some level because they’ve achieved something which nobody would ever have thought possible... So on one level they kind of need congratulating” (Aretoulakis 2008). Predictably, they were then protested and ridiculed for their comments. Stockhausen’s concerts were cancelled and both were accused of supporting terrorism. Aretoulakis’s paper seeks to clear up misinterpretations of Hirst and Stockhausen by showing how disinterested appraisals of the “Beauty” of the 9/11 attacks will reveal non-rational aspects of the attack that need to be recognized in order to cultivate an authentic moral and ethical judgment.
Hirst and Stockhausen’s appraisal of the attacks were not moral or ethical in nature, and so did not lay any normative claims such as “These attacks should have happened.” They praised the attacks for accomplishing what “true art” seeks to do - to explore the “impossible.”
The point is that the 9/11 attacks’ “aesthetic power derives from its autonomy, its non-dependence on any known category of perception” (Aretoulakis 2008). The attack itself was a bringing together of the familiar and the unfamiliar. The planes, of course, were familiar, as were the twin towers and the pentagon. The planes crashing into the towers and the pentagon was completely foreign. This tension between the familiar and the unfamiliar refers to the impossible. The conjoining of the two is the goal of any significant artist, according to Hirst and Stockhausen. Their praise for the attacks went no further than this: they publicly acknowledged that what was achieved on September 11 is what is sought after in “true art.” As Aretoulakis notes, “(t)wo familiar objects combine in an unfamiliar mode thereby yielding an authentic experience of newness, an irregular beauty, as Kant envisions it” (2008).
Dispassionate Aesthetic Appreciation Vs. Ethics
Even recognizing the very technical way “beauty” is used here, it is difficult to see how one could look at the 9/11 attacks dispassionately and even find an aspect of them
praiseworthy, or beautiful. These events were certainly visually stunning, but it’s hard not to associate them with the most deplorable ugliness. Still, Aretoulakis argues that we must do so in order to pass sound ethical judgments on them. Stockhausen, who’s comments were received with outrage, had shows cancelled as a result. Aretoulakis writes, “The fervent reactions to Stockhausen’s ideas insinuate that artistic preoccupations with the humanly impossible as well as the morally inconceivable have so far been unjustifiably (but not unpredictably) overlooked as they belong to a future, dispassionate, analysis of 9/11. Such an analysis would allow for a morally free and thus more ethical explication, as it would permit the symbiotic operation of many different faculties - politics, aesthetics, ethics, realism - without any of them ruling over any other” (2008). Aretoulakis’s argument rests on the human ability to distinguish different types of judgments so that we can combine them consciously and responsibly. One is a judgment of reason, which involves the faculty of the “Understanding.” This type of judgment perceives rational aspects of the event, which would include a moral understanding of the event (this evidenced by Kant’s claim that the Categorical Imperative can be derived through reason). Another type of judgment is a judgment of taste, which involves the faculty of the “Imagination.” As seen, this involves the four moments discussed, and effectively intuits non-rational aspects of an event.
Aretoulakis notes that there is a universal human response such that we are engaged by catastrophes on film all the time. Aretoulakis says, “we are too deeply immersed into the culture of visual violence not to appreciate aesthetically, or take secret pleasure in, real violence when it occurs” (2008). Our fascination with the event of 9/11 can therefore be explained by its taking an “absolute aesthetic power” that we regularly appreciate in fictional scenarios, and bringing it to a practical, mundane level. We could only recognize this deep-seeded, secret pleasure if we were to first take a disinterested look at the spectacle, applying only a pure aesthetic judgment (or, a judgment of taste), thereby recognizing the attacks in their absolute aesthetic form. This type of judgment, as seen, does not involve one’s rational faculty. We can then bring to such a judgment conceptions associated with the faculty of the understanding, recognizing the realization of absolute terror on a mundane level. This faculty of the understanding, unlike the imagination, does involve human rationality. Combining the two, we can adequately appreciate the suffering produced and the reality of the situation.
