Ask anyone, and they will admit to the importance and power that art has on the world. Indeed, art can be admired for art’s sake, however the admiration of art goes much deeper. William Faulkner described what his work—his art—meant to him in his Nobel Peace Prize banquet speech, “I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work – a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before” (Nobel Prize, emphasis added).

Of course art can comprise of anything that one finds soothing to the soul: poetry, music, photography, painting, fiction, autobiographies, dance, graphics, theater… It is impossible to exhaust the list in which something can be described as art. But for the purposes of this paper, since I am inquiring into Plato’s interpretation of beauty and art, I shall narrow this infinite list of art down to poetry and paintings—subjects that Plato deems as mere imitations.

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May 13th, 2011

The problem of evil has perplexed even the most prominent of philosophers for centuries. How is it that a being that is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good could allow evil to exist? Some contend that God cannot exist merely for this obvious contradiction between evil and an omnibenevolent being. Furthermore, the very existence of evil leads to the inevitable questioning of God’s chaste abilities.

David Hume authors a much recognized take on the problem of evil. In this conjecture Hume posits, “Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?” (Hume, Dialogs). It is a seemingly deplorable accusation to insist that the monotheistic God of the 17th century is both powerless and wicked.

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May 13th, 2011

Throughout the third part of Spinoza’s Ethics, Spinoza address two very serious exigent matters: one, he attempts to illustrate to the reader that humans merely follow nature’s order. According to Spinoza, human beings operate according to their casual nature, which is no different than any other finite modes. Thus, human behavior and the behavior of other ordinary objects are to be understood in the same way. Second, Spinoza maintains that moral concepts such as virtue, vices, good, evil, etc. should be understood only as it relates to psychology. Since human beings are no different than ordinary objects as both follow their casual natures, so too, moral concepts should be understood just as other concepts are.

In the beginning to Part III of Ethics, Spinoza exemplifies his account of the laws of nature: “The laws and rules of nature, according to which all things happen, and change from one form to another, are always and everywhere the same. So the way of understanding the nature of anything, of whatever kind, must also be the same, viz. through the universal laws of nature.” Spinoza insists that, unlike many other philosophers during his time, humans are not outside nature. That is, when a human being does good, is free, is moral, it is so through the nature of laws and nothing more.

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April 26th, 2011

Free speech is a concept that can be respected in two main lights: first, an individual ought to have the ability to speak freely to insure his or her autonomy is respected, and second, an individual ought to have the ability to speak freely to insure that society has access to this speech. Presumably, the intrinsic view of free speech based in individual autonomy seem to be separate from the extrinsic view of free speech based in utility and consequences however, I maintain that though they are different, they certainly are not separate. Pertaining to free speech, autonomy and utility are, in fact, bonded together, unraveling in no certain arrangement.

An intrinsic approach to free speech is perhaps the most commonly accepted by political theorists. Many rights can be explained as having strong ground in an intrinsic view such as the right to vote, the right to contraception and abortion, freedom of religion and, of course, the right to freedom of speech and expression. Relevant to an extrinsic approach, rights consisting of freedom of press, the right to vote, the right to protest (in general and against the government), and again, freedom of speech and expression.

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April 26th, 2011

Socrates’ critique of Greek tragedy is primarily focused on the mimēsis characteristic of poetry; that poetry is third from the truth and is a mere imitation of appearances. In Book X of The Republic, Socrates immediately begins to explicate the serious deficiencies of his contemporary poets, including Homer. He states that the product of poets “distorts the thought of anyone who hears it” (Plato’s Republic, p. 265, 595b). Because poets and painters alike merely imitate the ideas of the Forms or things, they simply do not know the truth of what they are speaking about.

For instance, a painter’s work is an imitation of, say, a bed that was created by a maker that was firstly created by the natural creator. Socrates explains that there are three types of beds: The first is the nature of the bed (made by the natural creator—God), the second comes from the work of the carpenter who makes the bed, and the third comes from the work of the painter.

Socrates, in Book X, is justifying the philosophy-based education over that of the poetry-education that everyone seems to encourage. Socrates, in much detail, posits that poets do not know and understand the truth of the originals. Many people mistakenly believe that poets must know what they write about if they are to produce work that is well liked by their listeners. But Socrates negates this stating that poets are really ignorant of what they write about. This imitation that poets publish is nothing more than a sort of counterfeit sincerity of ideas. So Socrates believes that for a poet to be a good poet and not a mere creator of imitation, he should possess knowledge of what he writes his poems.

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March 18th, 2011