Aesthetics Essay -- Art

Aesthetics Kant defined aesthetic as both, â€Å"the analysis of taste and the analysis of sensible cognition or intuition† . Aesthesis, means â€Å"sensation†, the Greeks made a distinction between aesthesis autophues (natural sensation) and aesthesis epistemonike (acquired sensation). We may say that aesthetics is both the study of aesthetic objects and of the specific and subjective reactions of observers, readers, or audiences to the work of art. Aesthetics is necessarily interdisciplinary and may be interpretive, prescriptive, descriptive, or a combination of these. The big, obvious question about aesthetic value is whether it is ever ‘really in’ the objects it is attributed to. This issue parallels the realism/anti-realism debates elsewhere in philosophy. Though there is little reason to assume that aesthetic value will behave in just the say way as for example, moral value. An extreme realist would say that aesthetic values reside in an object as properties independent of any observer’s responses, and that if we make the judgment ‘That is a beautiful flower’, or ‘this painting is aesthetically good’, what we say is true or false – true if the flower or painting has the property, false if it does not. We will tend to like the object if we recognize the aesthetic value in it, but, for the realist, whether we recognize it and whether it is are two separate questions. Consequently, much work in aesthetics has gone into trying to specify the nature of aesthetic experience or aesthetic response. One factor is pleasure, satisfaction, or liking. The second is experience: the response we are looking for must be a way of attending to the object itself. In the case of music, it must be a response to perceived patterns of s... ...bility, however, so that a new question emerges: The music all by itself somehow seems to point to, or stand for emotions – how? Aesthetics has yet to come to terms with this issue. There is a similar pattern in the case of artistic representation. In the question of what a picture depicts, what role is played by the artist’s intentions, and what by the interpretations which an observer may conjure up? Or does the painting itself have a meaning by standing in symbolic relations to items in the world? If the latter, how similar, and how dissimilar are depiction and linguistic representation?. Once one starts to address problems at this level, the philosophy of art starts to concern the nature of philosophy as a whole. Work Cited Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgement. Trans. J. H. Bernard. Hafner Library of Classics. New York: Hafner Press-Macmillan, 1951.

A Book Review: Back to the Front by Stephen O’Shea

With Back to the Front Stephen O'Shea has written a very interesting, non-fiction book that crosses a variety of genres. It is a travel book, a personal journey, and an anecdotal history of World War I. Instead suffering from a staggering number of facts, Back to the Front provides historical information on a more personal, more immediate level. It is the story of the Western Front; it is also the story of discovering that story. Back to the Front tells the story of what O'Shea experienced while walking the route of the World War I trench lines from Nieuport, Belgium to the Swiss border 450 miles to the south and east.Throughout the summer of 1986 O'Shea walked through the length of the infamous no man's land that separated the German Army and the Allied Armies from 1914 through 1918. During his journey O'Shea recorded his thoughts, and collected bits of information and scraps of memories not only of his journey, but of the First World War and its impact and relationship to its futur e, our present day. He augments these with detailed research not only of the battles of World War I, but with information of other wars that allows the reader to make comparisons with events he or she may be familiar with.O'Shea wrote Back to the Front in a simple, easy to read style. He seems to anticipate the reader's experience and provide resolution to difficulties the reader may have. When he enters Ypres, that difficult to spell and harder to pronounce city in Belgium, O'Shea provides the pronunciation for the reader: ee-pruh; and provides an interesting anecdote where he claims the English occupying forces struggled with the same difficult and decided to call it â€Å"Wipers† (O'Shea, 31).Back to the Front relates not only the details of his physical journey highlighted with interesting and amusing anecdotes, it provides graphic details of the enormity of the war. Some of these facts are staggering. To the Boomers whose primary war experience is Vietnam with its approx imate fifty thousand United States troops killed and to later generations that have seen 3,000+ American deaths in Iraq, it is difficult to internalize how the French could have had 210,000 soldiers killed in the month of August 1914. Such tragic losses were not unusual in the Great War.Time and again the military leadership of France and England ordered soldiers forward in open attacks on the well entrenched German soldiers. Hundreds of thousands of men were killed as they bravely, but foolishly followed their orders. O'Shea tells of a German officer who described the British soldiers as â€Å"lions led by donkeys† (O'Shea, 30). Stephen O'Shea is a Canadian writer and journalist who has lived in Paris since the early 1980s. Born in 1956 O'Shea spent his childhood at â€Å"the whim of [his] father's employers . . . bopping from city to town to city every two or thee years† (O'Shea, 3).Consequently he is like many members of the generation that lacks roots because of th e mobility the automobile provided to North American families in the Twentieth Century. Previous to his walk across Europe, O'Shea had visited the site Battle of the Somme and had become aware just how little impact the â€Å"war to end all wars appeared to have on his generation, the Baby Boomers. O'Shea tries to overcome the attitude common to members of all generations that his generation is somehow special and that the experiences previous generations were of limited value and should be ignored and dismissed â€Å". . .as a sort of tedious overture humanity had to endure before the real divas stepped on stage† (O'Shea, 2). He tries to overcome the attitude that â€Å"[i]f a thing is history, it is a loser. Been there, done that, let's move on† (O'Shea, 1). What results is not a just history although one certainly learns history, nor is it just a travel book that describes far away places for the armchair traveler to enjoy. Back to the Front is the story of not onl y O'Shea's walk through the trenches, but it is the story of the Baby Boomer generation searching for its place in the world, but searching for its place in history.Undoubtedly, O'Shea's book is not unique, perhaps not even special, it is a book, about a generation's search for its place in history. However it is a good book and a thoughtful book that should be read not only by Baby Boomers, but later generations as well when these generations approach middle age and are trying to locate their place in the past, present, and future. Works Cited O'Shea, Stephen. Back to the Front: An Accidental Historian Walks the Trenches of World War I. New York: Walker and Company,1996.

