Seek Beauty Nowhere, Find It Everywhere. What does that mean? Who is this Aesthetic Man and, more importantly, what is he smoking? This sincere Aesthetic Man (as opposed to Kierkegaard's insincere version) is constantly aware of the asthetics of life. Sam (Sincere Aesthetic Man) knows that no matter what happens to him, no matter how down on his luck he may be, that, from an objective point of view, his life is aesthetically pleasing, hence beautiful, hence he is happy.
Yes, Sam is sort of hokey. He's got this banal conviction that "life is beauty", that the fabric of human events, woven together, regardless of individual blemishes, forms a beautiful tapestry. It's enough to make you want to smack him.
But Sam's no fool. It's not like he goes through life smiling at disaster, grinning at his own pain. The key is that he believes in life's aesthetic value from an OBJECTIVE point of view. He believes that if a totally impartial observer could view the world as a whole, could take in the entire story of human existense, then that observer would find it absolutely beautiful (and by "absolutely beautiful" I mean "absolute beauty".)
Sam (nor anyone other person) can ever be a truly objective viewer of humanity because, of course Sam (and every other person) is a part of humanity. A misanthropic hermit who lives alone in a cave is still playing his role in the human story. Truly objective observers might be: a) God, b) advanced forms of alien life who are able to watch all of humanity and all of human history at once. But that's not the point. The point is Sam's conviction that, if he WERE an objective observer, he'd see the beauty, even the beauty in the times that Sam doesn't actually feel particularly beautiful. This doesn't mean he enjoys, (let's suppose) getting beaten up and mugged, but it helps him realize that he is part of a dramatic storyline, a comedy of hitting bottom, a grander chain of events, and, therefore, it helps him accept the low moments.
It's similar, in a way, to Nietzsche's Eternal Return (here I go, bastardizing another philosopher), in that Sam accepts every detail of life exactly as it is with happiness. But it's definitely NOT the same. Yes, if Sam were to discover that Nietzche's Eternal Return were true, that he would relive his life exactly the same way eternally more and had lived it exactly the same way eternally before, he would look upon this fact as objectively beautiful, as art. But the departure from Nietzsche is that Sam really doesn't care. He'd pretty much look upon anything as beautiful. In order to accpet Nietzsche's Eternal Return one needs to accept every single moment of existence without a desire to change. If you say, "Yes, I'm happy with everything except for this one tiny moment," then Nietzche would tell you you're not happy with any of it, because to change one thing is to change everything. But Sam sort of steps outside this "happy with everything" or "happy with nothing" trap, because he sort of doesn't care. Change it, don't change it. Chang one thing, change nothing, change everything. He probably would look back at certain events and think that, subjective, it had might have been better had he not scalded himself with burning coffee, but he still accepts the moment. It's all beauty to Sam.
Questions to be answered in future posts:
Question 1: How does Sam live his life? Like anyone else? As a hedonist, seeking only pleasure? Why would he even bother getting out of bed if staying in bed is just as objectively beautiful as doing stuff?
Question 2: How does Sam know that life is objectively beautiful, or, perhaps more importantly, how does he manage to convince himself of the objective aesthetics of life?
