Conatus: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

14. Quality

‘That which is without quality cannot be measured, the invisible cannot be examined, the incorporeal cannot be weighed, the limitless cannot be compared, the incomprehensible cannot admit of more or less.’

Gregory of Nyssa

Beauty has been our lead in to questions of value. We have seen that some value derives directly from human instinct, whilst some is based on the human capacity for rationalised thought and language. In the last chapter we noted that there seems to come a point where we are faced with having to just deal with differing opinions on particular matters. So, for instance, when we looked at the sublime compared to beauty with regard to aesthetics, it is difficult to discern exactly why one thing should be described in one way and another thing in a different way, other than just saying it is one person’s opinion against another’s. Likewise, perhaps there’s a bit of elitism in suggesting that we differentiate between pleasure and more lasting happiness and joy. Maybe this does not matter too much in issues of aesthetics. But the foregoing chapters have already shown that things are not so simple. There’s already some hints at values, goodness, virtue and moral correctness being somehow wrapped up in our aesthetic judgements. It

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