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Alex Gibson's avatar

I enjoyed this and I can value your position. I'm searching my tastes for any vulgarity, baseness that I enjoy, anything repetitive, amelodic. I dare say it's there. do you refer to beauty as aspirational? Is depiction of tragedy still aspirational intent?

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Richard Kuslan's avatar

Beauty is what really is.

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Alex Gibson's avatar

and was, they're the same?

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Richard Kuslan's avatar

Difficult to express, but only because language is an imperfect medium to express what is perfection. Once you glimpse it, you will know what it is.

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Alex Gibson's avatar

A clever answer, but also a good one! does one also know baseness? I guess so. Do they never intersect? Unfortunately we are using words again! but perfection is worth thinking on.

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Richard Kuslan's avatar

As I have come to understand it, beauty, which is covalent with truth, may be glimpsed in its material expression, when captured by an Artist (with a capital A, not with a small a). Real Artists are rare individuals who have the sight which can see it, the talent to express it and the practiced skill to codify it in a form. Baseness, ugliness, dross, falsehood, etc., are all just attempts that are wide of the mark or, as we see over the last century, intentional fraud.

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Alex Gibson's avatar

Thanks for indulging my questions, i'm enjoying the problem here! I'll be back. I love Scruton's 'uses of pessimism', that's a gem. Maybe i'll pick up 'On beauty'. I remember once walking around a crisp and pristine Roskilde, the cleanest and freshest town I ever saw, while listening to Roger and Douglas waxing about things.

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