“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Friday, March 18, 2011

Aesthetics and Ethics: Disgust and Disgust


Psychological Science has correlated moral disgust with physical disgust. If you eat something disgusting you can feel moral disgust, with the reaction rising in those with more conservative views.

Since ecological politics has to do with coexisting with other lifeforms even if they are threatening or disgusting;

And since Kantian taste is about knowing how to appear disgusted at the right moment (Derrida's brilliant essay “Economimesis” explores that);

And since the whole Kantian edifice (hence correlationism) operates through the aesthetic;

It seems mightily important to me that we investigate this.

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