Love your point here, Katy--perhaps one could sum up your conclusion by saying that if aesthetic justice is a human virtue, it's necessarily developed socially, in communion with others of our kind. I don't know of any others who use the phrase "aesthetic justice" in this way, but I'm sure you know about the quotation from Joseph Conrad which Flannery O'Connor mentions (cf Habit of Being 28). O'Connor mentions approvingly Conrad's "Joseph Conrad’s “aim as an artist [which] was to render the highest possible justice to the visible universe.”"
Alex, that's well said; to this the contemplative realist would add the desire to render the highest possible justice to the unseen -- no small task, especially since art is wholly reliant on sensory detail. So analogy between the seen and the unseen is likely to be somehow involved, if only to avoid the kind of abstraction which is fine for us to indulge in this context, but would so often be misplaced within a fiction. (Conrad again: "Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off. And thus, doubtful of strength to travel so far, we talk a little about the aim — the aim of art, which, like life itself, is inspiring, difficult — obscured by mists.")
And yes, that O'Connor passage is for sure lurking in the background here too. There's irony in that, as we would now acknowledge ways in which both Conrad and O'Connor were unaware of limitations in their own vision that sometimes hampered them -- yet even so, I do think the general statement you quote holds true. We still have so much to learn from artists who imperfectly realized their own ideals and yet were faithful to their craft as far as it could carry them.
Love your point here, Katy--perhaps one could sum up your conclusion by saying that if aesthetic justice is a human virtue, it's necessarily developed socially, in communion with others of our kind. I don't know of any others who use the phrase "aesthetic justice" in this way, but I'm sure you know about the quotation from Joseph Conrad which Flannery O'Connor mentions (cf Habit of Being 28). O'Connor mentions approvingly Conrad's "Joseph Conrad’s “aim as an artist [which] was to render the highest possible justice to the visible universe.”"
Alex, that's well said; to this the contemplative realist would add the desire to render the highest possible justice to the unseen -- no small task, especially since art is wholly reliant on sensory detail. So analogy between the seen and the unseen is likely to be somehow involved, if only to avoid the kind of abstraction which is fine for us to indulge in this context, but would so often be misplaced within a fiction. (Conrad again: "Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off. And thus, doubtful of strength to travel so far, we talk a little about the aim — the aim of art, which, like life itself, is inspiring, difficult — obscured by mists.")
And yes, that O'Connor passage is for sure lurking in the background here too. There's irony in that, as we would now acknowledge ways in which both Conrad and O'Connor were unaware of limitations in their own vision that sometimes hampered them -- yet even so, I do think the general statement you quote holds true. We still have so much to learn from artists who imperfectly realized their own ideals and yet were faithful to their craft as far as it could carry them.