Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Internal and External Reasons' and 'Public Text and Common Reader'

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4 ideas

21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 1. Artistic Intentions
Without intentions we can't perceive sculpture, but that is not the whole story [Scruton]
     Full Idea: A person for whom it made no difference whether a sculpture was carved by wind and rain or by human hand would be unable to interpret or perceive sculptures - even though the interpretation of sculpture is not the reading of an intention.
     From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.15)
     A reaction: Scruton compares it to the role of intention in language, where there is objective meaning, even though intention is basic to speech.
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 3. Artistic Representation
In aesthetic interest, even what is true is treated as though it were not [Scruton]
     Full Idea: In aesthetic interest, even what is true is treated as though it were not.
     From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.18)
     A reaction: A nice aphorism. I always feel uncomfortable reading novels about real people, although the historical Macbeth doesn't bother me much. Novels are too close to reality. Macbeth didn't speak blank verse.
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 5. Objectivism in Art
We can be objective about conventions, but love of art is needed to understand its traditions [Scruton]
     Full Idea: An historian can elucidate convention while having no feeling for the art that exploits it; whereas an understanding of tradition is reserved for those with the critical insight which comes from the love of art, both past and present.
     From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.24)
     A reaction: This aesthetic observation is obviously close to Scruton's well-known conservatism in politics. I am doubtful whether the notion of 'tradition' can stand up to close examination, though we all know roughly what he means.
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality
Stoics say that beauty and goodness are equivalent and linked [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Stoics say the beautiful is the only good. Good is an equivalent term to the beautiful; since a thing is good, it is beautiful; and it is beautiful, therefore it is good.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.1.59