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Peirce: CP 1.612 Cross-Ref:††
612. So, then, we appeal to the esthete to tell us what it is that is admirable without any reason for being admirable beyond its inherent character. Why, that, he replies, is the beautiful. Yes, we urge, such is the name that you give to it, but what is it? What is this character? If he replies that it consists in a certain quality of feeling, a certain bliss, I for one decline altogether to accept the answer as sufficient. I should say to him, My dear Sir, if you can prove to me that this quality of feeling that you speak of does, as a fact, attach to what you call the beautiful, or that which would be admirable without any reason for being so, I am willing enough to believe you; but I cannot without strenuous proof admit that any particular quality of feeling is admirable without a reason. For it is too revolting to be believed unless one is forced to believe it. END QUOTE
And once we fault the philosopher for being so peremptory, we assent. Since I have a philosophic spin-off that makes Aesthetic the Mao-defeating, nonviolent, peaceful trigger for all human conscious action, I shall readily admit Bliss is one of my Ontological cohabitors with Love. Ontology is where I put words Wittgenstein said we should not speak of. I have inferred in many ways that the uplifting we are now in enables us to venture into the ontological with some caution but not with any fear. The reason I deem bliss to be real and important apart from my meditative experience of it is because I see bliss as a verbal engine of instilling, filling, supplying, creating bliss within a human form or for that matter a life form. I do not surmise the extent to which this operates but I would not object to having the ontological term Universal applied. It is distinct from love in that love is what is being thus transported. The paradox of existence, one of them, is that we are one but individuals in oneness. I see bliss and love as two aspects of a process by which this individuation is as it were serviced. That reason may not satisfy CSP but I have given up on trying to satisfy him. He is after all Peirce still.
612. So, then, we appeal to the esthete to tell us what it is that is admirable without any reason for being admirable beyond its inherent character. Why, that, he replies, is the beautiful. Yes, we urge, such is the name that you give to it, but what is it? What is this character? If he replies that it consists in a certain quality of feeling, a certain bliss, I for one decline altogether to accept the answer as sufficient. I should say to him, My dear Sir, if you can prove to me that this quality of feeling that you speak of does, as a fact, attach to what you call the beautiful, or that which would be admirable without any reason for being so, I am willing enough to believe you; but I cannot without strenuous proof admit that any particular quality of feeling is admirable without a reason. For it is too revolting to be believed unless one is forced to believe it. END QUOTE
And once we fault the philosopher for being so peremptory, we assent. Since I have a philosophic spin-off that makes Aesthetic the Mao-defeating, nonviolent, peaceful trigger for all human conscious action, I shall readily admit Bliss is one of my Ontological cohabitors with Love. Ontology is where I put words Wittgenstein said we should not speak of. I have inferred in many ways that the uplifting we are now in enables us to venture into the ontological with some caution but not with any fear. The reason I deem bliss to be real and important apart from my meditative experience of it is because I see bliss as a verbal engine of instilling, filling, supplying, creating bliss within a human form or for that matter a life form. I do not surmise the extent to which this operates but I would not object to having the ontological term Universal applied. It is distinct from love in that love is what is being thus transported. The paradox of existence, one of them, is that we are one but individuals in oneness. I see bliss and love as two aspects of a process by which this individuation is as it were serviced. That reason may not satisfy CSP but I have given up on trying to satisfy him. He is after all Peirce still.