Aretoulakis’s point is that fully appreciating the attack would entail both the imagination and the understanding, the absolute form and the mundane. Recognizing a deep-seeded pleasure in viewing the event is uncovered in attending to the absolute form of the attacks. Hirst and Stockhausen’s recognition of 9/11 as great art likewise recognized the absolute form in the 9/11 attacks. The reactionary criticism to their comments, as ignoring a recognition of the pure aesthetic judgment of taste, labeled them as supporting terrorism and being immoral artists. But such criticism came only from the point of view of the rational faculties of the understanding, recognizing the event only in its mundane form. Reactionary critics therefore did not pay heed to important non-rational aspects of the event which are necessary in understanding a complex and horrible event like 9/11. Aretoulakis argues, “art and beauty assume an even greater importance in the sense that they provide views and sensations that are other than reason... thereby helping analyze events like 9/11 that cannot be analyzed through reason only” (2008). He argues, therefore, that in understanding 9/11 and similar events, there is a need for a recognition of the absolute form of an event like 9/11, thus consciously utilizing the distinct faculty of the imagination.
A Summary of Aretoulakis’s Argument
Now we are at a point where we can summarize Aretoulakis’s argument. It goes as follows: Everyday aesthetics can be experienced in a dispassionate way aesthetically, or in terms of aestheses (the senses), and should be in order to develop a fuller understanding of their significance. Therefore, the 9/11 attacks should be, in part, experienced aesthetically and dispassionately. As such, it’s important that a part of our evaluation of the event involves a recognition of its aesthetic Beauty in the Kantian sense. This recognition (the imagination), once understood and articulated, should combine with the rational faculties of the understanding (which include ethical judgments) to provide a fuller understanding of the event. Hirst and Stockhausen, as artists, should not be condemned for pointing out the success of the 9/11 attacks as art, in that the impossible became reality. They should not be condemned because they were exploring the event from the faculty of the imagination, and as we’ve seen this is a critical component for understanding the event in its entirety.
Now we must ask if this goal of dispassionate analysis is really possible, or if any aesthetic judgment, even that associated with beauty, will be necessarily influenced by the rational faculties of the understanding. The claim that we can distinguish and utilize different types of judgment when analyzing an aesthetic experience is controversial in contemporary theories of aesthetics. The contention rests on the whether or not the non-rational aspects of an aesthetic experience can or should be separated from rational considerations. Berys Gaut, among others, has argued that morally virtuous responses to artwork increases the artwork’s value. On the other hand, morally depraved responses to artwork decreases the artwork’s value (Gaut). The same rule can apply to everyday aesthetics. The idea is that our knowledge of an event conditions (or should condition) our actual aesthetic experience of it. It is articulated in the theory known as contextualism. If correct, it refutes the idea that a dispassionate appraisal of an event such as 9/11 is possible or of serious value. Rather, our aesthetic evaluations draw (or should draw) from a matrix of emotional states, attitudes, interests, values, cognitive styles and background beliefs, all stemming from a viewer's particular embodiment.
A Contextualist Analysis of the 9/11 Attacks
Contextualism argues that “one’s aesthetic pleasure or pain is the result of realizing that one is attending to a particular sort of thing” (Eaton 44). It recognizes that knowledge, as emerging from one’s situatedness, will affect aesthetic judgments. Therefore, a brand new sparkling Hummer may be deemed ugly by an environmentalist just because it is a vehicle that gets dreadfully bad gas mileage and is therefore environmentally wasteful. On the other hand, a beat-up, ten-year-old Smart Car standing next to it may be deemed beautiful in light of its exceedingly good gas mileage. These examples show that the “faculty of the understanding” influences the aesthetic appraisal of an object. Its theses can be elucidated in a strong form as follows:
(1) Aesthetic experience cannot be experienced dispassionately because one’s situated knowledge necessarily conditions one’s aesthetic experience.
