Communication and COMPENSION

Excerpt from the new book by Valery Plants

The publishing house “New Literary Review” published a new book by Valery Plants “Until. After the fall. A brief story of a common feeling. " We publish her fragment.

Valery Plants. Elevated. After the fall. A brief story of a common feeling. M.: New Literary Review, 2022. Content

For Kant, the taste in material-subject filling is not of interest. In essence, its goal is a desuljective of the grounds for taste, deprivation of the subject of rights to his “personal” subjective opinion, since judgments of taste are possible only through the participation of the subject in the reported judgment. Indeed, if you like something, then I like it without a concept, without interest and without a goal. When the subject is extremely active, then he learns and, therefore, does not need the concept of beautiful, for the beautiful cannot be the object of knowledge. Kant took a decisive step to understand the taste, more precisely, judgment and taste in unity (which, by the way, is difficult to perceive from the point of view of common sense that unconsciously shares the taste and judgment about it: it is one thing to have a taste (you have it or do not), and another - to judge it (like everyone else or against all - it does not matter)). But the Kantian epigraphy is unchanged : there is no taste without a judgment of taste . There is a taste when there is a judgment of taste. But in this case, if, by judging, understanding the type of aesthetic reflection, the taste acquires an objective meaning, but als OB (as if (German). - approx. Ed. ).

Communication, wider - the possibility of communicating with taste agents, is the initial condition for the judgments of taste. In other words, the judgment of taste is only the possibility of the spread of a socially significant (group) assessment of the chosen model. Thus, the pleasure experienced from the contemplation of the work of art is the higher the higher it corresponds to the pleasure of the expected one, that is, which has already received a “taste” assessment from the reference group. In the judgments of the taste, Kant identifies the main tone: communications, Mitteilbarkeit . There is a condition for communications, and then we can talk about co-communication, that communication has taken place and that the community has developed. In any case, the word “general”, gemein, also include “general feeling”, Sensus communis, “unanimity”, “sociability”, “general condition”, “universal”, “universal community” - now a centuries -old roll call with Gemeinschaft, community and communication society. To reflect means every time to take the position of “universal point of view”, that is, constantly falling into place of another. So, communications are rather the principle of transmission of the message. If there are no sufficient obstacles, then the message between individual members of the community allows you to organize statements that make general judgments of taste. In this case, the message is always more than the reported. Where, then, the taste has a more accurate localization? Maybe in the message, that is, in the transmission of the impression, or the feeling of pleasure that one experienced and conveyed to another? Or in that unexpected fact that communicability creates the possibility of a message itself? Is publicity itself not transmitted to another as the truth, this freedom to judge anything and whatever (without violating the established law)? This is the right to judgment, regardless of some other opinion, is a condition for communications. Nothing needs to be proved how nothing needs to have anything as signs and symbols of power in order to start talking ... If a certain initial unity of the group-community is evident, then the question of who likes what you like does not make sense. Everyone likes exactly what everyone likes, and everyone is pleasure in what everyone likes. Kant notices:

“The very concept of universal communications of pleasure suggests that pleasure should not be the pleasure of pleasure emanating from the mere sensation, but the pleasure of reflection, and therefore aesthetic art as elegant art is one that has a reflective ability of judgment, and not a sensual feeling.”

The taste (like a formal feeling) is reduced to the message of its sense of pleasure or displeasure to others and contains the ability to experience pleasure and feel satisfaction (Complacentia) through this message, along with others (in society).

Here is a decisive moment. After all, the subtlety of Kant’s conclusion is that we get the pleasure of the beautiful only thanks to the opportunity to inform another about it. The guarantor of communications is different, since communications are quite autonomous (independent of what and how can be reported).

