Formality

Formality:

So, we had an interesting discussion below about Wagner, and how an artificial thing might be 'more real' than reality. Let's talk a little more about that.

Let's say you have been sitting on rocks all your life. You are used to it, but you have noticed that some rocks serve the purpose of sitting better than others. For example, rocks that are flatter, and of a certain size, are superior for sitting purposes than rocks that are sharp or angled. At some point, you take this knowledge and sort out what the truth is about 'that which is good for sitting.' You use this knowledge to build something you decide to call a chair.

The chair is an artifact, not a thing found in nature. Yet it is superior for your purpose to any rock you will find in nature -- or any log -- or anything else you might sit upon. This is because you have extracted from reality, and purified, the truth about sitting and what kind of things are good to sit upon.

That same rather prosaic model can be applied to moral questions. Let's say I see three people do something that I admire, but in which I can see that they are acting from mixed motives. I can extract the thing I admire from their mixed motives, and hold it up pure in my mind. This is the thing I call "good," and in some way it is a more real good than any of the three things I saw.

An artist can do this too. Twain wrote: "I have never seen anything so great and fine and real as this devotion." What is it to be great? What is it to be fine? Well, what is it to be good? It's the same process of extraction and purification, so that we have the idea without adulteration. It makes perfect sense for art to be able to be greater and finer than reality.

Then, though, we come to "real." Here we have a question. Is it real? Is it "more real"? What would it mean for it to be "more real"? If it is extracted from reality, and purified of the admixture of impurities that we always ever find in reality, how is that making it "more real"? I think Twain is right, but it's important to understand just why and how he is right.