#he has had time to develope some feelings without the knowledge that kant had

[bentnotbroken1fanfiction]

I still don't think Kant is as emotionally connected to Bison as Style is to Fadel. He says he wants to end this quickly so he doesn't fall for him, but he is visibly scared and extremely hesitant most of this episode after James shows up.

And yeah, Style is hesitant too when they are in the sauna, but then he quickly gets over it. The more he talks to Fadel and the more Fadel opens up, the more you can see the wheels turning in Style's head.

In the locker room with Kant, he's the first to say his heart is on the line and that he cares about Fadel. It felt like Kant was just agreeing as an afterthought. Like yeah, that's why we need to get them arrested.

At the end Kant doesn't seem to into the cuddly time. And yeah he is the one that saw the photos and evidence so that makes sense, but Style has seen Fadel take down three grown men. He's not stupid. And yet he's taking him home and being the one to initiate the sex and kiss his scar (the one he's been told is from an occupational hazard) and telling Fadel that while he scares him, he makes him feel safe too. And wants him to lay himself bare for Style and can't wait to be trusted 100%

At this point, Style is in way too deep. He might just hop in the police car with Fadel.

[pochiperpe90]

Beware of the thief

How do you become the longest-lived criminal in the history of Italian comics? For LUCA MARINELLI it all started as a child, at the zoo. Before the eyes of a panther

«The cold determination of a panther that silently approaches its prey: this is the expression I tried to instill in our Diabolik's gaze». When Luca Marinelli frowns and lights up the panther's eyes - the writer has had the opportunity to get a taste of it during the interview - the first instinct is to flee that look: too intense. It will be him, armed with a dagger and dressed in the famous tight black jumpsuit, with a hood that leaves only the icy eyes uncovered, to interpret the anti-hero born from the imagination of Angela and Luciana Giussani - the two sisters of Milan well known in history as the Queens of Terror - in the awaited cinematic adaptation of the comic directed by the Manetti Bros. (Ammore e malavita), in cinemas from December 31st.

«Fifty years in the homes of Italians. 150 million copies sold. Impressive numbers. Diabolik is an icon, it belongs to the IMAGINARY of hundreds of thousands of people"

During a walk along the Kreuzberg canal in Berlin, his adopted city since 2012, the Roman actor explains that the choice to be inspired by the feline for the interpretation of the character is not accidental. «Fans will know that Diabolik takes his name from a panther. Their meeting, which lasts a few moments, is significant: after a high-tension face-to-face, the feline decides to spare the boy, almost as if he had smelled a fellow in him. The panther was one of my favorite animals as a child. I remember like it was yesterday the day my parents took me to see it at the zoo, and my amazement in front of that creature, that night-black mantle, shiny and iridescent, with bluish reflections, and that deep, rhythmic breathing. Finally, particularly indelible in my mind is the feeling of sovereign calm that emanated from the animal». “From the beginning, I had a good feeling about this film,” continues the actor. «The first meeting with the Manettis, which I have been following with interest since the time of Zora the Vampire, took place in Rome, in the neighborhood where both Antonio and Marco and I grew up. They explained to me that they had a very specific vision of the character's personality, but that they would like to see what I could offer them. We auditioned together, which was very useful in igniting the spark of collaboration. I have a clear memory of that day and the subsequent exchange of emotions and thoughts. When I later found out that I was chosen for the part, I was very happy».

Luca Marinelli is certainly not new to acting challenges. From the dazed Mattia in ‘The solitude of prime numbers’ (2010), the character with whom he conquers notoriety, over the years he engages in roles that are not very easy, very different from each other ("The only thing they have in common is my nose", ironically, pointing to his face), showing great versatility and an extraordinary capacity for psychological identification. Among his most convincing interpretations, that of the Zingaro in ‘They call me Jeeg’ and that of Martin Eden in the homonymous film by Pietro Marcello, with which he won, respectively, the Silver Ribbon and a David di Donatello as best supporting actor and the Coppa Volpi as best actor. But dealing with a myth like Diabolik, the object of an almost sacred cult, is a new challenge.

«Fifty years in the homes of Italians. 150 million copies sold. Impressive numbers. Diabolik is an icon, and for this reason it belongs to the imagination of hundreds of thousands of people. If you think you can satisfy them all, you start off on the wrong foot: you risk that the final result is not what you really want to stage, but I'm sure the public will not be disappointed, or at least I hope. You will see how much love and respect there was in implementing this transposition", explains the actor, who speaks with full knowledge of the challenge of interpreting an icon: in 2018 he plays a true sacred monster, Fabrizio De André, in ‘Principe Libero’ by Luca Facchini. A friend told him: you're crazy to take this part. But he, careless, immerses himself in the biography of the singer-songwriter, ventures like a shrink into the maze of his psyche, and he returns to the man of that icon, receiving critical acclaim for that insidious role. The only flaw, some malevolent purists observe, is his Roman accent.

