> It depends what you mean by "problem"?
I meant that if someone gets a lot of enjoyment out of "Louie Louie" but I prefer Mahler's 10th or Beethoven's Violin Concerto (which I happen to be listening to right now), that's fine with me. (Although, on mature consideration, I believe "YMCA" would have to be judged to have made a greater contribution to the history of civilization on Earth than LL.)
> Moreover, it isn't obvious that such an exploration (however difficult
> -for the reasons pointed to by psychoanalysis - it might be) wouldn't
> enable me to improve my "tastes" i.e. enable me to appreciate objects
> productive of a higher form of "happiness."
I don't have the slightest idea of what the phrase "higher form of happiness" would mean in relation to music. I think we just listen to music for pleasure -- rock doesn't give me pleasure, but it does others. Mahler generally gives me more pleasure than Schoenberg, but I kind of like the latter too, on some days. I get some pleasure out of LL and YMCA, but not nearly as much. Others have very different preferences; that's basically all that can be said, it seems to me. None of these are "higher" than any others. I know I have more pleasure listening to some things than others, and so does the other person. But those are the only sorts of comparison that can be made. I don't think I can be sure that I have more pleasure in X than the other person has in Y, even.
> Simply asserting that tastes can't be rationally explored and
> criticized doesn't demonstrate that they can't be.
Well, I'm still waiting. Back in the day, when I was a philosophy grad student and then briefly an asst. prof., aesthetics was not my main interest, but I dabbled in it some. I never found any rationalist aesthetic theory that made sense to me.
For a rationalist theory that makes it possible for one piece of art to be proven (yes, because that is what reason does) "higher" than other to work, I think art has to be about more than pleasure. There has to be something that reason can get hold of to base its proofs on, but it can't get hold of pleasure and make one "higher" than another. And I think art is about pleasure.
Furthermore, even if I could somehow prove rationally that my pleasure in listening to Beethoven is more "elevated" than the LL fan's, what would be the point? After the discussion was over, we'd just go back to listening to whatever we liked, just as before. This kind of thing is something for the philosophers in their elbow-patched tweed jackets (and I used to be one, remember) to exercise their brains on and publish papers about to further their careers, but it doesn't mean anything to music lovers. (BTW, Mahler wrote a great song on this subject.)
> It's possible this is a sign of a very weak unintegrated ego using
> psychotic defenses against its own instinctive tendency to sadistic
> violence, an instinctive tendency it experiences, on account of its
> weakness, as "the overwhelming."
Wow, that fits me to a T; how did you ever know? I'm just waiting for my psychotic defenses to bubble to the top of my consciousness. Then I can finally let go of this pesky obsession I have with the idea that reality is the thing I need to strive to keep in touch with.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ When I was a little boy, I had but a little wit, 'Tis a long time ago, and I have no more yet; Nor ever ever shall, until that I die, For the longer I live the more fool am I. -- Wit and Mirth, an Antidote against Melancholy (1684)