COFTY : Didn't the Platonic Academics despise art?
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The mutations of Plato's ideas produced something called:
Can we really talk about BEAUTY?
by Terry 17 Replies latest jw friends
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Terry
Plato’s Aesthetics
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cofty
There was also an anti-Enlightenment movement that can be traced from Emmanuel Kant via all the way to postmodern philosophers like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.
We see it regularly on this forum when posters smugly proclaim that nobody really knows anything about reality.
This theme of deep scepticism might be excusable in the pre-Socratics but it is just lazy posturing in the post-enlightenment world.
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Terry
COFTY: There was also an anti-Enlightenment movement that can be traced from Emmanuel Kant via all the way to postmodern philosophers like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.
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In my opinion, Communism failed its predictions about the rising up of workers and overthrowing Capitalists (in the West) ... and so...
there emerged the Frankfurt School which converted Communism and repackaged it
into Social Justice criticisms substituting as they went POWER Hierarchy instead of Capitalism. Instead of workers throwing off chains, we have women standing up to male dominance; blacks standing up to White Privilege, and Philosophers / Writers
deconstructing "meaning" in Art, Literature, etc.
The means of transmission of this Frankfurt School ideology is Universities and faculty.
Primacy of Consciousness runs rampant through Social Justice movements and the deconstruction by post modernists. That's Plato in a nutshell. -
Finkelstein
I think this article helps to explain what Terry is getting at .......
Plato writes that the Form (or Idea) of the Good is the ultimate object of knowledge, although it is not knowledge itself, and from the Good, things that are just, gain their usefulness and value. Humans are compelled to pursue the good, but no one can hope to do this successfully without philosophical reasoning. According to Plato, true knowledge is conversant, not about those material objects and imperfect intelligences which we meet within our daily interactions with all mankind, but rather it investigates the nature of those purer and more perfect patterns which are the models after which all created beings are formed. Plato supposes these perfect types to exist from all eternity and calls them the Forms or Ideas.[2] As these Forms cannot be perceived by human senses, whatever knowledge we attain of the Forms must be seen through the mind's eye (cf. Parmenides 132a), while ideas derived from the concrete world of flux are ultimately unsatisfactory and uncertain (see the Theaetetus). He maintains that degree of skepticism which denies all permanent authority to the evidence of sense. In essence, Plato suggests that justice, truth, equality, beauty, and many others ultimately derive from the Form of the Good. -
cofty
Interesting Terry.
I have only quite recently decided to educate myself about philosophy. I am finding it fascinating. So far I am wrestling with two books by Anthony Gottlieb The Dream of Reason and The Dream of Enlightenment.
It's amazing to see the same arguments being played out again and again over centuries.
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Terry
Cofty, the book that spun me around sideways was Mortimer J. Adler's
10 PHILOSOPHICAL MISTAKES.
In fact, it was the very first book of Philosophy I ever read.
I was just killing time at the public library until it was time to pick up my
son at school.
The name Mortimer J. Adler struck me because I adored my set of
GREAT BOOKS of the WESTERN WORLD he had assembled.
So, I began reading and it grabbed me. I read the whole book in one sitting
and - after collecting my son - went straight to the bookstore and bought a copy
for myself.
Adler is a Humanist who has a deep-seated "spiritual" side.
But he is intellectually honest.
That is damned rare.
http://www.churchhistory101.com/docs/Adler-Ten-Mistakes.pdf -
LoveUniHateExams
I think, re human facial beauty, much of what we find attractive comes down to symmetry.
Take this famous guy ...
I'm not attracted to Muhammad Ali but he was pretty photogenic in his prime. I'm fairly sure lots of women found him attractive ... probably some gay guys, too, I guess. His face was symmetrical, his teeth were straight, white and well-formed. His skin was clear and without blemishes. He was tall-ish and well-proportioned - not too fat, not too thin, not too stocky and not too gangly. His shoulders were broad and his waist was fairly small.
Now take this guy ...
Joseph Merrick was unfortunately extremely deformed. I'm not sure what he suffered from - it could have been neurofibromatosis or proteus syndrome, or both. He may have been a beautiful person on the inside but he had literally zero physical beauty. Notice, too, his asymmetrical head, face, arms, body. What woman in her right mind would consider this guy attractive? She would have to be off her raving titties to want this guy's babies.
I feel kinda bad talking about him like this but I'm not ripping on him, just stating what I think is the obvious.
Although physical beauty is subjective to some degree, genetics does come into it. Women wouldn't want to have Joseph Merrick's babies because his appearance is due to his genetics (genotype gives phenotype). There must have been something about Merrick's DNA for him to have grown up and looked like he did. Babies inherit some of the father's DNA. And women wouldn't want a chance of their babies to look like him.
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I read somewhere that there is a link or correlation between high fertility levels and young women who have an hour-glass shape. <---- is this correct?
If so, this kinda makes sense because the hour-glass shape is very attractive for adult males.
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Terry
Ah, sweet mystery of life