Despite being a comic book hero, to face Diabolik, the actor «decided to avoid any comic characterization of the character, trying to give a convincing representation from a human, psychological point of view. Who is this mysterious man, who with his criminal findings terrorizes the rich city of Clerville? What vicissitudes lead him to become a king of crime? Questions that have become the starting point of my research. For months and months, my flat was flooded with comics, scattered all over the place. And for every hundred I read, the Manettis - who I suspect know all the 800 and more numbers in the series - were ready to lend me as many». Day after day, Marinelli has thus sneaked into the lair of the King of Terror: he spied on his objects, opened his wardrobe, rummaged in his drawers. “I fell in love with him, unconditionally, without giving in to the temptation to express a condemnation or an acquittal. It is a precious lesson, which was passed on to me in the Academy: never judge your character. You risk that a distance will form between you and him which, I play hard, is negatively reflected in the quality of the interpretation».

The result is a film that is radically different from the first film adaptation, directed by Mario Bava, in 1968. "Among its strengths, there is a fascinating 1960s aesthetic, made up of machines, costumes, places and a thousand technological inventions of our Diabolik», he says. “To my great pleasure, I was involved in the discussion of the character's look right from the start. Particularly difficult was the development of the mask and the legendary black suit, designed by Diabolik himself and equipped with fantastic characteristics, not repeatable in reality. An almost impossible mission, but after weeks of attempts, thanks to the collaboration of all departments, we arrived at a result that was very satisfied: we did it by working together. I want to emphasize the all together. When you work with the Manetti Bros., this aspect is deeply tangible: everything takes place in an atmosphere of great exchange and collaboration. Many have known each other within the crew for years, and one almost has the impression of having been adopted by a large family, rather than working on a normal set ».

“Who is this mysterious man who terrorizes the rich city of Clerville? What led him to become what he is? For months these questions have been my RESEARCH"

The film - which the Manettis defined as "darkly romantic" - will also tell, to the delight of fans, the prodromes of the love story between Diabolik and his partner in crime, Eva Kant (Miriam Leone). "Two special, different people who first sniff each other with suspicion, only to recognize each other as soul mates," he explains. “I really like their level of complicity. Diabolik, however, is a very tough and reserved character, who rarely shows a feeling: this is certainly one of the differences, perhaps the clearest, between him and me. I am his opposite: as a good romantic and empathetic, I confess, I often cry. I think that doing so can be an important moment of openness, growth and awareness, which we should learn to actively seek. Are you feeling down? Play the saddest song you know and give yourself a treat: enjoy your tears, a friend once told me. Holy words: woe to keep everything inside. You run the risk of walling yourself up alive behind a senseless wall of hardness».

Although "very interesting", the actor prefers to gloss over future film projects out of luck. "At the moment my wife and I (the German actress Alissa Jung) are very busy with our association: we are about to open the headquarters of PenPaper-Peace in Italy, the association founded by Alissa in Germany, with which we built two schools in Haiti after the disastrous earthquake of 2010». As the actor launches into the memories of his first trip to the Caribbean island, the weeping willows of the Kreuzberg canal that framed the interview mentally give way, for a moment, to the lush vegetation of the Caribbean. «Indelible memories. Two years after the disastrous earthquake, I found a country on its knees, surrounded by rubble, pain and despair, but also many smiles and a contagious desire to live", he says. As the name of our association suggests, all you need is a sheet of paper and a pen, and you can give a child education, and with it a possibility, a future. And this not only in Haiti, but all over the world. At the moment we are focusing on a project in Italy that will support the boys and girls who are going through this difficult period of the pandemic».

GQ Italia

Just wanted to translate this interview for the non-italian’s fans ^^ (sorry for my English)  

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: Do the intellectual elites basically set the direction of how society thinks? Over the centuries, the general public has followed philosophical trends in the academic world so how do these beliefs and academic theories filter down into the mainstream? Is there anything we can do to stop it?

It may seem like in our current turbulent times that the elites do the thinking for the masses. And if one stands back to look at the flash points of intellectual history that indeed feels true. But equally one can stand back and ask critically if this is really so? 

Who are you actually talking about? Who are these intellectual elites? I dislike these generalisations because they are unhelpful. How does one define elite? Is it intellect? Is it cachet of social position? I think our so-called university elites - professors etc - are in their own existential crisis because of how commodified a university education is becoming. They are beholden to students as consumers. It’s a worrying trend.

