from Bill Lantry's post #224: "Some don't like to put down their thoughts, out of concerns they'll change tomorrow."


In Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, he reports this exchange between himself and Michael Welfare, one of the founders of the Dunkers. When Franklin suggested to Welfare that he defend the sect against scurrilous attacks by publishing the articles of their belief, Welfare responded:

. . . .When we were first drawn together as a society, it had pleased God
. . . .to enlighten our minds so far as to see that some doctrines, which
. . . .we once esteemed truths, were errors, and that others, which we had
. . . .esteemed errors, were real truths. From time to time He has been pleased
. . . .to afford us further light, and our principles have been improving, and
. . . .our errors diminishing. Now we are not sure that we have arrived at the
. . . .end of this progression, and at the perfection of spiritual or theological
. . . .knowledge; and we fear that, if we should once print our confession of
. . . .faith, we should feel ourselves as if bound and confined by it, and
. . . .perhaps be unwilling to receive further improvement, and our successors
. . . .still more so, as conceiving what we their elders and founders had
. . . .done to be something sacred, never to be departed from.

Sounds like wisdom to me.

Jan

Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie discuss the truth of beauty, the beauty of truth.

https://youtu.be/cQo9ldCBrvQ

Jan Hodge's quote is worth remembering. The fact that a thing can't be defined and given solid immutable borders does not diminish it, but rather is indicative of its worth. That is, when speaking of the larger subjects. Where many religions go wrong is where they trade guidance—which is without hard (immobile) borders—for dogma, which is noted for its inflexibility, and its conceit. I think Lao Tzu's quote that Bill mentioned is a generalization that may lead to a sense of the truth, that truth being the insufficiency of words to encompass or limit the highest concepts. However, noting Lao Tzu was no slouch when it came to using words, it was not meant as dogma. For another example, the Muslim world in a sense lost their understanding of (and thus their being guided by) the Quran by accepting the dogma of various "sheikhs" and interpreters and compilers of alleged prophetic sayings. So they came to accept these by rote and stopped using their minds. Then they are shocked when I tell them one of the most frequently used phrases in the Quran is "Will you not use your minds?"

Also re philosophy itself. It is important to consider great ideas and deeper meanings. But therein also lies the danger of "arriving" at the final ultimate truth which one then enshrines, thus losing the possibility of further growth as described so well by Mr. Welfare. (And where oh where did the Welfare family go?)

Delicious, Ross.

I agree. By linking to that YouTube you granted me an awesome boon that I didn't even know that I craved. And I do crave awesome boons.

Not all men do.

Well then Rick, it’s a silliness that has resulted in such secondary sillinesses as Chartres Cathedral, the Enneads of Plotinus, and the Florentine Renaissance. For non-European sillinessess how about Avicenna or al-Ghazzali, who based much of their thinking on Plotinus along with key passages from the Quran. All light years beyond Keats, who is great but fragmentary along with the time he lived in. Name me one artistic production of the present that approaches the beauty of Alhambra. And yet a long, rich culture of discourse on the nature of beauty had a lot to do with the preparation that it took to create such a masterpiece.

I can see the sense in choosing not to talk about it, or in thinking that talking about it inhibits creative practice in the present. Writing a poem is a lot more fun. But to dismiss talking about it as a sterile academic exercise is to ignore the facts: vast edifices of artistic realization far beyond anything possible in our own time, inspired and sustained by the sort of talk you’re writing off as “silly.”

“Objective subjectivity,” and that’s that. If only the great aesthetic theorists of the past had known it was so simple. Jeesh.

I'm with Rick.

Exactly. In an odd way, some responses remind me of that old joke about the guy who is born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. Then he argues that any discussion of the finer points of batting is just silly.

Newton had a better view: we only see a little further because we have the benefit of standing on the shoulders of giants.

But the whole know-nothing position is curiously American. We even see it in our politics. One side says "I built my business all by myself." And when the other side says "You didn't build the roads to transport your goods, you didn't build the network you use to communicate, you didn't build the schools that train the people who work with you," they get really, really mad. And say unpleasant things.

Never mind that Keats' 'beauty is truth, truth beauty, and that's the end of it,' is just silly. If A *is* A, it can't also be B, unless of course everything is one, in which case it makes no sense to name A and B. Never mind that at best it's an undergraduate's view of Plato (if only Keats had lived longer!). It's especially ironic when formalists repeat it, since Plato believed beauty is form enough, and that 'the form F *is* F.' And that only beauty is *both* a form and a sensory experience.

You can tell I'm a little frustrated. I don't understand how we can draw such clear lines between learning, knowing, and doing. It seems to me they are interwoven and interrelated. I don't fully agree with Maritain's definition that art is "a virtue of the practical intellect that aims at making," but when he says 'since art is a virtue that aims at making, to be an artist requires aiming at making beautiful things,' I'm right on board. Maybe that's because I believe virtue can be taught, discussed, learned, and practiced.

Maybe that's the theological difference here. If one believes, with the Spartans, that virtue can not be taught, that it (like artistic ability) either exists or doesn't exist within the individual, then every discussion of the subject would be pointless. On the other hand, that would also mean workshops are completely pointless. ;)

Best,

Bill

Let's tighten up here :
If A *is* A, it can't also be B, unless of course they map exactly onto each other, in which case it makes no sense to name separately A and B --- except if A and B are terms from different realms of discourse --- which "truth" and "beauty" (as of a summer's day) certainly are.

Doesn't Plato's Good entail Truth and Beauty? (Logos and Cosmos?)