Dear bloggers,

In posting Matt’s comment about light, it occurred to me how often Matt’s thoughts range the gamut of philosophic discourse.  Between the lines of Matt’s sometimes serious, sometimes humorous posts, there are implicit musings on each of the elements we traditionally see as underpinning Western philosophy:  metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics.

In the post about light, we see Matt ruminating on the artist as a creator of light.  There is a cosmologic bent to this line of thinking, and therefore a metaphysical underpinning:  the nature of light, of the universe, and of the human being's place within it.

He then clarifies this statement by thinking about the perceptual level of human consciousness:  how we perceive light, and how, as he succinctly puts it, “light gives us the ability to comprehend.”  This is an epistemological thesis, by which I mean:  It is concerned with the theory of knowledge and how percepts turn into concepts within the human brain.

Matt continues this train of thought in his next statement, when he says that without a work of art to contemplate, there would be no light to shine or not shine on any particular topic that this artwork might elucidate.  This reminds me of self-esteem psychologist Nathaniel Branden’s idea of shining the light of consciousness selectively on the entities or ideas we wish to know:  the selectivity of focus of consciousness.

Matt goes on to suggest that a passionate debate about the worth of lack of work of an artwork—the active conversation between people about ideas, based on a physical object such as an artwork—is part and parcel to the proper, productive, and humane interaction between people.  In other words, Matt is positing, as he often does, that the healthy, peaceful exchange of ideas between people—even, or especially, if those people disagree, is an ethical imperative.

And as Matt also often points out, if that peaceful conversation is trumped by force, violence, or coercion, there are disastrous political consequences.

So what Matt has done, in the course of a casual reply to a reader’s question, is to progress through metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics, all by the way of aesthetics.  He has glided through all five of the main branches of Western philosophy with an easy-going nonchalance, such that you probably did not realize—indeed, he himself may not have realized—that he has just given us a brief tutorial on the power of art to impact every sphere of human intellectual concern.  I deal with Matt on a weekly basis, and I have known him for six years now; I interviewed him in depth for a biography.  So it is easy for me to take for granted how Matt, almost by stealth, communicates so much between the lines of what he says and how he thinks.

One technique that Matt, by his nature, employs to make his ideas palatable to the general public is humor.  Humor is the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down.  Humor is what gets the congregation into the revival tent.  Humor is the way in which Matt, an Irishman by heritage, buffers the sometimes disturbing profundities he is apt to discuss in any and every conversation.  He uses humor to pull the rug out from under himself, and from under us. I like this blend of import and levity.  It is easy to take for granted, especially since Matt is self-effacing about his abilities as a student in school.  He has been a lifelong auto-didact, meaning, a self-educator who has sought out people and experiences that have enriched him, and now he is passing along the distillation of a lifetime of learning to those around him:  through his speeches, his peace projects, through this blog, and above all, through his paintings.

Richard Speer
Blog editor