Of course it didn’t use to be like that because then our intellectual elites had both recognised intellectual prowess and a social cachet. In other words they had power. I think the modern day academic is many ways a powerless and even pitiful figure at the mercy of university managers and money men.

Nor do I think one thinker dominates over others as they might have done in the past.

A case van be made that ideas today are democratised. Power resides wherever their is a vacuum. It doesn’t reside in the class room but on social media.

In our more recent times intellectual trends like post-modernism and now social critical theory have been seeping into the mainstream. Even Donald Trump has brought up critical race theory to the wider watching populace as a beating stick over the left.

But many ordinary people would be hard pressed to name the actual thinkers (outside of just lumping people together as an amorphous mass e.g. cultural marxists or far right conservatives). It’s more true to say that all ideas now fight in the market place of ideas as a product for people to consume blindly.

But why one idea takes off and another doesn’t is something I don’t have answer for. Or where is the point where ideas from top down meet reality from bottom up and create some kind of intellectual and social momentum? I don’t have time to get into that here.

Another thing is that like an MP4 download the compression size of the complexity gets eroded the more it is downloaded and passed around. In other words people start arguing over labels and top line arguments than actually grapple with the deeper and more complex ideas contained.

This isn’t to say there are no problems with such theories - e.g. critical race theory - because there are. For the record, I am hostile to such philosophies as a Tory as I am towards many lefty isms plaguing the modern university campus that find their way into the public square.

Rather than attack the messenger (ie people) one should critically examine the arguments from every side. This is true for any theory and wherever it comes from. We engage ideas not people.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record so let me play devil’s advocate and suggest an alternative if only to muse upon on it.

I was having a stimulating series of conversations with a professor of intellectual history and other academic historians and political scientists from prestigious French institutions at a friend’s dinner party not so long ago. Like any French dinner good conversation is expected along with good food and wine. Arguments are meant to be robust and even heated but never personal. Arguments are won as much by charm and wit as it is by intellect. It’s all very convival and civilised.

Anyway, we touched on many things from the sorry state French politics, Brexit, Trump, and Covid of course. The usual stuff I imagine. But because of who was around the table the discussion enjoyably explored much wider issues.

For me it’s always interesting to hear the premise from where people build their arguments. For the left secularist the Enlightenment becomes the cornerstone from which the lens of history is viewed and interpreted. For the conservative it’s anything before the 1789 Revolution. Both actually looked at change and the ideas therein as from top down. The ground up (or the view from below) was given short thrift.

I suggested an alternative premise more from a playful motivation than absolute empirical evidence - if only to liven things up a little as the conversation was becoming stale and even predictable.

Perhaps the direction of influence could also be seen the other way round? That is to say that philosophical theories formalise and develop ideas that are already in circulation in society and culture.

Did you get that? Let me explain.

Remember Hegel's beautiful and profound observation that 'the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk. In the words what Hegel was saying was that philosophical theory comes afterwards, reflectively, when a development of ideas or institutions is complete and (he would add) in decline.

Plato's 'Republic', at least its political portion, was as the late Michael Oakeshott once put it, 'animated by the errors of Athenian democracy'. Any citizen could participate in politics and help determine policies and legislation without any knowledge of the relevant matters. Plato saw democracy as the politics of ignorance. If every other human inquiry or activity recognised expert knowledge - in his famous example, you wouldn't let just anyone, regardless of their lack of specialist skills, navigate a ship - why not politics, too ? Why should politics be special in not requiring knowledge of the proper ends and means of political action as a condition of participation. Think of this what you will, but the 'Republic' was rooted in its contemporary context and was a response to it.

Aristotle's 'Politics' is a theorisation of the Greek polis, which was already passing out of independent existence under the impact of Alexander the Great's conquests. Athens was a city-state, and a democracy (albeit a limited one). Even though Aristotle was not born in Athens his views were accepted until he was shunned after the death of Alexander.

Aquinas' 'Summa' was a response to the recovery of Aristotle's writings and to the ongoing beliefs and practice of the Catholic Church - as well, of course, to movements which he opposed in theology.

Hobbes' 'Leviathan' is clearly a recipe for avoiding the kind of political and social chaos caused by the French Wars of Religion and the English Civil Wars. They were in his rear-view mirror when he wrote his tome.

Hume's 'atomistic' view of the nature of experience as composed of distinct impressions and ideas drew on the model of Newtonian 'corpuscular' physics.

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason asks how knowledge is possible, with the glories of Newtonian physics in the background. His emphasis on the place of reason in ethics is fully in the spirit of the Enlightenment's celebration of reason.

John Stuart Mill's 'On Liberty' was a counter-blast to the pressure toward conformity which he thought he saw in the England of his day.

Logical Positivism was a response to the huge, brilliant developments in science - relativity and quantum theory - and took the form of scientism, the view that scientific knowledge is the only form of deep and accurate knowledge (of all real knowledge).

