In reading some aesthetic literature recently, it appears that philosophers have considered the human form as an object of beauty for quite some time, and some even considered it the ultimate form of true beauty.

Have any philosophers notably taken a different stance on this topic, either considering the human body ugly or neutral in terms of beauty? Who would these philosophers be and in what works would they have approached this interpretation?

I’m trying to make sense of this essay

https://juddfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Specific_Objects_1964.pdf

But any thoughts would be helpful

Hello, I was wondering if people knew of works comparing æsthetic sensibilities from different cultures, especially ones that try to get to the essence of why a given pair differ? I'm thinking particularly of Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows as an example.

 Hi there,

I am a folk singer/musician and PhD student (writing my dissertation on philosophy and esotericism) who has taken on the endeavor to transform philosophy into music, aestheticize knowledge. Enclosed is my musical exposition of the mystical aspects of Platonic philosophy, especially the aspects which the Neoplatonists would reinterpret in their understanding of the mystical ascent. The song primarily follows the trajectory of the Phaedrus and the Symposium, but also references the Republic, Meno, Phaedo, Critias, and the Timaeus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1_DeeQ3YLE

I created a lot of hand drawn animations for it, and included a lot of alchemical imagery, as many alchemists did indeed interpret Plato alchemically. I also created a number of animations of the images from the great Neo/Platonist Renaissance magi Robert Fludd, my own artwork, one of Athanasius Kircher’s illustrations, an image from the alchemical treatise the Rosarium Philosophorum, and images from ancient Greek art (the sirens and Eros) that I adapted. Yes, sirens in the ancient Greek context were envisioned as avian rather than aquatic humanoids! The chariot animation was created using the still frames of a film of a horse running (it took awhile to make!).

Some nuances: the line “drinking from the lake of memory” is an allusion to Orphism, as Plato’s theory of anamnesis derives from the Orphic cult. I am also dressed in Egyptian-style attire at one point, a subtle reference to Plato’s debt to the ancient Egyptian religion.

I have been studying and writing about Plato in an academic context for more than 12 years now, I’ve read and written about these texts a lot over the years, and I feel a very deep philosophical affinity with Plato’s philosophy. Though a rationalized mysticism, Plato preserves the knowledge of mythic traditions and mystery cults. In addition to my own knowledge and experience working with this philosophical material, I took inspiration from the books of the late Algis Uzdavinys, one of my favorite scholars, in the construction of the narrative, specifically his texts The Golden Chain and Orpheus and the Roots of Platonism. I also include citations at the end, citing the sources for these lyrics to give it a bit more scholarly weight. I just finished writing about eleven thousand words on Plato for my PhD thesis concomitantly as I constructed this creative artifact, so sharing this feels like a personal culmination. I hope you enjoy this experimental didactic production! As Socrates relates, philosophy is the best music (Phaedo 61a).

This is maybe a very basic question -- please forgive me; I have an academic background, but little-to-no formal instruction in art or aesthetics, so I expect I'm reproducing a lot of 101-level arguments. Note that I am not asking about AI art, but art and design more generally.

I got started by thinking about 3D printed sculpture. I notice that a lot of it feels really sterile and cold to me (and to people I've asked their opinion). But that isn't universal to the medium; I've seen 3D printed stuff that seems more human and organic, too. Something else is happening here.

And of course humans can design and create art or objects that feel cold, soulless, and inhuman, even in traditional, analog media. (I was jokingly going to cite Thomas Kinkade here, but I recognize that that example is actually a little complicated; his works used traditional artistic media, but a Fordian assembly line process for reproductions. But I gather that even the originals feel cold to a lot of people, despite the attempts at "warmth" and "light". Hmm!)

So I'm trying to figure out the factors underlying these two distinct "feels". Laying my cards on the table: this is a practical question, based in trying to create "warm", "human", "organic" results in the "cold" medium of 3D printing. But now I'm curious in general.

There are some things that I feel pretty sure make art look human or soulless. I think a lot of the answers have to do with something feeling "too perfect," unlike something that's found in nature (hello Aristotle). Too symmetrical, too shiny, and so forth. But I'm not sure if that's all of it -- and I suspect that if you ding up a shiny thing, it wouldn't necessarily feel "warmer".

