7 ideas
21982 | I only wish I had such eyes as to see Nobody! It's as much as I can do to see real people. [Carroll,L] |
Full Idea: "I see nobody on the road," said Alice. - "I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked. ..."To be able to see Nobody! ...Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people." | |
From: Lewis Carroll (C.Dodgson) (Through the Looking Glass [1886], p.189), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7 | |
A reaction: [Moore quotes this, inevitably, in a chapter on Hegel] This may be a better candidate for the birth of philosophy of language than Frege's Groundwork. |
12163 | Literary meaning emerges in comparisons, and tradition shows which comparisons are relevant [Scruton] |
Full Idea: We must discover the meanings that emerge when works of literature are experience in relation to each other. ...The importance of tradition is that it denotes - ideally, at least - the class of relevant comparisons. | |
From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.27) | |
A reaction: This is a nice attempt to explain why we all agree that a thorough education in an art is an essential prerequisite for good taste. Some people (e.g. among the young) seem to have natural good taste. How does that happen? |
12162 | In literature, word replacement changes literary meaning [Scruton] |
Full Idea: In literary contexts semantically equivalent words cannot replace each other without loss of literary meaning. | |
From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.25) | |
A reaction: The notion of 'literary meaning' is not a standard one, and is questionable whether 'meaning' is the right word, given that a shift in word in a poem is as much to do with sound as with connotations. |
12159 | 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. |
12160 | 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. |
12161 | 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. |
20765 | Man is a brave naked will, separate from a background of values and realities [Murdoch] |
Full Idea: Existentialists no longer see man against a background of values, of realities, which transcend him. We picture man as a brave naked will. | |
From: Iris Murdoch (Against Dryness: a polemical sketch [1983], p.46), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 7 'Subjectivism' | |
A reaction: It is one thing to deny the values, and another to deny the realities. This piece is a 'polemic', and reads more like an exhortation than a truth. Many of us are, at best, cowardly naked wills. |