Marxism was a response to the embryonic birth of the modern capitalist system after the industrial revolution in Britain. Both Hegel and Marx formulated their theories by what they observed was happening with the birthing pains of modern industrial capital society. Cultural Marxism is a different beast entirely.

I could go on.

I am not suggesting, of course, that there was anything crude or mechanical in the way these philosophies emerged from their contexts. They all added independent thought of great subtlety. But their problems and the terms of their solutions were set by their times, at least as they understood them. It’s plausible but may not be completely true. But that’s part of the enjoyment of musing upon whimsical thoughts without the conceit of being certain.

Anyway something to think about.

Thanks for your question.

[drnikolatesla]

Nikola Tesla’s Thoughts On the Soul and Life After Death

Tesla’s reasoning are the thoughts of a practical man of science, who has not only conducted experiments, but deep mental consideration to the question of immortality. Tesla was destined by his parents at an early age to enter the clergy, but the inventive genius, inherited from his mother, took him into the realm of science. Most of his life was spent in deep meditation to the question of the soul and life after death. His conclusions on the subjects will most definitely not run parallel with most others, but are indeed food for thought.

Here are 6 quotes made by Nikola Tesla:

1. When a child is born, its sense organs are brought in contact with the outer world. The waves of sound, heat and light beat against its feeble body, its sensitive nerve fibres quiver, the muscles contract and relax in obedience—a gasp, a breath, and in this act a wonderful little engine, of structure, is hitched to the wheelwork or the universe. Left to itself the engine stops; it has no power to draw energy from Nature’s inexhaustible store.

“The little engine moves and works, changes size and shape, performs more and more varied operations, becomes sensitive to more and more different influences, and now there begins to manifest itself in it a mysterious force. It becomes capable of responding to stimuli of a more subtle nature and of drawing, for its own use, energy from the environment. Gradually the engine has been transformed into a being possessed of intelligence, which perceives, discerns, does like others of its kind.

“The experiences multiply, the knowledge increases, the discernment becomes keener, the human being responding to the faintest influences, is awakened to the consciousness of Nature and its grandeur, and in its breast there is kindled a desire to imitate Nature, to create, to work itself the wonders it perceives.

”But the exercise of this power does not satisfy the mind, which rises to still higher, undefinable perceptions, not of this world, and inspired by them the artist, the inventor and the man of science give expression to the longing of the soul.

(“Shows How Men Of The Future May Become As Gods.” NEW YORK HERALD . December 30, 1900.)

2. “That an aggregation of impressions, thoughts and feelings having no materiality, and vaguely designated as mind, or soul, should be substance susceptible of quantitative determination is altogether too absurd for discussion.

“The change however, which takes place in the human body during its awful transition from life to death is a great subject for scientific investigation which may possibly lead to important results. If the experiments of Massachusetts physicians are to be at all seriously considered, it is only in this respect.

“I could not help being struck by the fact that men of a scientific caliber sufficiently large to undertake measurements requiring the greatest delicacy and skill, should not be correspondingly resourceful in devising the apparatus for the purpose. A scale responding to the weight of one tenth of an ounce is not a fit instrument for weighing the human soul.

“It is not less astonishing that such trained observer should have overlooked a trivial cause responsible for the seeming lightening of the body. I use this term designedly, for accepting the exudations which have been taken into consideration there was no loss of substance in death.

“When the rigor mortis sets in there is an increase of volume for various reasons. Just to give a rough idea I shall assume that the living body, weighing a hundred and sixty pounds, had filled a space of three cubic feet. The air in a sick room may weigh about fourteen ounces per cubic feet. Half an ounce of the air would consequently occupy a space of sixty-two cubic inches, and that would be only one percent of the original volume of three cubic feet. As will readily be seen, a very slight general deformation of the body, scarcely perceptible, is adequate to explain the puzzling observation. The sudden tipping of the scale demonstrates nothing except the coarseness of the instrument. Had the balance been very sensitive, owing to the resistance of the air, the platform would have ascended slowly.“

–Nikola Tesla

(“Scientists Doubt The Human Soul Was Weighed.” New York World, March 17, 1907.)

3. “Since time immemorial the most profound thinkers have tried to lift the veil that hides the beyond. I have read thousands of volumes of literature and thought for years in the hope that I might get some kind of evidence to show that death is not the end. But all in vain. To me the universe is simply a marvelous mechanism, and the most complex forms of human life, as human beings, are nothing else but automatic engines, controlled by external influence. Through incessant observation I have so convinced myself of the truth of this that I cannot perform any act or even conceive a thought without locating at once the external stimulus that prompted it.

