I’m very much behind the idea of using art (or indeed anything) to regulate undesirable brain events that are outside of direct conscious control. I’m also behind making ideas aesthetically pleasing in general. It’s the “non-argumentative ways of conveying a point of view” that I find uncomfortable. How do you properly respond to them?
Making something beautiful for beauty’s sake creates a barrier to destroying it. If someone writes a perfectly palendromic villanelle advocating a borderline-indefensible position, it becomes harder to critique that position without looking and feeling like an unappreciative phillistine.
This may be covered by your “not manipulation” caveat, but I’d still rather ideas be incidentally beautiful than deliberately so.
Making something beautiful for beauty’s sake creates a barrier to destroying it.
Every argument dares you to demolish it, but not so with art. Bach wrote a beautiful song about how death is good. Those who believe that death is good can derive some comfort from it, but I don’t feel it is an obstruction when I try to convince them of the opposite point of view. A rational argument for the value of life has nothing to fear from a song; and an affect-laden parable is not made weaker by Bach’s song.
Personally, I would still listen to Bach on my 200th birthday.
It’s the “non-argumentative ways of conveying a point of view” that I find uncomfortable. How do you properly respond to them?
The same way I properly respond to all other ways of conveying a point of view: the most effective way I know that isn’t itself unethical. If my audience is more moved by poetry than prose, arguing in prose when others are using poetry to argue wrong positions is not praiseworthy.
Of course, if I’ve spent decades learning how to argue in prose and/or am naturally skilled at it, whereas I’m not skilled at arguing in poetry, that means choosing to compete in an area where I’m not confident.
And you’re absolutely right: that is uncomfortable. Sometimes, the right thing to do happens to be uncomfortable. It sucks, but there it is.
All of that said, it is important to clearly distinguish in my own head between the goal of being compelling and the goal of being correct. They are distinct, and largely orthogonal. But they are both important.
I’m very much behind the idea of using art (or indeed anything) to regulate undesirable brain events that are outside of direct conscious control. I’m also behind making ideas aesthetically pleasing in general. It’s the “non-argumentative ways of conveying a point of view” that I find uncomfortable. How do you properly respond to them?
Making something beautiful for beauty’s sake creates a barrier to destroying it. If someone writes a perfectly palendromic villanelle advocating a borderline-indefensible position, it becomes harder to critique that position without looking and feeling like an unappreciative phillistine.
This may be covered by your “not manipulation” caveat, but I’d still rather ideas be incidentally beautiful than deliberately so.
Every argument dares you to demolish it, but not so with art. Bach wrote a beautiful song about how death is good. Those who believe that death is good can derive some comfort from it, but I don’t feel it is an obstruction when I try to convince them of the opposite point of view. A rational argument for the value of life has nothing to fear from a song; and an affect-laden parable is not made weaker by Bach’s song.
Personally, I would still listen to Bach on my 200th birthday.
The same way I properly respond to all other ways of conveying a point of view: the most effective way I know that isn’t itself unethical. If my audience is more moved by poetry than prose, arguing in prose when others are using poetry to argue wrong positions is not praiseworthy.
Of course, if I’ve spent decades learning how to argue in prose and/or am naturally skilled at it, whereas I’m not skilled at arguing in poetry, that means choosing to compete in an area where I’m not confident.
And you’re absolutely right: that is uncomfortable. Sometimes, the right thing to do happens to be uncomfortable. It sucks, but there it is.
All of that said, it is important to clearly distinguish in my own head between the goal of being compelling and the goal of being correct. They are distinct, and largely orthogonal. But they are both important.