The problem with aesthetics being the dominant value is that, for some people, aesthetics implies cruelty.
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Think this critique is a bit incomplete, but essentially correct.
Not sure what's missing, though. It just tastes a bit... unspiced?
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Not sure. I think what strikes me about aesthetics is the sheer arbitrariness of it.
Even with semi-objective measures of beauty & ugliness, some people love ugly things and despise beauty.
It's a deity out of cosmic horror - beautiful but capricious, incomprehensible, deadly.
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Its drives and wishes are random, and it acknowledges no master.
Whatever taste affords is deemed good, all other things bland or uninteresting or ugly. There is no standard except the one set by taste, so anything is possible.
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Conversely, any comprehensible system of ethics must have good and bad baked into it. Without these, ethics is meaningless.
But life is full of fuzzy and utterly incomprehensible calculus, the full extensions of even the smallest actions are unknowable.
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So corners must be cut, structures must be built. In absence of perfect judgement there must be good-enough judgement. Heuristic.
Noise is filtered. Signal is purer, but less lively.
Then actions must be consequential. Everything must be measured, weighed. The scales rule all.
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I think this is great. I also don't think ethics should be dominant
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And the problem with ethics being the dominant value is that it can descend into legislation of the soul for its own sake, deprived of joy and beauty.
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