I gather there are arguments that art that feels "human" "means something", and that "cold, sterile" art is "meaningless". "Warm" art is designed to elicit emotions in the observer, and/or it had the original artist's emotion influencing its creation. But I'm a little leery here:

• First, this is all highly subjective -- what's profound to you may be shallow to me.
• It suggests that some kind of ✨intent✨ suffuses art, separate from objective material reality. I'm not 100% anti, but I'd want to break this down more.
• And finally, I've also seen this used in discussions about the difference between "true" art and kitsch. (There's Kinkade again, lol.) The argument I've seen is that kitsch falls on the meaningless end of things, or fails to transmit a full spectrum of emotion. I would agree that kitsch fails to convey much meaning, and maybe doesn't convey as broad of a spectrum of emotion, but it nonetheless feels very humane, warm, and soulful. Maybe excessively so!

So I feel like I'm very far down a rabbit hole and need some help getting out. I suspect there's plenty of theory out there about this, especially dating from when mass production started to take over from handmade work. Hell, this feels like it might be one of the central questions of your field...!

But finding more information is hard. I tried Google, but I'm slogging through a small mountain of articles about how to identify AI art. That's kind of the next door neighbor to my question, lol.

Can you help me out?

If you have academic references about this that are reasonably accessible to a laycreature, I'll happily take them.

Thank you in advance!

Mine would be the Garden at Arles, Van Gogh, 1888

So the title is quite self explanatory, I love drawing for myself, but I would also like to improve my art by confronting myself with philosophical points of views. I'm not an expert in philosophy but I studied it a lot in high school and college so I can fairly easily read original and difficult philosophy books.

Thanks

Follow us here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/InstitutionalCritique/

In art, institutional critique is the systematic inquiry into the workings of art institutions, such as galleries and museums, and is most associated with the work of artists like Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Andrea Fraser, John Knight (artist), Adrian Piper, Fred Wilson, and Hans Haacke and the scholarship of Alexander Alberro, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Birgit Pelzer, and Anne Rorimer.

Institutional critique takes the form of temporary or nontransferable approaches to painting and sculpture, architectural alterations and interventions, and performative gestures and language intended to disrupt the otherwise transparent operations of galleries and museums and the professionals who administer them.

It felt like something inside me was healing.

When I looked into the art I felt as if it was me. And that it knew me - like all the good and the bad it was strangely like I was being reassured or connected to it in a soulful way. So, I was like well that's weird, and then i tried looking it up but couldn't find anything.

I know I'm not the only person's whose felt this before.

But I'm not smart so I don't know what exactly this is, so, please help me.

I stumbled upon some really well done YouTube videos that broke down different aesthetics and their history and now I can’t find them! I remember it being narrated by a woman and she explains how they came about, how they got their name, and what actually defined the look of the aesthetic. Feels like they were wiped from the internet or something.

The first one I saw was about the aesthetic of 90s and early 2000s kids toys and commercials like the stuff Nickelodeon used to produce. Over the top, bright, with exaggerated features.

The second one was breaking down the aesthetic of early 2000s textbook covers. The light and easy landscapes with floating computers trying to relay excitement of the new future of technology we were emerging into.

I really wish I could remember the proper names of the aesthetics so I can try and track them down. I’ve gone months back into my YouTube history with no luck. I’ve tried every combination of key works I can think of and just get the same videos of old commercials.

In part of the video it looked like she was on a website that listed every industrial design aesthetic with a little thumbnail image that included examples of the aesthetic. Anyone have a clue what that website is?

If anyone has any notion of what the hell I’m talking about I would be so thankful if you chimed in! I’ve been driving myself nuts all morning trying to find these videos!

Hey there! I’m posting this in hopes of finding likeminded artists to make fantasy literature in drawn, manga-inspired format (graphic novel, webcomic, later maybe video game or anime) with aesthetic, intellectual and moral value. I wanna do this together with someone(s) who appreciate the depth of art wherever, however and in whatever format they encounter it. If this sounds like you, please continue reading to see if our tastes and ambitions align UwU

TLDR-version: Popular art (most fantasy and manga) is beautiful but mindless. Contemporary "high" art is mindful but ugly. I wish to make beautiful AND mindful drawing-based fantasy literature inspired by the classics. Wanna help?

Disclaimer: Take everything written here with a grain of salt. I’m trying to capture what’s on my mind about fiction and art in general and some of it is not nice - it involves a lot of heartfelt criticism, which may be felt as being offensive if taken the wrong way. My tenor is that I want to make better what in my eyes is currently being done wrong in the majority of art and entertainment (which includes this very separation). Note that anyhow, I do not care to change the way you make your art, this is just my vision for the art I wanna make (maybe together with you) and my tentative reasoning behind it.

