5 ideas
| 7276 | All art is quite useless [Wilde] |
| Full Idea: All art is quite useless. | |
| From: Oscar Wilde (Preface to 'Dorian Gray' [1891]) | |
| A reaction: Echoes Kant's thought that art is 'purposive without purpose'. Although I find Wilde's claims that morality has nothing to do with art to be naïve, I find this remark sympathetic. Art may play with moral feelings, but is unlikely to affect actions. |
| 7274 | Books are only well or badly written, not moral or immoral [Wilde] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. | |
| From: Oscar Wilde (Preface to 'Dorian Gray' [1891]) | |
| A reaction: This is simply false. Novels that are viciously (or subtly) racist, sexist, homophobic, or egotistical can obviously be immoral. I could write a nasty story about Oscar Wilde. It might, though, be very well written. If life is moral, so are novels. |
| 7275 | Having ethical sympathies is a bad mannerism of style in an artist [Wilde] |
| Full Idea: No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. | |
| From: Oscar Wilde (Preface to 'Dorian Gray' [1891]) | |
| A reaction: This has a Nietzschean suggestion that the artist is 'beyond good and evil', and operates on some higher level of values, which in Wilde's case seem to be purely aesthetic. You can't justify a callous murder by executing it beautifully. |
| 20930 | The existence of law is one thing, its merits and demerits another [Austin,J] |
| Full Idea: The existence of law is one thing; its merit and demerit another. Whether it be or be not is one enquiry; whether it be or be not conformable to an assumed standard is a different enquiry. | |
| From: John Austin (Lectures on Jurisprudence [1858], p.214), quoted by Jens Zimmermann - Hermeneutics: a very short introduction 6 'Positivism' | |
| A reaction: It is impossible to contest this point, but the issue is whether there is nothing more to law than its written existence. |
| 1513 | The Egyptians were the first to say the soul is immortal and reincarnated [Herodotus] |
| Full Idea: The Egyptians were the first to claim that the soul of a human being is immortal, and that each time the body dies the soul enters another creature just as it is being born. | |
| From: Herodotus (The Histories [c.435 BCE], 2.123.2) |