“A forceful argument in support of the existence of a creative agent is made of the law, order and harmony perceptible everywhere. But it must not be forgotten that Kant’s reasoning and conclusion in this respect are irrefutable. According to this philosopher, the conception of fitness has been created in the speculative mind of men, which thus admires a miracle wrought by itself.

“Granted a planetary system, it is absolutely inevitable that in the course of eons such organized beings as we are will evolve. The cooling of the hot masses results in a precipitation of water, and under the influence of the sun’s rays heliotropic action takes place and life is started. Through chemical and other agents and continuous adjustment complex mechanisms come into being, and these ultimately develop into structures of marvelous complexity with capacities of response to the faintest stimulae from the environment.

“When we realize this as a fact we begin to grasp the great idea of Buddha–that self is an illusion. Indeed, we are nothing but waves in space and time which when dissolved exist no more.

“There is this to be said, however, that science without hope is not satisfactory, and unless one has some ideals he cannot achieve happiness. The religious is the most lofty ideal, and it seems that the great reformers who, ages ago, laid down rules of conduct were right in their conclusions that a peaceful existence and a continued onward march of man on this globe is essentially dependent on the conception of a God.

“I have read Mr. Burbank’s statement in which he expresses an opinion shared by most natural philosophers, but one must not be too rash in contradicting the conclusions reached by countless men of genius who spent their lives in endeavors to ascertain the destiny of the human race. A single individual, however well informed and capable, may be partially unaware of if not utterly blind to evidences of a certain kind, which might be quite sufficient for others. This is the reason why I am distrustful of my own findings. Possibly Mr. Ford, who I understand is accepting old traditions, may be closer to the truth than such men as Burbank and myself.

“I have searched during many years for some process or means to test the possibility of future existence by scientific experiment, and I have devised one, which, to my great disappointment, has failed. But perhaps some more skillful experimenter might succeed if I suggest to him the course. To put it briefly, it is this:

“Our bodies are composed of molecules of various elements, harmoniously united. Do these molecules retain any after-effect when the body is dissolved? To ascertain this take, say, two molecules of hydrogen from the body of an individual and also one molecule of oxygen. Furthermore, provide another molecule of oxygen taken from some other body. Now place the two molecules of hydrogen so they can combine with the oxygen, and if they prefer that molecule of oxygen with which they were previously united, then reincarnation is proved. For, though it may take ages and ages, ultimately the molecules which constituted that body will get together again, just as in a vast city individuals from a distant land finally meet and establish close contact.”

(“After Death — WHAT?” Lima News, Lima, Ohio, March 14, 1926.)

4. “We are all automatons obeying external influences. We are entirely under the control of agents that beat on our senses from all directions of the outside world. Being merely receivers from the outside, it is a very important question how good the receivers are—some are sensitive and receive accurately. Others are sluggish and their reception is blurred. The individual who is a better machine has so much greater chance of achieving success and happiness. An individual who is an offender of law is a machine in which one or another organ has been deranged, so that the responses are no longer accurate.

“There is no chance in nature, although the modern theory of indeterminacy attempts to show scientifically that events are governed by chance. I positively deny that. The causes and effects, however complex, are intimately linked, and the result of all inferences must be inevitably fixed as by a mathematical formula.

“I also absolutely deny the existence of individuality. It took me not less than twenty years to develop a faculty to trace every thought or act of mine to an external influence. We are just waves in time and space, changing continuously, and the illusion of individuality is produced through the concatenation of the rapidly succeeding phases of existence. What we define as likeness is merely the result of the symmetrical arrangement of molecules which compose our body.”

“How about the soul - the spirit?” he was asked.

“Ah,” he exclaimed, “but there is no soul or spirit. These are merely expressions of the functions of the body. These life functions cease with death and so do soul and spirit.

“What humanity needs is ideals. Idealism is the force that will free us from material fetters.”

(“Tesla Seeks to Send Power to Planets.” New York Times, July 11, 1931.)

5. “One of the most fundamental and also one of the saddest facts in human life is well brought out in a French proverb which, freely translated, means:

‘If Youth had the knowledge and Old Age the strength of doing.’

Our condition of body and mind in old age is merely a certificate of how we have spent our youth. The secret of my own strength and vitality today is that in my youth I led what you might call a virtuous life.

"I have never dissipated. When I was a young man I understood well the significance of that old French proverb, although I doubt that I had even heard it then. But I seemed to have a clear understanding while still young that I must control my passions and appetites if I wanted to make some of my dreams come true.

(“Tremendous New Power Soon To Be Released.” By Carol Bird. Charleston Daily Mail, Charleston, West Virginia, Page 40. September 10, 1933.)