My ambition

Essentially, my wish is to elevate fantasy and manga from popular entertainment to the level of high art and literature. I see huge potential in their youthful spirit and emotional force that is absent in the more accredited "high" art forms, which have been led astray by hegemonial trends in Western art since the early 20th century. With more refinement in aesthetic, moral and intellectual terms fantasy&manga might attain the same status as the best works of the world’s artistic heritage and make a meaningful contribution to humanity. Right now, works in these forms merely scratch the surface of what is possible, I think (which in fairness can be said about any human art to some extent). I want to unlock the vast potential of fiction dormant in these forms to help reshape human consciousness and make life on Earth a bit more beautiful.

What’s wrong with popular art

Most fantasy and manga works published to this day seem to me like products of an uncoordinated, unsophisticated play with the creative might of the human mind. While I consider some outcomes truly stunning and worthy of recognition (see my sources of inspiration below), most seem to lack refinement in several ways. Generally speaking, I see four issues: lack of aesthetic balance, intellectual coherence, moral responsibility and depth. Aesthetically, popular art commonly employs extremely strong and emotive means for purposes that do not seem to aesthetically justify these means. This exaggeration of means is what I would call kitsch (although this word has other meanings, too). I'd argue it is caused by insufficient refinement of aesthetic taste by author(s) and/or viewership. Intellectually, most works of popular art do not manage to develop a plot or setting without apparent fallacies – be they soft mistakes such as unconvincing blends of subject matter or hard logical inconsistencies in the presentation. Even though logical consistency may not always be necessary to express the point of a work, it seems to me that most fallacies simply stem from a lack of effort spent on careful development rather than being a result of artistic choice, and thus detract from a work's objective quality. Morally, most works of fantasy and manga, like entertainment in general, do not take much responsibility for the ideas they express. I'd argue that living in a world filled with needless suffering not caused by evil intent but rather by human ignorance and folly, there is little excuse for consuming people’s time with entertainment that does not help them grow as a person and even aggravates their biases. The blind reproduction of obsolete social norms combined with the blunt gratification of mundane urges is how in my eyes entertainment serves to keep people in a psychological cage of immaturity. Fiction in general could instead do humanity a great service, if it were approached by its creators with differentiated consideration rather than irresponsible dalliance or abusive commercial intents (the last point is especially applicable to big commercial studios). Finally, most works of popular art to my mind simply seem to lack depth – by this I mean expressing something worth expressing, a point not easily grasped with definitions and hence best left to individual judgement.

What I want to do better

To make artful literature based in fantasy and manga, inspiration may be drawn from the works of the Western canon and classics of other cultures. These works, considered classics due to some of their sublime qualities, can serve as role models in aesthetic, intellectual and sometimes moral terms. My goal, however, is not to just copy or re-express their content, but to abstract some of that which is sublime about them and apply it to themes of contemporary relevance in a broadly accessible format. Beyond this, I would want to draw inspiration from intellectual subject matters such as the histories of humanity, human cultures, religions, mythology, philosophy as well as from (natural) science, mathematics and logic. Because I consider it among the greatest treasures humanity has in its keeping, the beauty found in nature ought to take centre stage. Themes I'd like to address in my art include the following:

• The meaning of life
• The value of culture
• The ambivalent role(s) of religion(s)
• The contingency of history and of social norms
• Law and rebellion
• Power structures and exploitation
• The diversity of human cultures
• The joy of travelling
• The beauty of nature
• The beauty of mathematics and logic
• The aesthetics of sex and fictional sexuality
• The relationship between humans and other animals
• The relationship between humans and their environment
• The value of friendship and kindness
• ...

Importantly, while I want to widen people’s horizon, I do not wish to preach any prefabricated answers. Rather, I would like to show how to ask relevant questions and to instil thought on relevant topics. My goal is to create a holistic art that lives up to its responsibility for this world, by considering all relevant facets, consciously reducing bias and not leaving anything to “chance” except by deliberate choice. Due to this holistic quality, the art I envision cannot easily be done by myself alone, because it requires knowledge, reflection and adaptation in so many fields in addition to the artistic skills to implement it. For exactly this reason, I hope to find likeminded artists here whose goals and ideas align with mine and who would like to co-create this art with me.