“... and the sensations are valued only insofar as they can be communicated to all (Allgemein Mitteilen); And although the pleasure that everyone has from such an object is only slightly and in itself does not represent much interest, however, the idea of ​​its universal community (Allgemeinen Mitteilbarkeit) almost infinitely increases the value of this pleasure. ”

The taste could even be defined as the ability to judge what our feeling in this view gives universal communications without means of a concept.

The taste, therefore, is the ability of a priori to judge the communications of feelings that are associated with this representation (without the means of a concept).

And yet on which side we can find Kant-an artist, a connoisseur of art or the public? This question should be followed by the answer: Kant - on the side of the public. Publicity as a condition for communications. To be public is to remain private, not involved in any community. Publicity is the flip side of the private. The model of publicity, despite all the efforts of Kant, is difficult to reveal. We will be forced to limit the sphere of publicity not only by the illusions of the privacy of feelings, but also by the fact that the perception itself brings pleasure, which is incomparable, since it is personally and individually. Who makes a judgment of taste? Public? Or does the communications principle create an audience, an aesthetized community that makes a judgment? But the community is not a society? What does Kant mean when talking about society ? Does he mean the community, that is, a completely localized group of art experts, or a separate layer (court-aristocratic), or something socially indecent, something outside the boundaries-the sphere of the public (bourgeois), not the public as a random museum or theatrical crowd, but as a public in general? Yes, this is exactly how: the community for Kant is determined by a socially significant event, which has received the status of public (publicity), that is, messages addressed to everyone whom it can achieve or always achieves regardless of whether it wishes it or not. After all, one can admire the grandeur of the genius of Velazquez and Leonardo da Vinci, never seeing their paintings (not knowing anything about these artists), but only repeating the echo of judgments of publicity. It is possible that Kant's requirements should be taken into account: the community is constructed (or, more precisely, completely arbitrarily formed) on the basis of judgments freely presented by each of its members. What delimits me from others and what connects with them is a special status of reason (my own judgment). The Kantian community of taste is not so much a salon (D. Didro) or something similar to the Jockey Club (M. Proust) or a “secret society”, how much the public activity of a free citizen. And this community develops through an increase in the number of its members, and it is necessary, because this process is the Enlightenment itself. Actually, it should be recognized that the Kantian community is determined in one case from a sense of pleasure/displeasure, in another - from a feeling of exalted. And these two communities are difficult to reduce to one: for example, a community of exalted feeling has a direct expression in the heroic of military affairs. A warrior, a priest, a politician - Kantian figures of an exalted one. But the only obvious hero of the exalted is a warrior :

“Even a war, if it is waged correctly and with strict observance of civil rights, contains something exalted and at the same time makes a way of thinking of the people, which wages the war, the more exalted, the great dangers he was subjected to courageously to resist them; And, on the contrary, a long world usually makes only a merchant spirit to dominant, and with it the low -hearted self -countryside, cowardice and prying and reduces the way of thoughts of the people. ”

Other communities are purely taste, or they are oriented to educate a sense of taste, for the pleasure of "eating" of beautiful things. In the foreground, in any case, for Kant, there may be a gastronomic community or a community of tobacco lovers. And this is another community that Kant very much appreciated:

“How could it happen that mainly the latest languages ​​denote the ability of aesthetic judgment by the word (gustus, sapor), which indicates only a certain weapon [of the external] feeling (inner oral cavity) and the distinction and choice of the things consumed? - Nowhere, sensuality and reason connected in consumption can continue for so long and so often repeated with pleasure as at a good dining table in a good society. - But lunch should be considered only as a means of entertainment of society. The aesthetic taste of the owner of the house is affected in the art of choosing what is generally valid; But he cannot achieve this with his own understanding, since his guests, perhaps, would have chosen other dishes or drinks, each in his own personal understanding. Thus, he sees his art in diversity, namely, in that everyone can find something in his mind; This serves as relative universal. In this matter, there can be no question of his ability to choose guests even for mutual and general pleasure (it is also called taste, but in essence there is a mind in its application to taste and differs from taste). So, thanks to a special understanding, an external feeling could give a name for the perfect choice in general, namely for a sensually universally significant choice. - It is even more strange that the ability to verify on the basis of [external] feelings, is there a something subject of pleasure (sapor) for the same subject (and not whether his choice is universally valid) or not, could even reach such an extent that it became the name of wisdom (sapientia); This happened, perhaps, because an unconditionally necessary goal does not require thoughts and testing, but enters into the soul directly, as if by the taste of useful. ”

