Wilde is appropriately called an aesthete if an aesthete prefers aesthetic values to moral ones. In his masterpiece novel The Portrait of Dorian Gray, and in one of my favorite essays "The Decay of Lying", Wilde declared his distinct preference for the aesthetic over the moral, when they do come in conflict. Lord Henry Wooton makes the case very persuasively in the former, and in the latter Wilde, like early Nietzsche, embraces the notion that we need lies in order to get through the day. Wilde bemoans the fact that the lies we tell ourselves had become so pedestrian and unconvincing by the end of the 19th century...it would be interesting what he would think of the beginning of the 21st.
Dan
Professor Daniel Shaw
Chair, Philosophy Department
Lock Haven University (570) 484-2052
Managing Editor, Film and Philosophy
"Hope is the thing with feathers--/ that perches in the soul--/
and sings the tune without the words--/ and never stops at all."
Emily Dickinson
________________________________________
From: Film-Philosophy [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michael Chanan [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 2010 12:22 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Wilde about Socialism
I think it's anachronistic to think of Wilde as a postmodernist or whatever before his time. Better to see him in historical context, as an anglo socialist in the same sort of mould as other nineteenth century aesthetes like William Morris. It's a tradition which survived into the 20th C in figures like the sculptor-designer-typographer Eric Gill, who was very much a sexual libertarian, and the poet-art critic Herbert Read, whose politics were anarchist.
Is the term 'aesthete' abusive? It became so, doubtless when mechanistic Marxists denounced it as effete.
The really intriguing thing is that this idea -- 'that the economically disadvantaged of society should have the same chance that the well-off have to fully develop in the areas they are most interested, including writing poetry and philosophy' -- is also found in the 1969 essay-manifesto 'For an Imperfect Cinema' by the Cuban film-maker Julio García Espinosa, where he looks forward prophetically into a future in which video technology 'ceases being the privilege of a small few'. Espinosa is very much, of course, a committed Marxist and Communist revolutionary.
'What happens then', he suggests' 'is not only an act of social justice — the possibility for everyone to make films — but also a fact of extreme importance for artistic culture: the possibility of recovering, without any kind of complex or guilt feelings, the true meaning of artistic activity...', namely, that art is a 'disinterested activity', and the artist is not strictly a worker.
'The feeling that this is so, and the impossibility of translating it into practice, constitutes the agony and at the same time the "pharisee-ism" of all contemporary art.'
You can find this essay at:
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC20folder/ImperfectCinema.html
Michael
Epi wrote:
I also find a lot of flaws in the aesthetic movement, however reading the first two pages of 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism' Wilde argues that the economically disadvantaged of society should have the same chance that the well-off have to fully develop in the areas they are most interested, including writing poetry and philosophy. Perhaps Wilde didn't adhere very strictly to Aestheticism?
This is, of course, just the result of some superficial reading, and I welcome further thought on this... was Wilde a postmodernist before his time, offering one view in one context (All art is quite useless) and a quite different one in another (Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing)? Was he an equal opportunity satirist, or is that just wishful thinking?
Epi
*
*
Film-Philosophy
After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to
To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask]
Or visit: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy.html
For technical help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon
*
Film-Philosophy online: http://www.film-philosophy.com
Contact: [log in to unmask]
**
*
*
Film-Philosophy
After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to
To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask]
Or visit: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy.html
For technical help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon
*
Film-Philosophy online: http://www.film-philosophy.com
Contact: [log in to unmask]
**
|