Conscience - 1294 Words

Thomas Aquinas gave a simple definition of conscience when he called it ‘the faculty of reason making moral judgements’. From this, conscience is simply a rational faculty that enables us to understand right from wrong. The faculty works on the basis of knowledge, first a knowledge of moral principles enshrined in natural law, and ideally a knowledge of diving law as revealed in the Bible. However, Aquinas recognised that conscience is by no means an infallible voice. We can have a mistaken, erroneous or uninformed conscience, and it is a moral obligation in itself to have an informed conscience. Aquinas, like Joseph Butler, believed that we have a capacity to grasp at a basic level the moral principles that should govern the right†¦show more content†¦If Freud is right, conscience is only a temporary restraint that remains tied to our dependence on the superego. Reality, however, shows that conscience is not so easily got rid of and the force of its voice is su ch that it has to be reckoned with at the moral, not just the emotional level. The breakdown of the relationships that form the superego does not mean the disappearance of moral values. We continue to hear the voice of conscience long after we have outgrown the parental or social values that we originally inherited. Aquinas and Butler would, of course, accept that conscience has an important social dimension, but would see this as following from the fact that human nature is also social. For Aquinas, the social aspect of conscience is one of essential aspects, since the common good is an important ethical consideration. To this extent, both would agree with Freud. However, they would insist that the values sensed by conscience are more profoundly based than by merely socially imposed conventions. For them, conscience is the faculty that alerts us, through nature and reason, to the moral values that shape our moral identity as human beings. If this is the case, Freud’s theory dissolves into superficiality. For J.H. Newman, conscience was more than a socially conditioned response system. Conscience was the voice of reason and nature but it was also the voice of God. Newman held that the insistent force of conscience suggests that there is someoneShow MoreRelated‘Conscience Is the Voice of God’ Discuss.1152 Words   |  5 Pages‘Conscience is the voice of god’ Discuss. Most people would agree that conscience is the reasoned voice inside us that guides and tells us what we should and shouldn’t do. However peoples views on the origins of conscience can differ a lot; whether people belief its Gods doing or whether it’s innate or even whether it is acquired. In this essay I will be showing the viewpoints of various philosophers with their beliefs on whether conscience is or isn’t the voice of God. Ultimately I believeRead MoreObedience to Authority vs. Personal Conscience Essay862 Words   |  4 PagesStanley Milgram, conducted a study focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. According to the study Migram suggested â€Å"that obedience we naturally show authority figures can transform us into agents of terror† (Migram, 1974/1994, p. 214). Milgram experiment was developed for the justification of the act of genocide in World War II. Many of the accomplices in the Holocaust said they were following in order given by Adolf Eichmann. Obedience to superiors is builtRead MoreThe Conscience And Moral Conscience1418 Words   |  6 Pageslove of our neighbors, and it is the job of every conscience to help guide us to making the right choice. Every day, we are faced with choices that are immoral and moral. Our conscience helps us solve the problems, especially when it comes to dealing with good or bad. Our conscience is connected to God because everyone in the world knows, deep down, that they are to be and do good, and this obligation could come only from God. I think that our conscience is a very real thing, and