Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Saundaranandakavya', 'The Principles of Art' and 'Recent Aesthetics in England and America'

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8 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 2. Invocation to Philosophy

7910	Pursue truth with the urgency of someone whose clothes are on fire [Ashvaghosha]
	Full Idea: As though your turban or your clothes were on fire, so with a sense of urgency should you apply your intellect to the comprehension of the truths.
	From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI)
	A reaction: The best philosophers need no such urging. I retain a romantic view that we should be 'natural' in these things. See Plato's views in Idea 2153 and 1638. However, maybe I should be confronted with this quotation every morning when I awake.

21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 1. Aesthetics

12156	Aesthetics has risen and fallen with Romanticism [Scruton]
	Full Idea: The rise and fall (as we presently perceive them) of aesthetics have been contemporaneous with the rise and fall of Romanticism.
	From: Roger Scruton (Recent Aesthetics in England and America [1980], p.3)
	A reaction: Maybe it started a little before Romanticism, as part of the Englightenment aim of being rational about everything, and maybe it survives Romanticism because we want to be scientific about everything.

21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 2. Aesthetic Attitude

12158	Aesthetic experience informs the world with the values of the observer [Scruton]
	Full Idea: It is possible to conclude that aesthetic experience has a peculiar practical significance: it represents the world as informed by the values of the observer.
	From: Roger Scruton (Recent Aesthetics in England and America [1980], p.13)
	A reaction: An excellent remark. If you look at, or listen to, anything, you can make a conscious effort to drain away your personal values (objectivity; science?), or you can consciously flood them with values. But moral and aesthetic vision must differ...

21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 4. Art as Expression

20420	The emotion expressed is non-conscious, but feels oppressive until expression relieves it [Collingwood]
	Full Idea: The emotion expressed is one of whose nature the person feeling it is no longer conscious. As unexpressed, he feels it in a helpless and oppressed way; as expressed, the oppression has vanished. His mind is somehow lightened and eased.
	From: R.G. Collingwood (The Principles of Art [1938], p.110), quoted by Gary Kemp - Croce and Collingwood 1
	A reaction: It sounds like the regular smoking of cigarettes. This is Collingwood answer the doubts I felt about Idea 20419. I would have thought the desire of Picasso was to create another painting, but not to express yet another new oppressive feeling.

21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 7. Ontology of Art

20421	Art exists ideally, purely as experiences in the mind of the perceiver [Collingwood, by Kemp]
	Full Idea: For Collingwood (and Croce) the work of art is an ideal object; …they are things that exist only in the mind, that is, only when one perceives. …The physical work exists to make this experience available.
	From: report of R.G. Collingwood (The Principles of Art [1938]) by Gary Kemp - Croce and Collingwood 2
	A reaction: This means that the paintings in a gallery cease to be works of art when the gallery is shut, which sounds odd. I suppose 'work of art' is ambiguous, between the experience (right) and the facilitator of the experience (wrong).

21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 6. Value of Art

20406	Art clarifies the artist's mind and feelings, thus leading to self-knowledge [Collingwood, by Davies,S]
	Full Idea: Collingwood suggests art should be thought of not as product or artifact but as an act or process of expression through which the artist clarifies her initially vague emotions and states of mind. As such, it is a source of self-knowledge.
	From: report of R.G. Collingwood (The Principles of Art [1938], Ch.6) by Stephen Davies - The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) 8.4
	A reaction: I might believe this of writing novels, but not much else.

29. Religion / C. Spiritual Disciplines / 3. Buddhism

7909	The Eightfold Path concerns morality, wisdom, and tranquillity [Ashvaghosha]
	Full Idea: The Eightfold Path has three steps concerning morality - right speech, right bodily action, and right livelihood; three of wisdom - right views, right intentions, and right effort; and two of tranquillity - right mindfulness and right concentration.
	From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI)
	A reaction: Most of this translates quite comfortably into the aspirations of western philosophy. For example, 'right effort' sounds like Kant's claim that only a good will is truly good (Idea 3710). The Buddhist division is interesting for action theory.

29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 2. Immortality / d. Heaven

7908	At the end of a saint, he is not located in space, but just ceases to be disturbed [Ashvaghosha]
	Full Idea: When an accomplished saint comes to the end, he does not go anywhere down in the earth or up in the sky, nor into any of the directions of space, but because his defilements have become extinct he simply ceases to be disturbed.
	From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI)
	A reaction: To 'cease to be disturbed' is the most attractive account of heaven I have encountered. It all sounds a bit dull though. I wonder, as usual, how they know all this stuff.