Against Skepticism and Deterioration: Art and the Construction of Peace

Conflict, a primal idea in art, is no exception to other ideas in being expressed in art to induce pleasure. No matter now monstrous reality is, its depiction in art brings pleasure to the senses, an intention that is virtuous independently of meaning or the subject matter depicted in art. The aim to imbue the spirit with joy, sending it above the misery of reality has traditionally spared art the moral judgment to which most other things are subject. Expression in art is interpreting reality, rearranging its constitution through perception, freeing it of consequence, and eliciting select emotions. In his Poetics, Aristotle presents the notion of speculative reality in disputing Plato’s Art as “three removes from truth,” having thus lost its documentative significance to interpretive perception but gained inclusivity. He argues that art holds greater domain than would an historical account. Historic recording chronicles events believed to have factually taken place in time thus presenting one part of a greater whole where disagreement, probabilities, and possibilities are. They exist outside empirical evidence, agreement, or dogma, flexibly open to interpretation and dispute. In this paper, conflict–in its various incarnations including war, is examined through the views of Joseph De Maistre, as a catalyst for actions, passions and universal movement.