it plays a large roleRead MoreRichard Iii/Looking for Richard Essay1179 Words   |  5 Pagesinherent. A scrutiny of the contradictory forces of humanism and determinism and the function of women as demonstrated by both texts imparts an incongruity of context. Difference is thus conveyed. Conversely, an acknowledgement of the strength of conscience common to both texts suggests an inherent influence. Thus it is through inspection of the prescribed texts that one may distinguish the degree to which the texts converge on inherent matters and diverge on contextual matters. The contradictoryRead MoreNatural Greatness : A Mind Shift1549 Words   |  7 Pageswhile trying to maintain the illusion of her self-righteousness. What separates the person of goodness from the person of greatness? In a word, we could say conscience. But that word is perhaps too common or simplistic. Further, most of us assume that we know what conscience is. What is conscience? Consider that the word, conscience, was invented to name a universal human dynamic. In other words, it was obvious that human beings everywhere have some sense of right and wrong, which influencesRead More The Bean Trees Essay1131 Words   |  5 Pagesare likely to be deported, and could face death in Guatemala. But she is breaking the law by taking illegal immigrants out of Arizona. Yet her conscience and her heart are involved. She cares for these people, and must take them to where they will be safe. Love and concern for others as well as her own self-respect allow her to act with a good conscience. She knows the nature of the risks she is taking, but goes ahead anyway. amp;#9;For everything Taylor now does involves breaking the law, inRead MoreSymbolism that Represents the Theme of Corruption in Shakespeares MacBeth1043 Words   |  5 Pagesmore, returning were as tedious as go oer†¦ (pg. 57) this symbolizes that the guilt Macbeth feels and compares it to swimming in blood, but he has already reached the point of no return. As Lady Macbeth is sleepwalking and attempting to clear her conscience, she says, Heres the smell of blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand†¦ (pg. 84) This symbolizes that nothing can remove the guilt and pain of the murders that she and Macbeth have committed. This thus establishesRead MoreEssay on Guilt In The Scarlet Letter And The Crucible987 Words   |  4 Pagesdifferent personal problem and with each character’s guilt comes a different reaction. Miller and Hawthorne use the source of guilt, the actions resulting from it and the eventual consequences to portray the concept of a guilty conscience to the reader.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Each character’s guilt originates from a different source. Through different characters, Hawthorne and Miller display guilt andRead More Symbolism In Macbeth1097 Words   |  5 Pagestedious as go oerÂ… (III. iv. 167-169) this symbolises that symbolises the guilt Macbeth feels and compares it to swimming in blood, but he has already reached the point of no return. As Lady Macbeth is sleepwalking and attempting to clear her conscience, she says, Heres the smell of blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little handÂ… (V. i. 46-48) This symbolises that nothing can remove the guilt and pain of the murders that she and Macbeth have committed. This thus establishesRead MoreSummary Of What Is Meant By Telling The Truth? 1220 Words   |  5 Pagesbecomes guilty.† Bonhoeffer does admit a challenge to his notion, namely that of the â€Å"conscience.† He refutes this self-raised objection on theological grounds for the conscience is â€Å"the attempt of the ego who knows good and evil to justify itself to God, to others and to itself.† The need of the conscience is for it to be freed by Christ for the service of God and neighbour. The autonomous nature of the conscience needs to be redeemed into fellowship with Christ. This being said, Schliesser questions