Why contemporary "high" art is not living up to its purpose (brief analysis of art history)

Western high art has inevitably encountered an impasse in the beginning of the 20th century. In culmination of a trend the seed of which was sown during the Enlightenment, Western art has become ever more individualist, experimental and semantic and less generic, traditional and aesthetic in nature – it became detached from its natural state as a facet of human life embedded in culture and was turned instead by Enlightenment ideology into something absolute, independent of culture and religion. Thus, Western art became bathed in idiosyncrasy, focussed on discovering the new rather than perfecting the old and zealous for political assertiveness. This, together with other factors such as industrialisation, has led to a complete breakdown of artisanal traditions in the West during the 20th century and a fall into hyper-individualism, hyper-specialism and hyper-politicism, with modern and post-modern artists on the one side using rather than making art – mostly to political and ideological ends – and those on the other end of the spectrum becoming one-track specialists focussed entirely on single dimensions of artistic creation, developing particularities that caught their interest in an ever more withdrawn and specialised idiom, rather than attending to the big picture of their creation. In short, a loss of perspective has occurred and broken the will to create serious art of general appeal. Wagner’s notion of Gesamtkunstwerk has been abandoned to the domains of popular entertainment. This development is not purely negative, and I do not wish to denounce 20th century artists nor contemporary ones for that which I criticise in it. Individualism has made it possible for art to be explored in an unprecedented diversity of dimensions, immensely broadening the artistic horizon of our species. Specialisation and experimentation have shaped a plethora of artistic tools that now lie available at the feet of anyone willing to study them. And overt politicisation has given art an ethical relevance it had been lacking throughout most of human history and was and certainly is justified by the many wrongs in the world that need to be addressed. However, to move forward in the 21st century, I think we need to begin to free ourselves from the vast heritage of confusions and absurdities engendered in the 20th century and its associated loss of aesthetic merit in art and steer our course in a new direction, so as to get back on track with the greater project of creating a true, just and beautiful world, which in some way has always been subliminally inherent in art even before artists thought of themselves as such.

An art of hope

The 21st century ought to be a century of healing. The wounds inflicted upon the human soul, flesh and our environment in the 20th century, aptly captured in much of its purposefully horrifying art, need to be remedied. If we, however, just continue expressing pain, estrangement, disturbance and hatred in art, we are not going to help humanity overcome this dark historical period but will sooner turn it mad. I want to create an art of hope, not misery. For this purpose, popular art provides a much more fruitful basis in my opinion than contemporary "high" art. Popular artists dare what most “high” artists have not dared for almost a century, that is to create all sorts of beautiful things, although without sufficient sophistication and thus inferior in character. If popular appeal is valued more than depth, art has no meaning beyond mundane entertainment. To make popular art meaningful, it needs to turn from diversion into guidance.

Why fantasy and manga

The reason I consider both fantasy and manga well-suited for this art is multi-faceted. Fantasy, at its root, is an abstraction and extension of myth. Myth is one of the oldest and most essential forms of fiction that has played a central role in the cultivation of meaning in virtually all human civilisations. With the dawn of a scientific worldview, it has largely lost its status due to the realisation that it is not real. Nevertheless, it is still extremely evocative and intimately connected to the human soul, rendering it effective as a medium of art. J.R.R. Tolkien, the paragon of fantasy, has shown to us how to create art of depth by interweaving invented myth, culture and language into an intricate narrative fabric. I would like, for one thing, to return fantasy to its origin that is the high literary and aesthetic standard of Tolkien’s legacy.

Manga, on the other hand, has enormous aesthetic, emotional and (pun intended) sexual potential. In visual art, one always has to prioritise certain features of the visual world over others, choosing which features to represent, since not all can be represented simultaneously. Some essential features may be represented more purely, and thus intelligibly, in drawing than in, say, photography – which is why most bird identification books feature drawn illustrations. Manga drawing, like much Japanese art, tends to prefer aesthetic purity over wealth of detail, the latter being commonly valued more in Western art. Thus, manga is characterised by an abstraction, purification and idealisation of certain essential aesthetic features of the visual world, especially human physiognomy. In this respect, it stands in a long tradition of Japanese arts abstracting aesthetic principles from nature and presenting them in a minimalistic, purified form – best exemplified by the Zen rock garden, which (among other aspects) uncovers the sublime aesthetics found in the pure spatial arrangement of objects. This principle IMO helps explain why manga characters tend to look sexually attractive – much rather than the goofy, in this regard less refined characters of, say, US-American comics – yet simultaneously, to a Western eye, somewhat plain and generic. They typically are a reduction of human visual features to that which lends humans outward beauty, giving manga characters aesthetic purity at the cost of aesthetic richness. Thus, when compared to real humans, they are less ugly but also less (deeply) beautiful. Because I consider aesthetic merit a primary goal of art, a healthy compromise between aesthetic purity, and thus intelligibility of the underlying principles, and aesthetic richness would be ideal, e.g. by enhancing manga style with elements from other visual art styles, taking inspiration from the canon of Western art and other classics.

