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The Ethical Compass of the Feminine Aesthetic
By: Kristalyn Bunyan

While I was on an academic study tour in Turkey during the summer of 2004, I was surrounded by fertility figurines, such as Artemis, Cyble, and Aphrodite. I was intrigued by the notion that whole societies were built upon a matriarchal system and that they emphasized certain feminine religious rituals. Upon my return to Mars Hill College this past fall, I began to investigate my own religious beliefs and the presence or lack of the feminine in them and in art. I began to incorporate numerous Renaissance Madonna images, such as Raphael’s Madonna dell Granduca into my prints. I simultaneously infused my artwork with circular forms including vessels, which have a symbolic reference to the feminine due to their openness. During my artistic exploration, wondering about the role of the feminine in my religion, Catholicism, led to further inquiries about the presence of the feminine in ethics. Thus, through this cerebral evolution which originated in Turkey, I was inspired to discover the inherent connection between ethics, the feminine, and art.

In this exploration of the feminine, ethics and art, I have chosen to maintain a fluid focus, but also incorporate philosophers for the framework of my exploration. I have used Levinas, Mary Daly, and Plato primarily for the feminine and the ethics. For the second half of the paper, I have incorporated Tolstoy and Anthony Savile in my discussion of aesthetics. These are the essential philosophies of the paper, on which my own philosophical inputs are based.

The feminine is not exclusively connected with the woman. As Levinas describes, “The feminine is the silent and discrete…” (Levinas 21). It is “a way of being”-a mysterious being that welcomes the beloved. It carries with it the connotation of caregiver. Although this is characteristic of the feminine, it is not limited to it. As Mary Daly states, attributes of the feminine are “emotional strength and independence, forcefulness, dynamism, decisiveness, coolness, objectivity, assertiveness, courage, integrity, vitality, intensity, depth of character, grooviness, etc.” (Tong 192). The truly feminine spirit is a blend of such virtuous attributes and unites the heart and head in all people. The mind responds to the body’s needs and initiates processes so that it may comfort itself or another. The feminine is mindful of the heart and passions and strives to balance feelings with reason when relating to others. In this blend of Levinas and Daly, the ongoing tension of the feminine between the mind and body and the self and others is emphasized.

Welcoming and care giving are seen as synonymous with comfort and comforting. Comfort falls under the category of responsibility, which Levinas insists requires responsivity and response-ability for the one who is in need (Levinas 29). “The nakedness of the face is destituteness. To recognize the Other is to recognize a hunger. To recognize the Other is to give.” (Levinas 29). The act of recognition and attempt to fulfill another’s need is feminine, according to both Levinas and Daly. In order to fulfill another’s need, one must have trust with the one who has the need. This trust, which allows for authentic comfort, occurs when there is vulnerability on the part of both the giver and the receiver. When Levinas states “the exposing to wounding and to enjoyment, an exposure to wounding in enjoyment, which enables the wound to reach subjectivity…”, he implies that sincere feeling only occurs when there is ultimate exposure and vulnerability (Levinas 61). When one is going to comfort someone, the other needs to be wanting comfort; this other who is in want of comfort is vulnerable because she is revealing her inadequacies and needs to another. The comforter is also vulnerable because the possible comfort that one will give can be refused or disliked or insufficient. Thus, in order for one to comfort, vulnerability needs to preexist.

Comfort begins with the body. The feminine is receptive to the other and their gifts. This receptivity to those outside of oneself is complemented by the feminine’s ability to be receptive to the inner struggles of the self. In old men’s wrinkled faces, the soft receptivity of the feminine is visually shown. During my visit to Turkey, I saw numerous dry and sun beaten faces of old men. Their wrinkled and worn skin was either physically rough and calloused or smooth and soft, but the skin itself which moves with the muscles, which moves in accordance to emotion and the demands of the being, gives with time and in response to the being’s demands. To give is to be welcoming--to be welcoming of life and what comes before you. The skin welcomes life. The inner energy of the old man and his experiences do not destroy his skin but rather his skin, his soul garment, bends with him- with his insatiable sorrows and jolly laughs. This feminine receptivity allows for the man to exist comfortably within in his own skin and allows for a necessary union between his mental/emotional state and his physical state. Receptivity welcomes life experiences because it bends with the moment; it is not soggy. The skin has a tender tension about it. As the skin bends, it does not break but stretches. In the stretch, there is tension and in tension there is a need for something else--for another expression--something other than its present condition.