In a weaker form, it makes the normative claim:
(2) Aesthetic experience should not be understood apart from one’s situated knowledge because such knowledge contributes to the value of the object of experience.
If you accept the contextualist position, Aretoulakis’s theory regarding 9/11 is problematic because, against the strong form, it asserts that a dispassionate aesthetic experience is possible, or against the weak form, that it is favorable. In both the strong and weak forms of the theory, contextualists deny that aesthetic pleasure should be taken out of context, it should not be divorced of moral and ethical judgments, and also it should not be divorced of situated knowledge. If correct, contextualists will find common ground with Aretoulakis insofar as we can learn about an event like 9/11 by attending to various aesthetic evaluations, but that is not at all due to attending to the absolute form and then applying judgments stemming from the understanding. Our learning about an event will involve investigating the way one’s complex disposition conditions an aesthetic experience and what such a disposition reveals about it. To understand the contextualist position and all it implies, we must first become clear on this idea of situated knowledge.
Contextualism and Epistemology
In laying out the contextualist conception of everyday aesthetics, I continually reference "knowledge" and its role in the deployment of one's aestheses. Knowledge, as I understand it here, refers to a situated knower - which means "knowers as situated in particular relations to what is known and to other knowers" (Stanford 2003). Generally, situated knowledge "(c)onsider(s) how people may understand the same object in different ways that reflect the distinct relations in which they stand to it" (Stanford 2003). Such a conception of knowledge recognizes that knowledge is embodied by a particular person with particular experiences who is situated differently in space and time from other knowers. It also recognizes that people represent objects in relation to their emotions, attitudes, interests, and values and that different "(p)eople have different styles of investigation and representation" (Stanford 2003). In addition, when experiencing the world, we do so in virtue of different background beliefs. These are important tenets of a contextualist epistemology, and I assume them here.
Related to everyday aesthetic experience, one's emotions, attitudes, interests, values, cognitive styles and background beliefs, all stemming from a viewer's embodiment, will be, with reference to the two possible theses of contextualism,
- necessarily involved in the employment of aesthesis
or
- of primary value in evaluating an aesthetic experience.
If we accept (1), it appears Hirst and Stockhausen's comments concerning 9/11 reflect less of a dispassionate appraisal of the aesthetic phenomenon, and more of their situated knowledge as avante-guard artists. If we accept (2), it will be far more important to understand their comments in light of their situated knowledge. That is, their comparison between the 9/11 attacks and great art will be important insofar as their perspective, as avante-guard artists, is unique. Their comments are valuable insofar as they’ve come from a certain type of understanding. As Aretoulakis argues, the interpretations of Hirst and Stockhausen should not be cast aside as though they are devoid of value. If we accept a contextualist theory of everyday aesthetic experience and with it an epistemology of situated knowledge, we should investigate their comments as conferring knowledge, although particular and situated. A reactionary response such as boycotting their shows is not appropriate. As situated knowers ourselves, the appropriate response would be to work toward an understanding of the attitudes, interests, values, emotions, background beliefs, and cognitive styles being utilized in their aesthetic response. Doing so, we will come to a deeper understanding of an event through seeking to understand the various aesthetic responses of other situated knowers. This is because "(p)eople may stand in different epistemic relations to other inquirers.... which affects their access to relevant information and their ability to convey their beliefs to others" (Stanford 2003). In other words, as situated knowers ourselves, Hirst and Stockhausen's aesthetic appraisals of the 9/11 event, and the contexts they come out of, broaden our epistemic relations and helps deepen our knowledge of the complicated event. It may in fact help us see the event with greater clarity and focus. Such an epistemology is central to contextualism, and thereby a contextualist theory of everyday aesthetic experience.