6. “To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without. Owing to the similarity of our construction and the sameness of our environment, we respond in like manner to similar stimuli, and from the concordance of our reactions, understanding is barn. In the course of ages, mechanisms of infinite complexity are developed, but what we call “soul ” or “spirit,” is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the body. When this functioning ceases, the “soul” or the “spirit” ceases likewise.“

(“A Machine to End War.” Liberty Magazine, February 9, 1935.)

–Nikola Tesla

[bookofdan]

Maya and Avidya

Shankara establishes the source of his philosophy at a remote and subtle point never quite clearly visioned again until, a thousand years later, Immanuel Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason. How, he asks, is knowledge possible? Apparently, all our knowledge comes from the senses, and reveals not the external reality itself, but our sensory adaptation - perhaps transformation - of that reality. By sense, then, we can never quite know the “real”; we can know it only in that garb of space, time and cause which may be a web created by our organs of sense and understanding, designed or evolved to catch and hold that fluent and elusive reality whose existence we can surmise, but whose character we can never objectively describe; our way of perceiving will forever be inextricably mingled with the thing perceived.

This is not the airy subjectivism of the solipsist who thinks that he can destroy the world by going to sleep. The world exists, but it is Maya - not delusion, but phenomenon, an appearance created partly by our thought. Our incapacity to perceive things except through the film of space and time, or to think of them except in terms of cause and change, is an innate limitation, an Avidya, or ignorance, which is bound up with our very mode of perception, and to which, therefore, all flesh is heir. Maya and Avidya are the subjective and objective sides of the great illusion by which the intellect supposes that it knows the real; it is through Maya and Avidya, through our birthright of ignorance, that we see a multiplicity of objects and a flux of change; in truth there is only one Being, and change is “a mere name” for the superficial fluctuations of forms. Behind the Maya or Veil of change and things, to be reached not by sensation or intellect but only by the insight and intuition of the trained spirit, is the one universal reality, Brahman.

This natural obscuration of sense and intellect by the organs and forms of sensation and understanding bars us likewise from perceiving the one unchanging Soul that stands beneath all individual souls and minds. Our separate selves, visible to perception and thought, are as unreal as the phantasmagoria of space and time; individual differences and distinct personalities are bound up with body and matter, they belong to the kaleidoscopic world of change; and these merely phenomenal selves will pass away with the material conditions of which they are a part. But the underlying life which we feel in ourselves when we forget space and time, cause and change, is the very essence and reality of us, that Atman which we share with all selves and things, and which, undivided and omnipresent, is identical with Brahman, God.

But what is God? Just as there are two selves - the ego and the Atman - and two worlds - the phenomenal and the noumenal - so there are two deities: an Ishvara or Creator worshiped by the people through the patterns of space, cause, time and change; and a Brahman or Pure Being worshipped by that philosophical piety which seeks and finds, behind all separate things and selves, one universal reality, unchanging amid all changes, indivisible amid all divisions, eternal despite all vicissitudes of form, all birth and death. Polytheism, even theism, belongs to the world of Maya and Avidya; they are forms of worship that correspond to the forms of perception and thought; they are as necessary to our moral life as space, time and cause are necessary to our intellectual life, but they have no absolute validity or objective truth.

To Shankara the existence of God is no problem, for he defines God as existence, and identifies all real being with God. But of the existence of a personal God, creator or redeemer, there may, he thinks, be some question; such a deity, says this pre-plagiarist of Kant, cannot be proved  by reason, he can only be postulated as a practical necessity, offering peace to our limited intellects, and encouragement to our fragile morality. The philosopher, though he may worship in every temple and bow to every god, will pass beyond these forgivable forms of popular faith; feeling the illusoriness of plurality, and the monistic unity of all things, he will adore as the Supreme Being, Being itself - indescribable, limitless, spaceless, time-less, causeless, changeless Being, the source and substance of all reality. We may apply the adjectives "conscious," "intelligent," even "happy" to Brahman, since Brahman includes all selves, and these may have such qualities; but all other adjectives would be applicable to Brahman equally, since It includes all qualities of all things. Essentially Brahman is neuter, raised above personality and gender, beyond good and evil, above all moral distinctions, all differences and attributes, all desires and ends. Brahman is the cause and effect, the timeless and secret essence, of the world.

