ASAGE - American Society for Aesthetics Graduate E-Journal
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Rethinking Realism: A Critique of Georg Lukács
No full textWord Count: 3,624 In ?The Ideology of Modernism,? Georg Lukács proposes the following antithesis in order to critique the aesthetic condition of modern subjectivity: ?Abstract potentiality belongs wholly to the realm of subjectivity; whereas concrete potentiality is concerned with the dialectic between the individual?s subjectivity and objective reality? (24). The necessity of such an opposition resides in the aesthetic preservation of ?Realism,? i.e., the commitment to interrogating and discovering the true laws governing objective reality?in short, the uncovering of essence from the distorting images of appearance. Lukács identifies the emergence of Modernism as a symptom of the impossibility to negotiate, aesthetically, the difference between appearance and essence: ?If the distinction between abstract and concrete potentiality vanishes, if man?s inwardness is identified with an abstract subjectivity, human personality must necessarily disintegrate? (ibid). Despite his dialectical exhortations, my paper will be an attempt to demonstrate that Lukács? understanding of Realism effectuates an absolutization of ?concrete potentiality? insofar as he reduces the relationship of the literary subject to an essentialized form, namely, an explicit recuperation of Aristotle?s concept of man as a ?zoon politikon? (31). The circumscription of the literary subject as an immutable absolute?renders eternal, what realist literature has always understood to be temporal. In other words, Lukács? aesthetic strictures have transformed the immanent forms of literary production into static forms of transcendence.
Desire Under the Plane Tree: The Fallacy of the Non-Lover and the Embodiment of Erotas in Plato?s Phaedrus
No full textIn the opening scene of Plato?s Phaedrus, the Socratic interlocutor of the same name swears on a sacred plane tree in order to compel an unwilling Socrates to speak on the subject of Eros. Socrates subsequently both recants this speech and claims it was an insult to the gods. This paper attempts to reconcile Socrates? premise in his initial speech?the lover disguised as a non-lover?with the idea that representation of any kind is inhibitive of man?s quest for the Good, specifically investigating the depiction of divinity and the salutary effects of madness on human desire.
Rothko's Negative Theology
No full textThis paper argues that the progression of Mark Rotho's painting, from his early, surrealist work to his more famous and more abstract Classical paintings, can be read as following the same structure as outlined by Pseudo-Dionysius' apophatic theology. In his Divine Names and Mystical Theology, Pseudo-Dionysius describes a process whereby one speaks, and fails to speak, the divine. He describes a process that begins in sensory experience and ends up, after ascending by way of negation, in an ";unknowing"; beyond the intellect, a ";darkness beyond light."; This ascension is motivated by what he describes as ";yearning"; and ";beauty."; I argue that both Rothko and Pseudo-Dionysius begin their accounts of beauty in corporeality and recognition only to, through negation, move beyond it. That is, I read Rothko's paintings' progress from specifically religious subject matter into almost pure monochromatic abstraction to mirror the progression of the mystic ascending towards God; Rothko, like Pseudo-Dionysius, negates the form of the body, the form of religious imagery, in his attempts to give the viewers of his painting an experience of transcendence.