Contextualism and Moral Relativism
It may be argued that the blending together of aesthetic appreciation and situated knowledge may lend itself to types of relativism, including moral relativism, but this temptation should be resisted. While contextualists disagree with Aretoulakis that a dispassionate appraisal of 9/11 is (1) possible or (2) valuable, they need not assert that there aren’t more or less justified ethical appraisals that in turn condition one’s aesthetic experience. We need not be moral relativists and say, for instance, that any ethical appraisal, as a conditioning element of a situated knower’s aesthetic valuation, is equally valid to anyone else's. Nothing about contextualism implies that we need reject the commonly held philosophical position that a moral judgment is necessarily a judgment that is not based purely on self-interest. Actually, the open-minded character of the contextualist’s method itself - that we can learn about a complicated event like 9/11 through seeking a deep understanding of various aesthetic reactions coming from a community of situated knowers - itself entails a degree of impartiality. The implication here is that hopelessly self-interested judgments will condition an aesthetic experience such that it will reveal aspects of the event that do not guide us in understanding the event ethically, but might guide us in understanding other aspects of the event, like its political significance for various situated knowers. We might say that a contextualist epistemology rejects objectivity and dispassionate appraisals, and it grounds knowledge in the various relations a situated knower has with other situated knowers, but it does not necessarily admit relativism either. We can still develop standards that distinguish different types of judgments - like moral, aesthetic, causal, perceptual, non-evaluative, mathematical, and so on. Some of these judgments may be activated at different times whereas others may not. And distinguishing these types of judgments will be important in teasing out the important dimensions of any complex event. But contextualism asserts that, while these various judgments are distinguishable, they can not be adequately understood outside the complex matrix that they in part form.
The Contextualist position confirms that there are a number of interrelated dispositions that are deployed in any appraisal, aesthetic or otherwise, and evaluating someone's assessment involves consideration of this matrix, this rich source of embodied knowledge. Such a method is arguably an effective way of making the world a safer place. Too often we label terrorists animals or criminals and don't seek to understand them as "situated knowers.” Though we don't need to be so relativistic that we accept their judgments, we cannot afford to misunderstand them. My argument here is that such an understanding involves, in part, consideration of aesthetic judgments. Aretoulakis and the contextualist agree that ethics can be in part understood through aesthetic experience. But whereas Aretoulakis believes that attention to the irrational aspects of an event will bring rise to elements that have bearing on our ethical judgments, the contextualist believes that a foundation in the situated knowledge conditioning an everyday aesthetic experience alone gives rise to the possibility of understanding ethics through aesthetic experience.
Contextualism, Kantianism and Zen Buddhist Monks
We must now take stock of what’s been said, and see how the Kantian analysis and the contextualist analysis fair with regard to our original problem: that a Zen Buddhist monk can potentially turn any everyday aesthetic experience into an extraordinary experience. It must be noted that Kantians do not proscribe what an aesthetic experience should be like. There is no inherent problem in an everyday object of relative simplicity being experienced in an extraordinary way. Kant only asserts that phenomenologically, an aesthetic experience will contain the four moments identified above. While a certain spiritual significance attached to, say, a well-organized vegetable garden, may only be experienced by the Zen Buddhist monk, so long as he experienced it as being unbiased towards it, as containing a possible experience for other people, as being purposive (or suitable for an aesthetic experience), and as being necessary, it fulfills Kant’s conditions for a judgment of taste. That is, Kant’s theory doesn’t refute the contextualist argument (1) or (2).
In the case of (1), to feel the four moments does not mean that one’s situated knowledge is not metaphysically responsible for one’s experience. This would explain why the Zen Buddhist monk can have a completely unique aesthetic experience, and yet still feel as though it were universal and dispassionate, purposive and necessary. On the metaphysical level, the contextualist would argue that their experience is indeed passionate: it is the result of their unique background and cognitive style, but there’s no problem with saying that it was felt as Kant describes.