This receptivity of the feeling of skin embodies the welcoming qualities of the feminine as explored by Levinas. Since the feminine is welcoming, it is also desirous. To be welcoming one must have some desire to be so. Desire actually precedes welcoming. The aim of a welcomer or desirer is that of union of love and is not possession.

If the basis of love is desire, the feminine is always striving towards its desired. It recognizes the incompleteness of its identity and this stimulates action. In Plato’s Symposium, Love desires what it does not have and seeks to find union with an other who embodies the object of its desires. Thus, one may second-handedly enjoy what one has not possessed. There really is no possession but a continuous desire for and enjoyment of what one adores of the beloved.

Union is a balanced combination of the lover and the beloved, whereas possession implies a hierarchal relationship where the lover wants to consume fully and always the beloved without realizing that this is impossible. According to Levinas, there exists an utter difference between the lover and the beloved, this degree of difference, or perfection, can never be overcome. It can never be overcome because it only exists in its desired form in the being that is seen as desirous. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates describes a lover who is in awe of the beloved and who by no means desires to possess him.

Socrates promotion of an ethical reference towards the beloved is expressed when he states “…when he [the lover] beholds a god-like face or a physical form which truly reflects ideal beauty, [the lover] first of all shivers …worships it…[and] would sacrifice to his beloved…”(Phaedrus 57). There is an ethical response by the lover because of the goodness, and beautifulness that radiates from the beloved. The beautiful that the lover sees and/or feels, which causes the lover to be responsive to the beloved, demands that the ethical be practiced.

There is a constant struggle for perfect union between the lover and the beloved. When there is union between the lover and the beloved, there is an ideal of balance—not consumption. Each is struggling to achieve possession of the other, and this struggle is acknowledged between the two; it is their goal. The paradox is that when the lover and the beloved understand that they will never possess one another, there is union.
Love seeks a balance. Love searches for a balance because its very nature is consummated by two extremes--poverty and resourcefulness as narrated in Plato’s Symposium. Love’s nature is alive and dead at the same time. Thus, love is not seeking a calm stagnant balance but a very real dynamic balance between the beautiful and the good. In the Symposium, Socrates asks the question “Then in wanting the beautiful, love wants also the good?” (Symposium 5). Yes, this goodness is love, and it is what the feminine desires. Thus, the feminine is necessary for the ethical, which protects and produces beauty and the good. The beauty and good are manifest in artwork, which incorporates the feminine and therefore hopes to promote the ethical.

Just as the body is receptive to the essence of an individual, so is art. It receives the essence, the activity and the ideas that the painter or printer places upon the canvas. In many of the images that you will see in a moment, I have striven to instill the power, gentleness, and universality of the feminine, as Levinas describes it. I have integrated iconic images of the Virgin Mary as well as abstract fertility figures in many of my prints. I emphasize crosses with circular forms to symbolically represent unity and peace and balance instead of “holy” separation or imbalance and sin, which the cross tends to epitomize. The process of creating art is feminine in itself because it labors to express and give birth to its love or passion.

The beautifulness of love is lovely because a shared struggle between the lover and the beloved is recognized and not hidden. For love, by itself, without publicly acknowledged desire, is ugly. Likewise, art must have some common expressed theme that has been already discovered in our world. Anthony Savile states that “ We cannot give a coherent account of planning for the future unless we have available notions like ‘desirable’[or] ‘valuable’…This can come about only if we find things in the world to be of value and to be worthy of our esteem, and that will happen only if we frame a vision of the world that sees it from a point of view that we share with others and that generates descriptions of it cast in terms of and responsive to, our common interests” (Eaton 131).

Unethical art or love hinders the unification process with the beloved because it places the desirous in a cabinet that can only be open at certain times around certain people. Ugliness is formed by lies, subtly perpetuated when love is only acknowledged secretly or in fear of loving completely. Ugly love remains dormant within one’s mind and a secret kept from the beloved.

Thus, to ensure one is not partaking in ugly art, one must be sure that one is abiding by an aesthetic that requires a process and action. The artist becomes a lover. Art serves as an emotional language for the artist and is quite personal because of this. Aristotle focused on the art rather than the artist (Stolnitz 6). However, Tolstoy emphasized the artist instead of critical interpretation of the art. Beauty follows emotion, Tolstoy posited (Stolnitz 49). Art must be universal in its expression. He insists that art cannot be art if it does not communicate to the viewer some understood universal theme. Beauty remains as some extraordinary byproduct from the creation of art and must not be the basis or purpose of the artist when forming art. The artist’s condition and life experiences are carried through into her work. She transmits her feelings into each piece she creates and thus, because every being is unique, so too is every piece of art that evolves from the artist, who is constantly changing with her experiences and seeking balance through art.