The goal of philosophy is to find that secret, and to lose the seeker in the secret found. To be one with God means, for Shankara, to rise above - or to sink beneath - the separateness and brevity of the self, with all its narrow purposes and interests; to become unconscious of all parts, divisions, things; to be placidly at one, in a desireless Nirvana, with that great ocean of Being in which there are no warring purposes, no competing selves, no parts, no change, no space, and no time. To find this blissful peace (Amanda) a man must renounce not merely the world but himself; he must care nothing or possessions or goods, even for good or evil; he must look upon suffering and death as Maya, surface incidents of body and matter, time and change; and he must not think of his own personal quality and fate; a single moment of self-interest or pride can destroy all his liberation. Good works cannot give a man salvation, for good works have no validity or meaning except in the Maya world of space and time; only the knowledge of the saintly seer can bring that salvation which is the recognition of the identity of self and the universe, Atman and Brahman, soul and God, and the absorption of the part in the whole. Only when this absorption is complete does the wheel of reincarnation stop; for then it is seen that the separate self and personality, to which reincarnation comes, is an illusion. It is Ishvara, the Maya god, that gives rebirth to the self in punishment and reward; but “when the identity” of Atman and Brahman “has become known, then,” says Shankara, “the soul’s existence as wanderer, and Brahman’s existence as creator” (i.e., as Ishvara) “have vanished away.” Ishvara and Karma, like things and selves, belong to the exoteric doctrine of Vedanta as adapted to the needs of the common man; in the esoteric or secret doctrine soul and Brahman are one, never wandering, never dying, never changed.

It was thoughtful of Shankara to confine his esoteric doctrine to philosophers; for as Voltaire believed that only a society of philosophers could survive without laws, so only a society of supermen could live beyond good and evil. Critics have complained that if good and evil are Maya, part of the unreal world, then all moral distinctions fall away, and devils are as good as saints. But these moral distinctions, Shankara cleverly replies, are real within the world of space and time, and are binding for those who live in the world. They are not binding upon the soul that has united itself with Brahman; such a soul can do no wrong, since wrong implies desire and action, and the liberated soul, by definition, does not move in the sphere of desire and (self-considering) action. Whoever consciously injures another lives on the plane of Maya, and is subject to its distinctions, its morals and its laws. Only the philosopher is free, only wisdom is liberty.

It was a subtle and profound philosophy to be written by a lad in his twenties. Shankara not only elaborated it in writing and defended it successfully in debate, but he expressed snatches of it in some of the most sensitive religious poetry of India. When all challenges had been met he retired to a hermitage in the Himalayas, and, according to Hindu tradition, died at the age of thirty-two. Ten religious orders were founded in his name, and many disciples accepted and developed his philosophy. One of them - some say Shankara himself - wrote for the people a popular exposition of the Vedanta - the Mohamudgara, or “Hammer of Folly” - in which the essentials of the system were summed up with clarity and force:

  ‘Fool! give up thy thirst for wealth, banish all desires from thy heart. Let thy mind be satisfied with what is gained by thy Karma. . . . Do not be proud of wealth, of friends, or of youth; time takes all away in a moment. Leaving quickly all this, which is full of illusion, enter into the place of Brahman. . . . Life is tremulous, like a water-drop on a lotus-leaf. . . . Time is playing, life is waning - yet the breath of hope never ceases. The body is wrinkled, the hair grey, the mouth has become toothless, the stick in the hand shakes, yet man leaves not the anchor of hope. . . . Preserve equanimity always. . . . In thee, in me and in others there dwells Vishnu alone; it is useless to be angry with me, or impatient. See every self in Self, and give up all thought of difference.’

Our Oriental Heritage by Will Durant

Book Two: India and Her Neighbors

Chapter XIX: The Life of the Mind, The Vedanta System

[themodernvedic]

What is the essence of Hinduism

Hinduism literally speaking is the religion of Hindus. Hindu is one who is a believer in any form of Brahmanism (one of the religions of India). In his lecture, delivered at the Parliament of Religions, at Chicago in Sept. 1893 Swami Vivekananda said, "Three religions stand in the world, which have come down to us from prehistoric times, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. They have all received tremendous shocks, and all of them can be proven by their survival, their inner strength. Sects after sects arose in India and unwillingly tried to shake and shatter the religion of the Vedas to its very foundation but like the waters of the seashore in a tremendous earthquake it receded only for a while, only to return in an all-absorbing flood - a thousand times more vigorous and when the tumult rush was over these sects were all sucked in, absorbed and assimilated into the immense body of the mother faith." http://youtube.com/watch?v=hi8g2h7mvMA Essence of true religion consists of nothing but the eternal truths and laws of the spiritual world. These principles have been discovered by the sages of ancient India. The degradation of Hindus took place because the life-giving principles of religion or Hinduism were applied in the practical life to solve social and national problems. Caste tyranny, loss of faith in their inherent powers and social neglect, reduced poor masses to mere cogs in the wheels of the exploitative machine, which was run by a few, powerful people. In reality if religion of the Vedas i.e. Hinduism was spread among the poor masses, it would awaken the dormant powers in them and they would be able to solve their own problems without any assistance.