With regard to (2), the normative aspect of the claim asserts that any feeling of Kant’s four moments should be transcended to consider the ways in which one’s unique context is indeed responsible for one’s aesthetic experience. In other words, one should not consider the experience solely with respect to the phenomenological method, but try to understand the context influencing or conditioning the aesthetic experience. The Zen Buddhist monk should relate their spiritually profound experience to their training as a monk, to their sensibilities growing up, to their philosophical understanding of the world, and to their background assumptions. This will provide a fuller and richer understanding of the aesthetic experience, which (2) claims is of the greatest value. If Kant is right about the nature of an aesthetic experience, he has given us its most general features - that is, the feeling accompanying anyone’s aesthetic experience, varied as those experiences are. As such, the contextualist will argue that it doesn’t tell us much about the event/object itself - or, it doesn’t reveal potentially useful information to a community of situated knowers, or to the situated knower him/herself. To look to one’s specific experience as drawing from a contextually laden background is to find a more specific and informative source of information,. Arguably this will provide a richer understanding of an aesthetic experience, leading to valuable perspectives on the object/event being analyzed.
Further, considering the metaphysics of aesthetic experience makes the Kantian analysis strikingly suspect. The contextualist seems to give a more plausible story for why different individuals have the types of aesthetic experiences that they do. Hirst and Stockhausen’s aesthetic experiences of 9/11 make sense in light of their background as avant-guard artists. Such a background affords them a radical stance on life and art. Given their philosophy of what art is (the making possible the impossible), their comments can make sense and should not be reduced to mere reactionary and unthoughtful speech, leaning towards terrorism and hate. That is, it’s in light of context that their comments make sense. This indicates that the context, on a metaphysical level, conditions the aesthetic experience, regardless of its phenomenological character. As for the Zen Buddhist monk, the spiritual experience derived from ordinary, everyday aesthetic objects makes sense in light of the years of training and study that have gone into seeing and understanding the world in a particular way. Consider this lecture given by the Zen master Yasutani: “Makyo are the phenomena - visions, hallucinations, fantasies, relations, illusory sensations - which one practicing zazen is apt to experience at a particular stage in his sitting. Ma means ‘devil‘ and kyo ‘the objective world’... Broadly speaking, the entire life of the ordinary man is nothing but a makyo... What is the essential nature of these disturbing phenomena we call makyo? They are temporary mental states which arise during zazen when our ability to concentrate has developed to a certain point and our practice is beginning to ripen. When the thought-waves which wax and wane on the surface of the sixth class of consciousness are partially calmed, residual elements of past experiences ‘lodged‘ in the seventh and eighth classes of consciousness bob up sporadically to the surface of the mind, conveying the feeling of a greater or expanded reality. Makyo, accordingly, are a mixture of the real and the unreal, not unlike ordinary dreams” (Kapleau 38-40). This teaching is given to students of Zen in the beginning stages of their arduous and serious meditation practice (known as zazen). It provides a particular theory of the phenomenal universe which they spend hours upon hours and years upon years reflecting on. It seems very problematic to say that a rich grounding in the theory of Makyo would not condition a practitioner’s aesthetic experience, founded as it is in a robust philosophical concept of the objects of aesthetic experience (phenomena). If an aesthetic experience itself is metaphysically dispassionate and universal, it seems suspect that the Zen Buddhist monk can derive a powerful and spiritual aesthetic experience from a well-organized vegetable garden. Given a theory of Makyo and the years of contemplating it, we can better make sense of what a monk’s experience is like, or we might vaguely understand in what particular ways it is extraordinary. We might understand how a well-maintained garden could be “a mixture of the real and the unreal, not unlike ordinary dreams.” This entails a metaphysically ‘passionate‘ and ‘particular‘ aesthetic experience, despite (perhaps) its phenomenological character.
Contextualism, Kantianism, and 9/11
Applied to 9/11, it seems plausible that Kant might have something right phenomenologically in identifying a feeling of impartiality, universality, purposiveness, and necessity in an aesthetic experience. Hirst and Stockhausen, it can be assumed, were trying to articulate what they felt was a universally accessible view of the 9/11 tragedy. They presumably would not have jeopardized their reputations and risked a public outcry if they didn’t feel their comments were understandable in some way - that is, accessible to the public, or as Kant would put it, universal and dispassionate. While their experience may fit Kant’s criteria phenomenologically, it seems plausible that a contextualist analysis better explains their experience metaphysically. That is, their experience can be traced causally to their particular embodiment and situated knowledge. We must now consider to what degree a Kantian or Contextualist analysis may provide a deeper understanding of the event itself.