By Tolstoy’s logic on aesthetics, ugly art is that which is produced solely for commercial and social means and not for the artist. If the artist does not have an inherent desire to express herself, then the art is ugly. So it is quite difficult to surmise whether art is art by itself or whether it requires a dialogue of some sorts to arise from the viewers.

Emphasis on dialogue also stresses the need for art to create relatedness within its composition as well as with the viewers. In relatedness, there is ethics or an aiming for the good outside of the art. Sincere art brings people together and bonds them in a certain emotional state or encourages the viewer to conclude that this piece does affect them in a certain way. Ultimate affection from the viewer for the artwork must arise from the love that was put into the piece. Without such love and responsibility, the artwork will simply become mundane and ugly; and essentially, people will not be able to respond to it because the viewer will not have the ability to respond to something that is lacking any true beauty or passion in its creation. There is no “give”—no response-ability—no welcoming.

This critiquing of art forces upon the art certain ethics. Sincere art evokes an ethical and sincere response from its viewers. If the art is not ethical or sincere, if it was made for the public without regard to the artist’s inner struggles, then the art is a lie and simply a hobby to entertain others. Such art is also unethical by the very nature in which it was created and is viewed, for the art consumes the artist’s time and hides her inner struggles which should have been expressed in the art instead of painted over by the wishes of the public. Essentially, this art is not created from the good nor does it do any good. For the artist, the viewer or society, must in some sense be the beloved, so that the lover, the artist can communicate openly her affection for whatever possesses her.

The artist is the lover, and by embracing the feminine, she strives to be ethical. The love of such a relationship is also the recognition of the similarities between the lover and the beloved. In a sense it tames the two opposites that it brings together, male and female, by meshing them together similar to the notion of yin and yang. It does not allow the opposites to separate. There is not a hierarchy of love that is received or given from either sex. Love is a balance between ignorance and knowledge and between all opposites. Diotima in the Symposium posits that love “is a mean between wisdom and ignorance” and an “intermediate between the divine and the mortal”(Symposium 5).

Love desires the good. The lover is guided by love to strive for the good. Again in the Symposium, Socrates states “there is nothing which men love but the good” (Symposium 8 ). Does this mean that one does not have good in themselves? No, this is not so. Instead, the lover recognizes the minute particle of loveliness already encoded in them and wants more of this goodness. The lover constantly seeks to discover more good, which she thinks might be found in her beloved. Love is the priestess of humanity. It teaches us of the divine while we remain in our human condition, just as art does.

The differences between the lover and the beloved are beautiful because if responded to in love, they lead lovers toward the ethical. It is the feminine recognition and acceptance of the similarities and differences between the lover and the beloved that is crucial in the development of beauty and goodness. When beauty is recognized, it must not be pushed away but pursued. True beauty is innocent and is the most present in the sharing of oneself. But before the lover can share, she must strive to know herself so that she may know what to share with the other. In this way, the feminine is acting in a balanced way. This balance will extract and refine the “best” within us and inspires us to be better. From our inspiration while in the balanced state, ethics arises so that we will have a guide while we struggle towards ultimate knowledge and beauty. Again, when we recognize the truth in ourselves and what we can and cannot give, there is balance which gives way to cyclic understanding of ourselves that can only be participated in with our acceptance of our beloved.

When we accept the good we see, we respond. According to Tolstoy, “A real work of art destroys in the consciousness of the recipient the separation between himself and all whose minds receive this art” (Stolnitz 44). Thus, if art evokes this unifying response from the viewer, there is a responsibility by the viewer to take care of the needs of the other. This ethical and aesthetic response is what Levinas describes as the essential duty of the feminine.

Works Cited

Atterton, Peter, and Matthew Calarco. On Levinas. California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 2005.

Eaton, Marcia Muelder. Basic Issues in Aesthetics. Illinois: Waveland Press, 1988.

Plato. Phaedrus and Letters VII and VIII. England: Penguin Books, 1973.

Plato. Symposium. http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/sympo10.txt.

Stolnitz, Jerome. Aesthetics. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1965.

Tong, Rosemarie. Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction. Colorado: Westview Press, 1989.

Tong, Rosemarie. Feminine and Feminist Ethics. California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1993.

Article Source: http://journal.ilovephilosophy.com

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