Secondly, manga lends itself naturally to pornography (which weighs heavily in its tradition) due to the abovementioned sexual attractiveness of its characters. One of the things I wish to do in my art is to reveal aesthetic principles of sex and abstractions and idealisations of these principles expressible only via sexual fiction. I want to do this both for the immediate purpose of conveying aesthetic value as well as, in combination with a suitable narrative framework, to comment on human morality relating to sex and to provoke critical reflection on these issues (e.g. questioning heteronormativity). Manga is an extremely suitable medium for sexual art – as can be seen in the myriad of hentai, yaoi and doujinshi (=fan art) works containing sexual fantasies with varying degrees of abstraction from reality as well as the vibrant furry porn community – a peculiar example of fantastical sexuality expressed in visual art.

Lastly, works of manga and especially anime tend to have a strong immediate emotional impact. This, I think, is likely due to their heavy focus on portraying emotions rendered effective by the purity of their representation of emotional visual cues and, potentially, the attractiveness of their characters promoting identification with them by the audience. Exactly this emotional persuasiveness can be used to create empathy and thus makes them a wonderful tool for teaching moral values, such as the value of friendship, as exemplified frequently in the Shōnen genre. This third aspect makes both manga and anime well-suited as ethical art, the most brilliant example of which are the works by Miyazaki and the Studio Ghibli, that are deeply aesthetic as well as morally insightful. Lastly, both fantasy and manga are popular art forms primarily among the young generation, who are the most willing and able to let their souls be inspired. Thus, this format has a high transformative potential, which is just what is needed to make art of use to the future of humankind.

What I would wish for in a partner on this creative journey

• First and foremost: well-conceived taste. No mere "liking" or "disliking" of works of art, but rather discerning and considering both good and bad qualities in any given piece, making nuanced judgements. I personally may well appreciate both a fantasy wallpaper and a fresco by Michelangelo, but I am aware of their differences in quality and cultural significance and therefore have a just estimation of their respective value.
• Ardent love for fantasy, manga and optionally other popular art forms.
• Relevant artistic skills, ideally manga drawing and/or other visual art skills.
• Intellectual curiosity and sound historical, philosophical and scientific education, as a basis for discussion of the above-mentioned themes and others to be addressed in our art.
• Interest in sexual aesthetics and a wish to explore (in fiction) sexual possibility space beyond mundane restrictions.
• Firm moral commitment and a wish to make art that is politically relevant, yet soundly aesthetic.
• Enthusiasm for foreign cultures.
• Deep appreciation for the beauty found in nature.

What is NOT necessary

• Formal training in anything.
• I do not mind whether you agree with my interpretation of art history. It's enough if you, like me, wish to make serious art out of fantasy and manga and appreciate the broad direction I outlined here.
• Don’t think you need to be amazing without any need for improvement. I’m not. We can grow together, let’s just start! UwU

What I bring to the table

• An artistic vision.
• Literary skills in nonfiction and belletristic writing.
• Advanced education in natural science, (world) history, mythology, Western classical music as well as philological skills (Sanskrit, Latin) and other language skills (Japanese, Quenya).
• A fantasy world in an advanced worldbuilding stage ‘optimised’ for expressive potential regarding the above-mentioned themes with an unfinished epic tale to take place in it.
• Affluent experience of foreign cultures and the beauty found in nature through extensive travelling.
• The ability to offer and take constructive criticism.
• Moral commitment, dedication to sustainability, animal rights and the future of humanity.
• Skills in music composition for Western classical instruments.

How to contact me

~black_phoenix143@web.de~

I’m looking forward to hearing from you😊 Let’s beautify the world!

