The Artist and The Beautiful

The Artist and The Beautiful

By

Martin L. Cowen III

This essay invites the reader to identify and activate the Artist within herself. This Artist performs the Beautiful person—mind and body.

Followers of our recent thought will recall that we are impressed with Professor Joe Sachs’ translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Sach’s translation makes clear that the goal of ethical action is the Beautiful. From Saint Thomas Aquinas we learn that Beauty is composed of three elements: wholeness, harmony, and radiance. We propose that the Beautiful is a perception, meaning that Beauty simply strikes you, rather than being the subject of analysis (though it can be analyzed). We respond to the charge that Beauty is in the eye of the beholder with the admission: Yes, it is! (To be asserted in a future essay: the assessment of the Beautiful has subjective universality and is binding upon all human beings.) We have asserted that in order to perceive the Beautiful, one must be properly trained. For example, only a properly trained lawyer can perceive as Beautiful a legal brief. We observe that Ayn Rand’s ethical claim that the goal of ethical action is a flourishing life is almost co-extensive with Aristotle’s claim that the goal of ethical action is the Beautiful. A flourishing life is a Beautiful life. However, Ayn Rand’s formulation, like Newton’s physics that breaks down near light speed, breaks down at the margin of life and death. And, finally, we argue that a Beautiful death is among the goals people seek. A Beautiful death not part of a flourishing life, logically, therefore, a more comprehensive theory is required, to-wit: Aristotle’s.

In preparation for our introduction to the Artist within us, consider the following:

During our recent study of the 1988 television documentary, Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, we learned that the religious event called “born again” is a psychological phenomenon involving the movement from an animalistic way of being to the quintessentially human way of being and thinking. An animal acts from instinct to satisfy basic needs, such as food, drink, and sex. The character of Shakespeare’s Falstaff as depicted in Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Falstaff (1893) is an example of a human being acting immoderately from the animalistic motives of food, wine, and sex.

The movement from animal to human does not involve discarding our animalistic nature, but regulating the animalistic nature and integrating it into the human nature, with a view toward the Beautiful. To use the language of aesthetics, the human being integrates his animal nature into the whole of his human being, renders the animalistic elements proportionate to one another and proportionate to the whole human being (in other words, brings them into harmony), and, in the case of the true artist, affects radiance. “Ad pulchritudinem tria requiruntur: integritas, consonantia, claritas.” Thomas Aquinas. [For beauty three things are required: wholeness, harmony, radiance.]

To illustrate the importance in philosophical and religious thought of the moderation of our animalistic nature, consider that religious ascetics, by definition, deprive themselves of food, wine, and sex. They do this precisely to bring their full attention to the essentially human parts of the human being. We do not recommend asceticism; we call attention to the practice of asceticism as evidence of our view that immoderate consumption of food, wine, and sex are perceived as problems by ascetics, theologians, and ethical philosophers.

The ascetic would say that he suppresses the animalistic in order to accentuate the spiritual. “Spiritual” means “of or pertaining to consciousness.” The mental elements of human being are the quintessentially human elements.

Again, we look to Aristotle for the quintessentially human elements. Aristotle is the first and greatest of categorizers. Aristotle categorizes the human excellences in his Nicomachean Ethics. (Some translations use the word “virtues.” We prefer “excellences.”) Among the human excellences are these: courage, temperance, liberality, magnanimity, proper ambition, patience, amiability, sincerity, and wit. The intellectual excellences are scientific knowledge, intuition, wisdom, art or technical skill, and prudence. The penultimate excellence is friendship. The ultimate excellence is rational contemplation. A full discussion of these excellences is a rehearsal of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. We have already studied Aristotle’s excellences in Fellowship of Reason Sunday School and we will do so again. This essay is not the place for that now.

Now, we are prepared to meet the Artist, whose job it is to perform the Beautiful human being using the animalistic and human elements listed above.

The Artist is the isolation in thought of the capacity of healthy individuals to stand aside from their active and emotive selves, to observe their acting and feeling selves in the context of their lifetime and group or society, and to influence their own action with a view toward the Beautiful. Apart from the Artist, we are a soup of chemicals. Sometimes we feel sexy, sometimes depressed, sometimes calm, sometimes nervous, etc. Commonly, we assign external explanations for our current chemical state, as in: “I am depressed, because my boss snapped at me today.” It may be that we are depressed because of our boss. It is more likely that our internal chemistry set is presently configured to make us depressed. One of the jobs of the Artist is to determine which is true.

We have used other labels for “the Artist.” “Homunculus” is from the Latin and means “little man.” In the 1997 film Men in Black, starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, there is a scene in which a dead alien is being examined in a morgue. The examination reveals that the face of the alien is a hinged door behind which sits another tiny alien who is dying. This homunculus is seated in a tiny chair in the skull of the exo-alien with many controls at his fingertips. Evidently, the homunculus is the driver of the eco-alien. As the homunculus dies he says: “The galaxy is on Orion’s belt.” (We mention the quote merely to recall the scene to mind for those who have seen the film.) This visual image of a homunculus is to provide the reader imaginary content for the idea of “the Artist.”

The function of the Artist has been identified by Aristotle as an “active condition.” The Artist is the personification of the mental function of actively attending to one’s actions, emotions, and thoughts with the intention of guiding those actions and thoughts in the full context of the individual’s whole lifetime within her group or society. The Artist is useful, in part, because she is an abstraction. She is abstracted from the whole human being and separated from the chemistry set which is our animalistic being. She is objective, an observer of the whole individual from whom she has been abstracted, seeing her individual (her host, herself) in the whole context of her lifetime and group or society. We have imagined the Artist (or the homunculus) as sitting on a high shelf in the room looking down upon us, judging us, advising us.

