metonymy4u

I believe that the central innovation of Kant’s work (anticipated in important ways by both Plato and Aristotle) was the notion that cause and effect models are not always the most useful heuristic. And I think that we are still struggling to figure out what to do with this idea. Like Picasso’s cubism and Beethoven’s romanticism, the dethroning of reason is still being worked out. For example: modern psychologists often make a distinction between the outward appearance (form) of a behavior and its relation to other behaviors in a chain of events (function). Plato also made this distinction. He (ostensibly) criticized the obsessions of the poets with mere appearances (copies of copies) and lauded the philosophers for understanding the truer natures of things. Still the question remains: under what circumstances is aesthetic as vital as essence? Is there another teleological suspension of the noumenal contained within recapitulation? Our own contemplation? The contemplation of an-other….?