Here is the link! Enjoy!
Blog Post #10 Reflections on the semester
I wanted to spend my last blog post talking of my experiences as a philosophy blogger and formal writer this semester. I found myself reading through interesting books and articles on art and emotion; I found myself struggling to answer to the question; “why does philosophy matter in society?” I found time and time again at ends with the goals of a paper because my original assumption, that philosophy was visible and present all through society, was so hard to prove true or not. I surely felt that in some subtle way there are effects of philosophers in society, but not in a way I think people are even aware of. Whether the independence of Americans is due to the impact of prevailing generations or the essays of an English philosopher was so difficult for me to discern through the semester. Regardless, I had a good time reading through some of the works by the likes of Nietzche, Marx, Hobbes, Locke, and Krishnamurti.
I thought the projects were difficult but somewhat rewarding. I felt as if I was making my own rules for all the assignment and that was a new experience. But I think I was able to produce material that was fairly in line with my original goal of revealing philosophy’s place in society and the impact it has on culture and human behaviour. I wish I could have improved on my ability to write in the Arts and Humanities but I still learned some through my own self studies. I look forward to completing my multimodal project and am already planning out future details for it.
Online Project: Philosophy, Art, and the Manipulation of Emotion
Great art surrounds us; the emotion we feel when we gaze upon our favorite works is hard to explain and harder to ignore. But what strategies do master artists use to make art that has the ability to play with our emotions? How is it that a cold piece of canvas can make us feel pity for an imaginary character and love for another? Are there perhaps conscious strategies employed behind great works of arts and where have these strategies existed? Is there a philosophy to creating Art? In this long form blog post I will be looking at others’ attempts to integrate a philosophy into different Mediums of Art and to allow you, the reader, to be able to look at some of your favorite art forms in a new light.
Art has had the capacity to affect human emotion since the days of cave paintings and dancing; through artistic and abstract mediums we have been able to feel for fictional characters and feel like we are experiencing a fictional world. Many have tried to break down the reasons we have the propensity to feel genuine emotion towards artwork. How for example is it possible to feel true pity for a character in a dramatic play if the drama effecting the character is not real and is for show? The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy expands on this idea and tries to define the “general features of emotion” in a way that will help us understand emotion’s role in artwork.
The first feature of emotion was deemed the Cognitive Thesis; here the author proposes states where we hold distinct objects in our mind, and our emotion arises from our ability to react the property’s of this object. For example, fear was said to be a reaction to an object’s dangerous nature or quality; such evaluations are prone to “norms of correctness” in the sense that one would not truly be scared by an object that was not frightening.
The second feature of emotion was the Belief Requirement, where you have to ask yourself if you believe what is happening unfold before you. “One cannot, it seems, grieve over someone’s death if one doesn’t believe that they actually died. Or one cannot hope that it will be sunny tomorrow if one believes that the world is going to end tonight.” In this sense one cannot feel fear for a fictional character or situation if he or she does not truly feel in danger.
The third feature outlined was the Phenomenological Thesis; the assertion that emotions are typically felt by their beholders in different levels. One for example will have varying levels of sadness depending on what event is unfolding; naturally the death of a close friend will affect you more than losing your car keys.
The last feature of emotion noted was the Valence thesis, in which the author noticed that emotions have a clear positive and negative associations. Fear and sadness naturally would be deemed negative emotions while happiness and admiration would be positive.
It is the experience of these components of emotion that can help us identify the way that artwork most successfully manipulates the emotions of its viewers. One can almost imagine an artist as performing a balancing act, where his art must not be too obvious, too subtle, or too unbelievable. Art that seems to want to depict a frightening scene but has light-hearted characters throws off the delicate balance that is so key for the proper experience of emotion. One must first digest the artwork, then one asks if he believes the situation, then one considers the situation and retains any emotions associated with the hypothetical situation. From here one evaluates these emotions and naturally experiences their positive and negative nature as well as the strength of the emotion.
Artists through the ages have come to similar crossroads in their understanding of emotion and the way that they could create art that most perfectly conveys the desired emotion. Many artists have pondered on the way that nature comes to affect the human senses and have gone on to replicate these phenomena in the artwork. Leonardo Da Vinci, for example, studied the way in which light shine on his subjects in nature in order to make his paintings more realistic to his viewers. Thus we can see how Leonardo recognized the importance of Believability in his paintings. Below we can see the realism employed in Leonardo’s paintings; below we have
Other artists have seeked to incorporate more complete and comprehensive forms of artwork, intentionally constructed in order to manipulate and extract emotions most heavily from the audience. Such a feat would involve inviting the audience to embark on a fictitious journey of great intrigue and mystery. One would have suspend believe and feel as if they are actually part of the artistic story that is unfolding.
The management of the audience’s emotions is a skill perhaps well mastered by playwright and composer Richard Wagner, whose four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) epitomizes his idea of a complete work of art, in which a work of art attempts to make use of as many different art forms and styles as possible. Wagner looked to evoke as much emotion as possible by consolidating all popular forms of art into one medium via the theatre.