Sources of inspiration

The following is a list of the most relevant works of popular art that have so far influenced me. I am not listing works of high art (except arguably Tolkien’s), as these would fill pages and not be illuminating as regards my approach to elevating fantasy and manga.

^(1) One form of contemporary hight art most commonly found in exhibitions around the world is what I call Staubkunst (”dust art”). This may sound pejorative, especially against the backdrop of my criticising contemporary art in this very writing, but it is not meant so. The works I am referring to are predominantly experimental and seek to uncover the aesthetics, and non-aesthetics, of objects and subject matters which usually escape our notice in everyday life – though, as is typical of contemporary high art, they sometimes have a political semantic dimension as well. Among this category I count, for example, textural painting, rubbish photography, sound poetry and microtonal composition. The reason I call it “dust art” is because of the extremely narrow focus of this art, which reminds me of (and sometimes is literally located on) the microscopic level of dust particles. There is value in this art for people who have – commonly via their engagement with art – unlocked an interest in details most people do not even perceive. Staubkunst is a justified art form and has a rightful place in art exhibitions, either to widen willing people’s perceptive horizon or as a dialogue among experts.

I personally have no doubts that AI will overtake humans in any type of technical task, eventually. However, it might have to be AGI the one to finally clear this dispute, maybe forever. While this claim might have the obvious existential character with a vast field for thought, I am particularly curious about how we will manage to find a way of expression that AI is incapable of doing, before we show it how.

Whether it is visual arts, music, literature... It seems obvious that AI will eventually be able to do anything we have done to this day and, possibly, better. It might take longer than some of us think it will, but then again, it might not. So only it won't be better at something that doesn't exist yet, which hasn't learn about. I understand that AI eventually develops creativity, and unconventional ideas (like in Alphago), but as art is the expression of human emotions and consciousness, I (want to) believe that we'll find something, an essence, to human expression, for which AI will always be a step behind. After all, it seems like that's all we might have left.

It makes me feel very excited because the current popular culture is sustained on the image we want to project, not necessarily the one that actually is - social media. Not everybody of course, but the majority surely. So the fact that extreme authenticity seems like a possible salvation for human expression makes me excited for the future if my humble prediction ends up happening.

What do you think, if any, will be that essence, concept, or idea, that will preserve the very nature of us?

https://youtu.be/m__MQnXtla8?si=DJQhu5Ss-BYcxBGr

…anyone know any?

The name is Gill Sonne. I heard it in an interview so I don't know the spelling. It's a medieval thinker I believe.

Help please.

The overwhelming presence of media, narrative, and artifice in everyday life, and the transfer of so much activity into the virtual realm, has robbed the arts (literature, painting, film, etc.) of a central function, which is to be what Arnold called "a criticism of life."

​

Arnold's claim assumes a distinction between the imagined fiction of the arts and the truth of real life. But if life becomes increasingly dominated by virtuality, if more social economic activity shifts moves online, real life will be increasingly mediated by, and occuring in the domain of, the artificial.

​

People are going to be sick of art, the arts, artists, anything artistic.

Dear Readers,

I read a bit about the aesthetic theory of both Plato and Kant and saw some similarity. I want to make sure others also understand this similarity or see if im misunderstanding it somewhere.

Plato is talking about our perceived world as the world of shadows. There is another world, with the perfect versions of the shadows we perceive in this world. So Plato is saying a tree in this world is merely an imperfect shadow of the ideal tree in another world we can't perceive being the ideal world. That is what Plato is saying right?

Then you have Kant who is speaking of the noumenal and fenomenal world. The fenomenal world being the world around us, the world of fenomenoms and the noumenal world, the world behind our perceived version of the fenomenoms around us. If im understanding correctly Kant is saying due to oure perceiving processes we can never see a thing around us truly for what it is, we will never be able to see a thing for how it really is in the noumenal world.

So whereas Plato thinks of things around us being shadows of perfect ideas, Kant is also saying the things around us are not how the things really are but just how we perceive them. Isn't there an overlap in thinking? Just in the matter of fact that they both think the world around us and how we perceive it is not the world how it really is, it is not the 'true' world.

Is this a small overlap or am I fully wrong?

p.s. sorry for any language mistakes, english is not my first language.

​

Cheers.

From an aesthetics perspective, what are your thoughts on pornography?

If my reading of Kants aesthetics is correct he thinks that, in a dialectical way, the fine arts is always moving toward destruction and it's this negation that makes it worthwhile. Are there any writers during the 1900s who expand upon this?