Naturally, Kant does not at all imply such a community where “freedom”, “right to judgment”, “autonomy of an individual”, “publicity of the statement” would be eliminated. Neither the secret community, nor "indescribable" nor ecstatic. It proceeds from the failure of everyone who immediately gives another all the future fullness of existence, which he himself claims. Of course, the community, since it is determined from the conditions of co-common and nothing else, that is, from what Kant calls communicating , cannot but deny himself if he abolishes communication between his own members. The communications, or, more precisely, the degree of communications, remains the only condition for the existence of a separate community. True, there is a difference that is hidden and does not intend to discover itself without a specially declared necessity. If we affirm the other as the basis of communication (after all, this is the one who should already be, and before the “I”), then, therefore, we allow only others to the community. The community is no longer and cannot have any “I” that would be aware of themselves outside the community, but this cannot be in principle, because the community is the establishment of communications between the wrong, that is, some with others.

But what could destroy this harmony of the judgments of taste and the taste itself, as well as to question all the genres of elegant art, to suddenly open the abyss under the feet of normative austeral aesthetics? Of course, the fact that the aesthetic status of the exalted was never completely clarified. For Kanta, the elevated is perfectly in the sense in which aesthetically assimilated object is always beautiful, even if its perception contains psychological difficulties at first (when he repels, attracting to himself, promising the highest enjoyment of the power that is disproportionate to the expected appearance of the beautiful). The elevated (and here we completely agree with Lyotar) is the key to the era of modern. And first of all, because the normative aesthetics in its orthodox porism, prohibitions, rules and rituals developed a norm for judgments of taste, obliging to follow in the judgments of the taste of a “common feeling”. Naturally, this conflict was always felt and not just felt, but was an “eternal move” of the development of art as such, because the work of art has always opposed the judgments of taste, the general assessment that society already has about the beautiful. Not every phenomenon in the field of art becomes a work. The status of the work - in the judgments of the taste not of the crowd, but the "public", wider - in public recognition. Starting with romantics (in the broadest sense of this aesthetics, including Hegel and Schelling), the concept of the exalted split. An elevated, exalting feeling is not eliminated, but exposed as an artificial, eccentric, such an implausible state of “soul” as excessiveness. And since there are extremely many such “exalted” conditions, not one of them, in fact, is exalted in the exact sense of the word. That's what Kant did not know. We will be fair: of course, he knew very well about these features of “strong” experiences, where the contemplation factor, contemplation did not turn on at all. After all, contemplation for Kant is what is already follows from the choice and evaluation. They tell you, as if making a decision: "This work of art is fine, now you can enjoy it!" Although Kant considered himself an opponent of fashion, the formal analytics that he offers for judgments of taste pushes him from the field of reflection, where the difference between “good taste” and “fashion” could still be established. Vulgar's fashion, it is opposite to taste, because it forces changes to changes that do not lead to its improvement. There is no lonely subject, there is only a member of the community entering into an agreement on the sample with others; The judgment of taste is only because it is possible that the samples already exist and precede the created work of art. To contemplate is not to judge, but judging, it is impossible not to contemplate, that is, to have a judgment (taste), regardless of “material” taste preferences. The community is replaced by communications. In this sense, Kant sees value not in the community, but in the state incarnation of the community, society. Valuable is not a community, but a general feeling , that is, the very message within a certain human set. The professional (corporate) community differs from other forms of community - communities in the idea, state, action, hobbies, etc.