California Fires: Finding Beauty in the Animal Evacuations
Something Unexpected There were two weeks in October that didn’t go as I expected. On Monday, October 9th, my wife was following the developing Northern California fires online when she saw that they were woefully shorthanded at the large animal evacuation site near us. We decided to spend a few hours the next morning volunteering. […]
Dive into Art & Faith
Art and Faith is really at the heart of what I do and who I am. I know there are many others who are also interested in art and faith. I started my career as an artist who was also a Christian. But, even in school how those two things worked together was important to […]
Revisiting 2014…aka another top 10 list.
A little while back I had a fan of Faith on View message me on Facebook asking me to once again post regularly on Faith on View. Okay, truth be told it really was more of an internet friend teasing me for my failures. For those who follow this blog, they noticed that in September posts […]
Poll: Is Beauty Objective?
There is massive disagreement about the ontology of beauty. For many today, beauty is merely in the eye of the beholder. For others, beauty is an objective reality. I’ve thought a lot about this over the last year and honestly I’m still not 100% persuaded either way. I’ve interacted with philosophers thoughts on this subject. […]
10 Days of Aesthetics: Conclusion (Day 10)
*Read this series from the beginning.* Language is a clear problem in articulating the concepts this paper addresses. We tend to apply only one adjective to a noun. So we may say Human Drapery 3 is a beautiful painting, an ugly painting, or a sublime painting. We may go so far as to join two […]
10 Days of Aesthetics: The Sublime (Day 9)
*Read this series from the beginning.* Kant’s distinctions about the sublime, and, in fact, the two forms of sublime Mathematical and Dynamical, are extremely nuanced and cannot be fully addressed here. But, there are some important points which help lead to the Axis Theory’s understanding of sublime. Kant begins his discussion of sublime by claiming […]
10 Days of Aesthetics: Disgust (Day 8)
*Read this series from the beginning.* If ugly is the ontological opposite of pretty then disgust maybe the ontological opposite of beauty. Kant closely ties the concepts of disgust and ugly. However, while Kant is ambiguous about ugly he clearly locates disgust within the imagination, as is beauty. He claims that disgust will destroy “all […]
10 Days of Aesthetics: The Beautiful (Day 7)
*Read this series from the beginning.* Historically beauty and aesthetics go hand in hand. The question of beauty is the primary question of aesthetics. In the Thomist tradition, beauty is considered a transcendental with concepts such as the good and the true. If this is true, beauty is objective, intellectual, moral, and universal. Kant, likewise, […]
10 Days of Aesthetics: The Ugly (Day 6)
*Read this series from the beginning.* Ugly is the ontological opposite of pretty and fills the other side of the Sensual Axis. Where pretty causes sensual delight the ugly causes sensual discomfort. This is relatively evident. There are clearly objects which cause discomfort on a sheer aesthetic level. However, the question of a pure judgment […]
10 Days of Aesthetics: Kitsch (Day 5)
*Read this series from the beginning.* Kitsch Kitsch is often very clearly linked with the pretty. Certainly, that is the case with the work of Kinkade. Roger Scruton says, “The world of kitsch is a world of make-believe, of permanent childhood, in which every day is Christmas. In such a world, death does not really […]