Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Complexity and Beauty, Law and Aesthetics
Sometimes people say that a simple theory is an elegant theory. Or one might hear that a theory is beautiful in its simplicity. That might mean that a simple theory is an effective theory, and that in turn could have two other meanings: (1) the theory's simplicity will allow more people to understand it in the first place; and/or (2) the theory's simplicity will mean that people who understand it and find it appealing are most likely to apply it correctly (or as intended). Both of these meanings really have to do with the theory's influence, or its expediency, or the capacity of the theory to reach desirable results: if you want your theory to be influential, to be useable, to be applied as you intend and to reach the consequences for which you intend it, it's wise to make your theory as simple as possible.
But I take the prejudice in favor of simplicity sometimes to mean something more than an argument from effectiveness. The equation of simplicity with elegance seems to be an aesthetic claim as well -- that simple theories are beautiful, elegant, artful, and that theories become uglier or progressively inelegant as they become more complex and ornamented. In legal theory, in the fields with which I am familiar, simplicity is often seen as an intrinsic virtue, and its virtue seems somehow fundamentally connected to an aesthetic sensibility. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, please, not Bernini.
I may be quite wrong about the impressions above, but having these thoughts suggests another set of questions that I'm hopeful the learned readership here will know something about. First, has there been any scholarship on the relationship between legal theory and aesthetics -- how and why it is that we find one kind or genre of legal theoretical account more appealing, from an aesthetic point of view, than another? Second, and more generally, what does the scholarly landscape of law and aesthetics look like? Has anyone thought about, for example, Roger Scruton's work in aesthetics in the context of legal scholarship? Are there any connections between aesthetics and IP law (I could have selected other fields, but this one seems like it might offer something particularly interesting)? I suppose the law and literature movement may have explored the aesthetics of opinion-writing, and perhaps there are other connections that have been probed there as well. And finally, is there any serious study of the connections between CST or Christian legal thought and aesthetics?
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2011/02/complexity-and-beauty-law-and-aesthetics.html
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Concerning possible connections between Catholic Social Teaching and aesthetics, the Concluding Document of the 2006 Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for Culture, entitled "The Via Pulchritudinis, Privileged Pathway for Evangelisation and Dialogue" states:
"The Ecclesia de caritate, witness of the beauty of Christ, reveals herself as his spouse made more beautiful by her Lord when she makes acts of charity and preferential choices, when she engages in the promotion of justice and building up the great common house where every creature is called to live, especially the poor: they too have a right to beauty. At the same time this witness of beauty by charity and by engagement in the service of justice and peace announces the hope that never fails. To offer the men and women of today the true beauty, to make the Church attentive to always announce, in good times and in bad, the beauty that saves and that is felt in those places where eternity has planted its tent over time is to offer reasons to live and hope to those who are without or risk losing it. The Church, witness to the final meaning of life, seed of confidence at the heart of human history, appears already as the people of the beauty that saves, for it anticipates in these last times something of the beauty promised by this God who will bring all things to completion in Him at the end of time. Hope, militant anticipation of the coming into the saved world promised in the crucified and resurrected Son, is a proclamation of beauty. Of this the world has a particular need."
Almost sounds like an endorsement of Bread and Roses.