Below you can be given a snapshot of this famous opera and though you may not feel as intense emotions as Wagner would have liked, see if you can see Wagner’s appeal to reality and tragedy, as well as his ability to mix different art forms such as acting and musical performance.
Through different art forms artists manipulate us into feeling for fictional characters and places; it is the talented artist who is best able to manage the expectations, realities, and emotions of their audience. This is an intentional effort by the author driven by his knowledge of the human condition and the expectations the audience has for the arousal of emotions. It is the aspect and balance of realism vs surrealism, outlandishness vs conservatism, and tense vs calm that keeps the audience engaged and on their toes. And it is through these lenses that we appreciate art and it is through our ability to hypothesize situations that we end up possessing certain emotions upon exposure to great art.
Blog Post #7 Why Does Philosophy Matter To You?
For most of my blog I have focused on analyzing how philosophic texts can affect the motives of members of society. But I have not gone into detail in why this should matter to you. Why should it be of concern to you if our government is formed on philosophic ideas? Does knowing this help you navigate society in some beneficial way? The answer is; probably not. Philosophy, like Art and like Writing, has an impact on our culture but if one did not look for any hints, you would not know they were there. I wonder whether it matters to see the history of the events around us or if we should be more concerned with the present moment. I find myself looking to support the notion that philosophy percolates through our very consciousness, but as I examine myself, I do not see such marks left on me. I wonder if philosophy affects any of my peers? Even if an idea can permeate a government and a national identity, I wonder if the average individual is left any different than he was before?
Do the Arts and Humanities come into play in the average being’s life? I argue that people are more concerned with dealing with their present issues than they are worried about analyzing the past to see how it affects their present. In my resubmission of my Long Form Print Project I hope to begin to answer these questions and let the reader know WHY any of this matters; perhaps I will find it does not really matter to the average person but is merely significant to myself. Perhaps I want the world to share interests with me and it is alright if we differ.
Blog Post #6 – Truth is a Pathless Land
For this blog post I wanted to talk about some of the difficulties and successes encountered in the Print Project and also talk a little about Jiddu Krishnamurti, a philosopher occasionally in line with some great Buddhist thinkers.
First the print project, which talked of the hidden effects philosophy has on society. Philosophy can help explain the rationale behind the formation of our country’s government, the rise of the scientist, and the organization of the Constitution. I went into depth on some of the roles that the Pamphlet Common Sense had on early revolutionary America. I went into detail on how the emergence of the scientist resulted from the Enlightenment movement, which was inspired partly by the objective nature of science that was being popularized by thinkers such as Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon.
Jiddu Krishnamurti was a philosopher who was primed from a young age to take over the Order of the Rising Sun, a religious group centered in India. However, as he grew older he threw off the shackles imposed on him by the order and decided to embark on his own path of learning and teaching. It is from these roots that he began to hone on his own personal philosophy, where he outlined the importance of awareness, mindfulness, and samsara, the process of suffering. Though many of his ideas and practices line up with some of the main Buddhist schools of thought, Krishnamurti himself denied any connection with the area of thought. He focused more on the ability of one to make his own path and denied the accessibility or value of following anyone else’s path. “Truth is a Pathless Land”
Blog Post #5 How Society Looks To Philosophy
In my past blogs I have focused on the effects that philosophy can have on people but I have not gone much in detail in exactly how ideas percolate down to the masses. It takes great and sustained force to invoke change in a human, these forces normally can come from society and family, as they are some of the most constant factors in one’s life. If Early Americans identified with ideas brought forth by Thomas Paine, how did they come to this way of thinking? Surely not every American was reading Common Sense but perhaps the ideas still percolated down some how.
Many ideas come into the public consciousness as a consequence of government bills and voting. The idea of individual rights and freedom was most vigorously perceived by the public when events such as the American Revolution were occurring. When the day to day lives of citizens and their loved ones are affected, people begin to fight what they believe in. Government action has a strong ability to alter the well-being of its citizens and perhaps when people are backed into a wall they express their beliefs most strongly and perhaps these line up with ideas brought forth by Thomas Paine.
Philosophy can also percolate into the public consciousness through efforts of religious institutions. The institutions and belief structures that they propagate can help shape our most basic beliefs. The ideas and life strategies preached in religious groups share similarities with many philosophic panties of thought. I will continue on this topic in future blog posts
And my question for the guest speaker Friday; how did you shift from a career in technical writing to a career writing fantasy and starting companies? What skills would you recommend developing?
Blog Post #4 The Philosophy of Early America post 1776
So in my past blog I have talked about the impact that Philosophy such as John Locke had on the early days of the American government but in this post I want to briefly highlight some of the characteristics of American philosophy post 1776, after the formation of the United States. I want to talk about some of what Thomas Jefferson said when he laid out the Declaration of Independence; “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Much of what Jefferson said stemmed from the mouth of Thomas Paine, who just a few decades early proclaimed that “The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of Nature for his rule. The liberty of man in society is to be under no other legislative power but that established by consent in the commonwealth, nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact according to the trust put in it.”