The active mental condition that the Artist performs requires effort. Because it is not possible to sustain that effort continuously, habit (an Aristotelian idea) is the necessary to guide us during the Artist’s breaks (off-time). The habit of being courteous to others is a good default position when the Artist off-duty. It might be that righteous indignation in a particular circumstance is the Beautiful response, but in the absence of the Artist it is probably better to behave courteously.

Let us now consider what the Artist actually does.

The purpose of the Artist is to compose a Beautiful human being. A human being is an integration of animal and high mental functions over a lifetime in society. Recall that three things are needed for the Beautiful: wholeness, harmony, and radiance. The relevant whole is the lifetime of the individual within his group or society. The relevant harmony is the proportionality of all the parts of a human life with one another and with the whole lifetime of the individual within his group or society. Radiance is more difficult to define and to achieve. We have referred to radiance before in friendly Fellowship of Reason conversations as “It.” Some performances and performers have “It.” The opera star Renee Fleming has “It.” Michael Jackson’s dancing in the 1983 video Thriller has “It.” The 1955 novel Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov has “It.” We have seen shows with ensembles of dancers all of whom perform the required steps. Sometimes, within the ensemble, a single dancer will stand out as having “It.” That dancer is sometimes the choreographer. The denouement of the Clint Eastwood 2008 film Gran Torino is radiant (has “It). “Radiance” or “It” is the quality of a work of art that arrests the mind of the viewer, creating the experience of awe and wonder in the observer. To find radiance in the whole of a single human life is rare. The largely fictionalized life (as told in Plato’s Dialogues) of Socrates is radiant. More often, individuals have radiant moments. (Religions commonly claim a founder whose life is perceived by the adherents of that religion as radiant: e.g. Jesus, Mohammad, and the Buddha.)

Here is a marvelous passage from a famous philosopher on radiance (viewed negatively), though he refers to radiance or “It” as “spirit.”

We say of certain products of which we expect that they should at least in part appear as beautiful art, they are without spirit, although we find nothing to blame in them on the score of taste. A poem may be very neat and elegant, but without spirit. A history may be exact and well arranged, but without spirit. A festal discourse may be solid and at the same time elaborate, but without spirit. Conversation is often not devoid of entertainment, but yet without spirit; even of a woman we say that she is pretty, an agreeable talker, and courteous, but without spirit. What then do we mean by spirit?

Now let us consider some examples of the Artist’s work.

Drink. Excessive drinking at the Christmas office party, for example, is easily seen as an ugly thing to do.

Food. Food examples in the negative come to mind. Recently, my family patronized a Pizza Hut with an all-you-can-eat lunch. The food bar was mostly empty. My family notice two enormous (400 lbs. plus) people with a stack of discarded pizza slices on their table with the toppings licked off. We estimate this to be an ugly scene.

Generosity. I share this personal example. We bought, in celebration of Thanksgiving, Chick-Fil-A lunches for the twenty-five person office staff recently. The Artist judged that repeating this extravagance within four weeks in celebration of Christmas would be an act of gaudiness rather than one of generosity. Therefore, there were no Christmas lunches from the Artist for the office staff.

Sex. Sex is among the three urges in need of moderation among these: food, wine, and sex. Most people married or not, find themselves attracted to others from time to time with varying degrees of intensity. The Artist can monitor this attraction. For example, a person might see a professional sex artist and be attracted. The Artist considers: (1) Does the professional sex artist have a STD (sexually transmitted disease)? (2) Might the professional sex artist blackmail the customer after the act or report the customer to the police? (3) Might the fact of using the professional sex artist negatively impact the other relations of the customer if the use became known? (4) Does the use of the professional sex artist provide any lasting value (beyond 10 minutes or 10 seconds of sexual pleasure)? In this case, the Artist has no trouble moderating the sexual urge of her Host (the human being from whom the Artist has been abstracted).

Many marriages end in divorce, often on account of sexual urges, notwithstanding the sacred oath: “for better, for worse, until death do us part.” While there are many circumstances, only one hypothetical example is considered here. Recall that the question for the Artist is: What is the beautiful thing to do?

Divorce lawyers know the impact of divorce upon children. The Artist observes the following. The Host is married with two children, a boy aged 9 and a girl aged 7, both of whom love their parents. The Host is strongly attracted to another person, not the spouse. The other person, who is reciprocally attracted to the Host, is also married with children. Both are decent people with standing in their communities. The Artist considers: (1) what will be the effect upon my children over their lifetime if I divorce my spouse and marry this other person? (2) What will be the effect upon the children of my beloved over their lifetime if that person divorces the spouse and marries me? (3) What will be the effect upon my formerly beloved spouse if I divorce my spouse? (4) What will I think of myself if I break my solemn oath? (5) Will I be able to trust my new oath-breaking spouse after we wed, should that person feel the urge again? Etc. The Artist judges: What is the beautiful thing to do? The Artist decides.

An example of the divorce situation is found in the 2000 film Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks. Hanks’ character is separated from his beloved by an airplane crash and four years on a deserted island. Upon his return, he finds his beloved, played by Helen Hunt, married with child. They do not resume their love affair, because not resuming it is the Beautiful thing to do.

We have introduced you to the Artist. Welcome your Artist into your life. Her job is to perform the Beautiful Person that you are and can continue to be.

As a New Year’s Resolution, invite your Artist to perform: to observe your actions, to consider the full context your actions over your lifetime and within your society or group. Take your Artist’s advice on the Beautiful. She knows it well. The Beautiful is the goal of ethical action. The Beautiful is a perception. You have been trained for the Beautiful or you would not have read this essay. The Beautiful can be analyzed, but that is not necessary in order to perform the Beautiful deed. Wholeness, Harmony, and Radiance are your Artist’s guides.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Fellowship of Reason.

It is the Beautiful thing to do.