Final

Well we approach our final hit on this subject. The subject of causality is massive no doubt. And my choice of which details to include has taken a time. Before I begin there is one point I want to point out more clearly: Volition is a type of causality. Purpose in (living) nature is a product of final causation—and consciousness merely beckons volition so as to remain within the teleological (causal) bounds of a living, conscious organism.

Art deals only with evaluative (non-cognitive) abstractions. Evaluative concepts are the “ought” and not the “is”: For Example: “We should leave Iraq”—Evaluative; “My car is red”—Cognitive; “The derivative of cosine is negative sine”—(fill in the blank.) Like teleology, evaluative concepts exist only in relation to living beings, and only those with volitional consciousness comprehend them in explicit & implicit form.

So to begin, we will approach the causal aspect of the artistry of the novel—how does causality and like concepts apply to the artistic formation of evaluative concepts in a literary work? What role does it play as a device, a tool, and a standard for literature?

As volition is the key to morality—and in turn to the evaluative content of art—it is the meter of aesthetics. Romanticism versus Naturalism is the division I am speaking of—the former has volition (final causation) and the latter is devoid of volition (final causation).

Romanticism shows volition (final causation) and all that is requires and implies. The author's function is to compose a world and people within it for his own purpose. The character's personality, choices, and values are things open to selectivity by the author—not one aspect can be overlooked, it must be purposeful, not a causeless (purposeless), random clash of events and things. The author is like an engineer, creating a structure with precision, economy, perfection. The plot must display a causal chain (not a determined chain) of actions by the characters; not one minute of the readers' time must be wasted on deterministic drivel or purposeless motion. Every person has a separate style—if we were to read three separate works of philosophy or literature, it would take only a short time to realize which of the works were done by separate authors. Music is a great example of style, us pop culture freaks know that the Ramones sound very different from Elliott Smith which sounds very different from Denali which sounds very different from Belle and Sebastian (which is closer to Elliott Smith), etc. The details Dante includes in the Inferno would probably be very different from the details George Eliot would have included—but this is pure conjecture, as the subject of the Inferno is one that could only belong to Dante in the first place.

The whole work is a work of purpose—each part must serve that purpose, and they must all be compatible with one another—they must be an integrated whole, with no part lacking.

If Emile Zola wrote a film—it would be Requiem for a Dream; I could never see it as original for that reason; and I didn't consider it a meritorious work of film at all, I shall explain.... Emile Zola—a deterministic writer, the father of naturalism. Things that happen without cause, a string linked together only by the binding of the book it comes in. Characters without purpose—tragic figures in lives of poverty and without the drive or means to survive or find happiness. They are trapped in a senseless world of fear and loathing, out to destroy them, with no causal conception it is impossible to manipulate or escape. Whiny pathetic-isms--purposeless pathetic figures...actually, I'll pass on that for something greater, something of aesthetic causal beauty: Romanticism.