The Beautiful Pragmatic

I have for some time tried to understand why I thought Maya Lin--a small woman working in a great workshop, thinking of huge structures--seemed so beautiful in a shot of this movie (similar to the picture below) in which she pulls her hair back behind her ears while analyzing the consistency of a sheet of metal.



I think I figured out how to articulate it as I was strapping my laptop into my backpack the other night: There is beauty in accepting the humdrum, the practical, while being able to maintain concentration on a theoretical that is applied to the practical. Not only does her practical world become better due to her considerate approach to forming it, but this effort further supports her opportunity to work in the theoretical world. How I see it, the relationship between the theoretical and the practical is a most beautifully crafted structure when balanced THIS WAY.

Kant talks about this balance of the aesthetically pleasing and the practical in the 3rd book of his Critique of Pure Judgement. He spends a lot of time discussing the "pure" aesthetic experience, unrelated to any pragmatic value of this experience. Yet he recognizes the infrequency of this sort of experience.

I don't mind this infrequency. An aesthetic experience that is sullied by pragmatic benefits--the Vietnam War Memorial's pure aesthetic value, complicated by the government's desire for it to draw tourists and avoid political complications--is more beautiful because it effects one's life on these multiple levels a "pure" aesthetic experiences necessarily doesn't. Appreciating the living experience of the monument and people interacting with it develops one's awareness of the practical and transcendent, the objective and the subjective, the consensual and the personal.

In fact, I think the sight of someone watching this event is nearly the most beautiful thing.