Distinguishing irrational vs. rational aspects of an experience does seem important. In this Aretoulakis is right: we can’t understand 9/11 only in terms of the faculty of the understanding. We need to take this insight into account. As shown in the Buddhist example, even a well maintained garden has irrational aspects (irregular Beauty) that can’t necessarily be articulated, but can be experienced. We can therefore say:
(3) The Kantian analysis provides a respect for the irrational aspects of an aesthetic experience - those aspects not accessible through a rational discourse. It does so by attending to the phenomenological aspects of an aesthetic experience, generally.
Contextualism provides a rich account of aesthetic experience as well by showing in what ways an embodied individual draws from a wealth of experience and a particular cognitive style when attending to an event or object aesthetically. As everyone is an embodied, unique individual, more sense will be made of their experience when we inquire into the context from which their comments arise. Therefore:
(4) The contextualist analysis provides a deep understanding of the causal factors involved in an aesthetic experience. It does so by attending to the experience metaphysically.
Further, the more epistemic relations we have, the more fully will we be able to understand the event. As with everyday objects like well-maintained gardens, the Buddhist monk may have something important to show us, which we can only hope to understand through an inquiry into the context from which he’s coming from. This will entail both sensation and knowledge, the faculty of the imagination and the faculty of the understanding. As Eaton argues, “(a)ny adequate theory of beauty must account... for both the roles of sensation and of knowledge” (Eaton 48). A contextualist analysis provides, so to speak, an opening that we might walk through, an invitation to learn more about the object or event. Hirst and Stockhausen’s comments certainly came from a particular situatedness - that being, they make sense from an artist’s point of view. They should not have been ridiculed so quickly or fiercely because they do add to the body of interpretations (and consequently knowledge) we draw upon when making our own aesthetic judgments regarding 9/11. Upon hearing their defenses and the reasons given for their comments, we may or may not view or understand the 9/11 attacks differently, depending on how well we understand those comments and to what degree we accept them. This indicates that taking into account knowledge and context, against the Kantian theory, is important when evaluating aesthetic judgments. Given the persuasive metaphysical defense of contextualism (1), this seems like a reasonable argument. Given the added perspective such a theory provides to an object or event, this argument also lends support to the normative argument for contextualism (2). Therefore:
(5) The contextualist analysis provides the deepest way of understanding the event or object of experience, potentially augmenting our own experience of it. It does so with reference to the situated knowledge embedded in a subject undergoing an aesthetic experience.
I hope to have shown here the value of the Kantian theory of aesthetic experience, understood phenomenologically, and the contextualist theory of aesthetic experience, understood metaphysically. I hope to have defended the need to attend to the aesthetic experience when trying to understand a complicated and aesthetically striking event like 9/11. I hope to have demonstrated that both theories must be taken into account when attending to an aesthetic experience and that the contextualist thesis should be taken into account to increase an individual or community’s understanding of an event such as 9/11. Applying the contextualist theory can likewise help us deepen our understanding of less radical aesthetic events/objects, like the well-maintained garden. The distinction between everyday aesthetics ordinarily experienced and everyday aesthetic extraordinarily experienced will never be drawn with reference to the experience itself, but only with reference to the subject and the situated knowledge she brings to that object/event. Given (2), this is not a detriment to the field of everyday aesthetics, but gives it even more importance, as it asserts that everyday aesthetics will have bearing on the epistemic possibilities for a situated knower and the community she interacts with.
Works Cited
Aretoulakis, Emmanouil. “Aesthetic Appreciation, Ethics, and 9/11.” The On-line Journal, Contemporary Aesthetics. Accessed March 24, 2008. <www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=510>.
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