Thursday, May 29, 2008
Are Aesthetes the Same as Other Members of the Knowledge Class?
Is taste a kind of knowledge like other kinds of knowledge? More exactly, are people who make their living from their taste members of the knowledge class, as people who make their living from more cognitive kinds of knowledge are members of the knowledge class?
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Try reading Oscar Wilde's The Critic as Artist. For the fin-de-siecle, Wilde was THE aesthete. Basically, he argues that not only is the aesthete (or critic) superior to all other classes, but that the critic represents a more highly evolved human strand of "elite souls."
Wilde's thought provoking essays aside, I'd say that In contemporary society we tend to clump the knowledge class and aesthetes. They're mutually dependent. One often consumes the fodder of the other.
Thank you, r,that is an excellent citation. Does Wilde, in keeping with the Romantic ideal, think that aesthetic knowledge can be learned, or does one need to be born a special soul?
Should we consider Fr. Pfleger a good example of an aesthete?
Fr. Michael Pfleger? How is he an aesthete? (I think I am missing a joke.)
Have you seen him preach? Well!
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