Discussion: Damasio and Scarry

DESCARTES' ERROR
We had a good discussion tonight about this text.  I think most people enjoyed it and found it contained much to think about.  The discussion ranged over many different - but interconnected - topics. We spent alot of time discussing the concept of free will and trying to define free will vs personal responsibility, how does upbringing, brain damage, substance or other abuse etc affect this.  We had a good discussion on the value judgments made about brain issues vs other issues.  If you have cancer or diabetes or a broken leg there is usually no blame to the person, no negative judgments of their character, no blame whereas with many mental illnesses, we are uncomfortable with this, we may blame them for their illness, for their lack of "willpower".  A few people in the class deal with people with mental illnesses through their work, two through social services and one through the prison system and it was good to hear their perspective on these issues.

We also discussed sick cultures and what Damasio might have been referring to in the 1990s when it spoke about sick sectors of American culture.  One aspect might have been violence, video games, issues with sexuality etc.  Damasio didn't really elaborate on what he had in mind when he included the comment in his book.

We spoke a little about the effects of civilization on humankind and whether we are progressing (continuing to evolve) or whether we are just cycling through variations in human nature.

I didn't take alot of notes as I was guiding the discussion but I thought there was so much scope in this book, especially coming as it does after we've worked our way through the centuries of thinkers who have been wondering about the various roles of passion and reason, our place in the world.



ON BEAUTY AND BEING JUST - by Elaine Scarry
Roberta was scheduled to lead the discussion and had sent out a detailed list of questions she wanted us to consider and how she wanted us to consider them.  Unfortunately she didn't make it to the class and so Stephen led the discussion on the areas of the book he wanted to explore.  This is the 1st year that the book has been included in the GLS curriculum and everyone found it challenging.  It's a deceptively thin book, looks very pretty with its smooth cover, thick coloured end papers and textured paper.  I think that most people, especially after having read the very scientific Descartes' Error, were looking forward to a book discussing beauty and its role in human existence.  This book didn't really do this adequately for most of us.  It was interesting but since none of us have a background in aesthetics or have done any reading in it (except maybe Stephen?) we had trouble with the conceptual level Scarry was writing from.

PART II
Scarry says Beauty was banished from academic world for 2 decades.  Political critique was based on:

1. distracts us from important stuff like suffering, "wrong social arrangements"
2. when we make beauty an object of sustained regard, our act is destructive to the object

It's not that beauty wasn't appreciated but rather that it wasn't considered a good enough reason by itself to value something academically.  The class didn't agree with a) Scarry's statement or b) that her reasons for this valid.  The 3 in the class who had just finished an undergraduate degree did say that they found that universities or faculties tended to become very entrenched on a specific way to do things and all the other ways are denigrated each time a new "fad" comes along - which is not to say that new fads are adopted frequently or easily but rather that academic thinking tends to be quite prescriptive and proscriptive in how their field of study should be studied, discussed and written about.

Our view of beauty may be changing based on changes in the world such as ability to reproduce much beauty much more easily.  When you can find images of great works of art on the Internet or buy a decent quality reproduction of art you've seen in any museum shop, it's not as rare as it used to be.

Steve brought up the Pidgin Restaurant in Vancouver's Eastside and the protests against it, protesting against gentrification.  He said this fits in with what Scarry said: that the wealthy diners will be gazing out at the suffering poor and this could be harmful to them (destructive); and the beauty of the restaurant and the food may distract society from the 'wrong social arrangements'.  The whole argument seems a stretch to me but again, I probably have to think about it a bit more.

"No detailed argument or description is ever brought forward to justify this generalization, yet the generalization has worked to silence conversations about beauty.  If this critique or the other critiques against beauty were crisply formulated as edicts or treatises with sustained arguments and examples, the incoherence would be more starkly visible and the influence correspondingly diminished.  They exist instead as semi-articulate but deeply held convictions that - like snow in a winter sky that keeps materializing in the air yet never falls or accumulates on the ground - make their daily way into otherwise essays, articles, exams, conversations.  Suddenly out of the blue, someone begins to speak about the way a poet is reifying the hillside or painting or flower she seems to be so carefully regarding.

Stephen said that the Heisenberg principle, interpreted to mean that the gaze of a viewer affects the observed object, was adopted by the humanities to say that people's gazes whether this is the male gaze harming a female or whatever, have an effect on what they are observing and that this effect likely is not benign or is actually harmful - at the very least there is an effect.

Elaine Scarry would have spent much time in university environments that constrained value judgments of what is beautiful by wanting to apply notions of patriarchy, prejudice etc

We then moved on to discussions of 'lateral disregard' and how Scarry proposed that when we put our notice to something beautiful, we bring less attention to other related objects.  This can lead to problems with over-specialization or fixations about things we admire, find beautiful.  This concept carried more weight that some of Scarry's other arguments or propositions.

It was interesting to consider Scarry's references to Simone Weil who was "always deeply somatic: what happens, happens to our body." pg 111 Damasio would, I think, agree with this.

The essentialist who believes beauty remains constant over the centuries and the historicist or social constructionist who believes that even the deepest structures of the soul are susceptible to cultural shaping have no need, when confronting the present puzzle, to quarrel with one another.  For either our responses to beauty endure unaltered over centuries, or our responses to beauty are alterable, culturally shaped.  And if they are subject to our willful alteration, then we are at liberty to make of beauty what we wish.  pg 74

Kant is an essentialist and Hume is a historicist, Hume felt that rights and wrongs change over time, according to conditions, externals.  I don't think there is an intrinsic beauty or rather, I think that beauty is very much affected by the viewer (their background, culture, experience, education, mood etc).  I think there are some qualities that humans tend to find beautiful such as symmetry etc but the range of things we find beautiful is so wide and varied and the effect beautiful things have on us is also so varied that I can't conceive of beauty being constant.

The discussion made me consider about beauty from the perspective of non-humans.  It seems a very human concept and while animals can be interested in many things in all my observations of them I can't think of any time I've thought they noticed or had a any notion of beauty.  This thought seems to lead me straight to next week's text which is "The Animal that Therefore I am" which I'm looking forward to reading.