I didn't misunderstand you at all. You have almost completely miunderstood my response if that's what you got from it.

And no, it's not a paradox. You can find a great deal by me on paradoxes on Medium. I know what paradoxes are and I know what contradictions are. You have stated a contradiction. Nothing can have value by not having value.

Bascially, you buy into the Romantic ideas on art. Yes, they are recent, and that matters a great deal. Kant was responding to art that had completely divorced itself from its roots in religion. There was an attempt…

ART

Welcome! I’m so glad I am able to talk to you today about one of the most important things in the world: art. If you don’t think art is important, ask yourself how much time you spend listening to and telling stories, listening to music, playing songs, and enjoying movies. More likely than not, the answer is that you spend most of your day doing these things. If we spend so much time on the arts, then it must be important!

So, each of you is doing something very important: you are contributing to making the world a more…

The sun breaks on the Texas fields
For the first time for me when I
See you every day. A cavern-
Like darkness descends, a dreary
World of shadows, chains…

Could I give up the magic I have earned,
The power over spirits I have fought
To gain? To see the spells I love be spurned
By me and never…

I could not ever say I hate my life
For if I were to say I hate today
I’d thus reject my children and my wife —
And I could never have…

“Virtue aims at the beautiful (to kalon).” — Aristotle

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty” — John Keats

The beautiful is fair, and the fair is just. — Elaine Scarry

We typically think of beauty, truth, virtue, and justice as being very different things. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” according to the common saying, which suggests that beauty is purely subjective. When we think of “truth,” we think of how something corresponds to reality. Virtue and justice both allow us to be maximally social, though virtue tends to be individual (you are brave or not) while justice involves…

His stomach rumbled, but he had to go
To his next stop — it was a little shop
That sold mere flowers, nick-knacks. In the flow
From shop to shop, he wished that he could drop

The wages he could offer — he was sure
He could have had a job by now, the knife
Of hunger would be gone. He would endure
A little less to feed his kids and wife.

He knew he was not worth the pay each place
Could offer him — he had dropped out of school,
He had no skills, and no one would embrace
Him so…

ART

“A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience.”
― Mark Rothko

“Resting the mind can be accomplished by meditation, and also by artwork, which allows the intuition to flow: the conscious mind recedes. Meditation and artwork at their best complement each other, and true things emerge.” — Candace Loheed

Art is a meditative space. The way you’re supposed to experience art is to stop and stare at it, to become completely absorbed in what you are seeing. You cannot experience art if you dash by it in a museum, eager to see the next piece…