The ideas expressed by both these speakers are ones I want to elaborate on in my Print Project, which will be able to be seen in the Portfolio section of my website!
Blog Post #3 – How is philosophy presented in society?
In this blog post I want to look at how Philosophy is portrayed in major news outlets such as television, advertisements, magazines, blogs, and newspapers. I want to inspect how the author of these articles tailors their style to a certain audience and context. Is pursuing philosophy an endeavor deemed valuable by the general public? Does the general public even read philosophy at all?
First I wanted to analyze this article that was posted to the Huffington Post blog. Link.
This blog outlined some of Confucius’ philosophies on the proper rule of government in society, how to ensure national prosperity, and the line between personal and public responsibility. What I noticed in this article was the way that the author appealed to the present, living generation by drawing corollaries between Confucius’ ideas and the stances held by the modern day Republican Party. I also noticed the author utilized brief, powerful quotes such as “When you meet someone better than yourself, turn your thoughts to become his equal. When you meet someone not as good as you, look within and examine your own self.” The author used these quotes to help explain the similarities between Confucius philosophy and modern day thinkers. He also helps reveal that their lies philosophy behind the dialect and ideals held by political parties. Trying to identify and group together the philosophies that are behind some of the popular cultural dialects being used today.
In future blog posts I will be looking at other types of recently printed texts and looking at how aspects of philosophy permeate the background of a lot of the ideas that we are very familiar with. Is there history of philosophical debate between many of today’s popular sentiments such as individual rights, abortion, freedom of religion, and policy of war. Have we forgotten the influence that philosophers have had on many of the beliefs we hold true to today?
Blog Post #2: A case study on the impact Philosophy has on the early United States
In this post I wanted to do a case study on the impact that Philosophy, especially content from Thomas Paine and John Locke and the influence this content had on early America. Though it has been noted by such historians as Alex De Tocqueville that Americans barely pay attention to philosophy, they all behave in similar manners and had similar values. I think that the reason for this is that Americans very greatly internalize the values of the country, but where do a country’s values come from? To look at the national identity of the United States, you must definitely look at the circumstances in which the United States arose; while in battle with Great Britain over taxation rules. Let’s highlight some of the quotes spoken by famous philosophers who reached their heyday during the Revolutionary war.
“The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of Nature for his rule. The liberty of man in society is to be under no other legislative power but that established by consent in the commonwealth, nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact according to the trust put in it.” – John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
Here John Locke expresses the identity that many Americans hold true to today; that representatives of a nation should not have to bow down to any superior power on earth such as a King or even a President. It was Locke’s ideas of liberty of man that the founding fathers pointed to when they were drafting documents such as the Constitution.
Blog Post #1: What is Philosophy?
Before we dive into the impact that philosophy has on different cultures I want to walk through the question; “What is Philosophy?” What question is philosophy trying to answer? How do people integrate these answers into the everyday life? It is when we can estimate the nature and impact of philosophy on the individual can we begin to see the overall effects it has on society.
No two philosophers will give you the same definition for Philosophy and if they do, try another pair and surely their answer will vary. It is a very difficult answer to give because philosophy, unlike biology, is not about one thing. Philosophy is just as much about the comprehension of underlying human experience as it is about the order of society. Another complication arises due to the fact that Philosophy is more concerned with questions than answers. Questions like “are humans inherently evil” or “should only the super-intelligent run countries” have no universal answer but it is in the struggle to answer these questions that topics of Philosophy arise.
In the essay, “The Value of Philosophy” by Bertrand Russell, we can see one author struggle to answer the question of what Philosophy is. He spoke of Philosophy as having 3 components, each representing a different aspect of the Art. The first Russell defined as the act Striving or yearning. It is the “love of wisdom” that Russell proposes as a hallmark of the philosopher. Some view philosophy not as a topic but a state of mind; An inquisitive demeanor is more representative of Philosophy than a library of tomes on the matter.
The second component of Philosophy is Wonder, which claims that the source of most philosophical questioning is the result of a childlike wonder with all that surrounds oneself. A dull mind is not amazed and the un-amazed cannot philosophize in the true sense. It is one who is bewildered by the current situation of the world who is intrigued enough to dig deeper; look out to the world with grey-tinted glasses and you will not be jarred enough to look any closer.
Philosophy is not consisted of records of ones amazement with nature but rather by the Insight that is gained by that amazement. “Philiosophers articulate their initial amazement by forming questions that guide their creativity toward comprehension of the problem.” However, due to the nature of questions without definitive answers, Philosophy tends to be more about uncovering small pieces of truth at a time in the greater journey to answer a question. “Therefore the search for truth is rather like a perpetual striving for more insight […] into life and the world”.
Founding Philisophers 