more on the monist and dualist aesthetics

i've been thinking through what exactly it is i mean by the "monist" and "dualist" aesthetics (see previous post here). it's important to clarify the distinction between aesthetic dualism and philosophical dualism, which i guess i could do by clarifying what i perceive to be the differing missions of art and philosophy.

philosophy is concerned with explaining reality (and the systems of thought that determine our perception of reality), while art attempts to describe our experience of reality. they appear similar, but in practice are so opposed to one another as to be almost incompatible. another way of putting it: a philosophical argument can be logically disproved, but a painting or a play cannot; a work of art is not considered to be "right" or "true" (or "wrong" or "untrue"); instead, we make the distinction between the works of art that come closer to describing what it feels like to be a person, and works that don't come as close.

philosophically, the notion of dualism--the mind existing as its own entity separate from the body--has been logically discredited; it is considered a fallacy (for now, at least). but fallacy is where art lives; you might even make the case that the whole point of art is to illustrate our illusions.

the dualist aesthetic describes not dualism as a philosophy, but dualism as an experience. it says: to live is to feel separated, from one's body, from the natural world, from other people. logically, we know this separation is not real, but we feel it anyway. i believe that in certain eras this feeling is much more prevalent than in other eras, and this manifests itself in our cultural record. we project our feeling of separation in all directions: it is in the sleek symmetry of an Apple product and the quantized percussion of EDM and hip hop. it is in the explosion of modernist art and architecture following the mechanization of the industrial age, and it is in the revival of classical ideals that flourished in the european renaissance and enlightenment eras. sometimes it celebrates this feeling of separation as a triumph over nature (as in classical art and architecture), and sometimes it condemns this feeling as a sort of curse (as in modernism's alienation), but the hallmark of the dualist aesthetic is that the feeling of separation is acknowledged.

i've also been wondering if this feeling of dualism might be built into christian and post-christian western culture. the fundamental christian myth is a story of humanity's separation from god; the expulsion from eden and the personhood of jesus christ are probably the two best illustrations of this motif. i fall into the camp of those who believe that the people make the myth and not the other way around, so i'm inclined to think that the rise of christianity as a world religion described some sort of budding awareness of this feeling of separation. (i haven't studied eastern religion or philosophy enough to make any authoritative statements here, but my general impression is that this feeling of separation is much more a feature of western religion and philosophy than eastern religion and philosophy. i'm not sure why this would be so, and i'm interested to learn more.)

so if the dualist aesthetic describes the fundamental human experience as one of separation, then the monist aesthetic does the opposite: it describes the fundamental human experience as being in balance with oneself and one's surroundings. it describes life's journey as something inevitable, rather than something strange. it contains an implicit criticism of the dualist perspective, effectively saying that dualism is nothing more than an illusion.

more on all this as i keep unraveling my thoughts.