Hindus were a philosophical race, whose conflicts were intellectual conflicts. Fortunately, India then was a country where the people had no lack of wealth, food and security. Having the Himalayas in the north and ocean on three sides, the country was free from the danger of foreign invasion. Nature was also favorable in such a place, in the Ashrams and Tapovans, the Indian rishis absorbed themselves in deeper truths of life which gave birth to the Indian philosophy. Dr. Radhakrishnan writes "The native utterances of the Vedic poets, the wondrous suggestiveness of the Upanishads, the marvelous psychological analysis of the Buddhists and the stupendous system of Shankara are quite as interesting and instinctive from the cultural point of view of the system of Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, if only we study them in true scientific frame of mind, without disrespect for the past or contempt for the alien" which is interesting and instructive from a cultural point of view Philosophy had a great impact and importance in India especially to Hinduism from the earliest times. "Darshan" as philosophy is called, etymologically means, "Seeing". This seeing is possible by perceptual observation direct experience, inference or self-realization. Indian philosophy recognizes that truth can never be self-contradictory. Therefore, in order to realize the distinction and relation of philosophy and religion i.e. Hinduism in the present context, we must first know what religion is. The word religion includes two Latin terms "Religio and Onis". Re-means again, ligio means to bind. Literally speaking religion binds a man to his source. Philosophers have emphasized one or the other aspect of it. Some important approaches in this connection are as follows: Intellectual Approach: Religion is clearly a state of mind. Moral Approach: Religion is nothing but morality touched with emotion Axiological Approach: God cannot be called the highest value because there is no un-valued phenomenon with which God can be contrasted.

Various definitions of Hinduism as a religion. Hinduism is a complex phenomenon in which one finds attitudes and feelings towards ultimate reality or God. From the definition of religion given by Sri Aurobindo, Hinduism appears to be highly comprehensive. To quote him "in most, essence of religion... is the search for God and finding of God. Its work is sincere giving out of the true and ultimate relation between man and God, relation of unity, relation of difference, relation of an illuminated knowledge and ecstatic love and delight, and absolute surrender and service, casting of every part of our existence of its normal status into up rush of man towards the Divine and descent of divine into man". This is true even today when we talk of Modern Hinduism. Our age is known as the atomic age. By controlling atomic energy man has achieved things which were formerly beyond his imagination. In the form of atom bombs he has developed an instrument of destruction whose after effects can be seen years after its use. Many nations, developed or even underdeveloped, of the world are busy in piling up such destructive weapons and many other nations are trying to copy them. This has made the thinkers of the world to worry about the future of man because an atomic war will not only lead to destruction and death but also deformities of crores of people and poisoning of the atmosphere and water to the extent of making human life practically impossible on this planet. But international peace and cooperation cannot be achieved through science alone because science is unable to do anything in this situation. This on the other hand is a moral and spiritual problem. For example, the philosophy of the Gita and the Upanishads may be found to be the most useful to a man at the present juncture. Hence it can be said that in this atomic age, science is more in need of philosophy than it has ever been. Ancient Indian thinkers of Hinduism have suggested different paths for reaching God or Truth, which is relevant in modern times also. These are classified into three chief paths of action, knowledge and devotion. In fact, these are the phases or the three different layers of every human mind.

Here we shall take the path of action. This is just like the choice between what is right and what is wrong, the good and the evil. One has to follow the right way and give up the wrong way. Gradually the evil will be eliminated and the good will be established which will ultimately lead one to godliness/ divinity. The question that now arises is, how to ascertain which action is good and which is evil Mahavir's advice is to walk carefully so that we do not tread over, even an ant. On the other hand, Lord Krishna advises Arjuna to fight the evil forces because no one dies, as the soul is immortal In ancient times Sri Rama accepted and abided by all limitations and restrictions of the society, and that is why he is called "Maryada Purshotam" while Shri Krishna who disregarded all social limitations and restrictions is still called "Yogeshwara Krishna". On the one hand Sita is adored as she never even saw the face of another man except her husband Rama but on the other hand Draupadi who was the wife of five Pandavas is regarded as a virtuous lady. Yudhisthira had staked his wife in a game of dice and yet he is called Dharam Raj. Bhishma was a witness to the disrobing of Draupadi and did nothing to avoid that incident, yet he is called an apostle of morality and righteousness. Parashurama killed his mother at the behest of his father and is yet called a great rishi. Therefore, no universal standard can be set for deciding what is good and what is evil. It deals with doing, not with being. As long as one does not know his inner self all his actions are cravings of the mind for the fulfillment of desires. That is why Indra says "in the very first instance try and realize what the Atman is so that all your doubts are answered. Socrates has said, "know thy self". Modern vision of Hinduism warrants us to rededicate ourselves to the pursuit of knowing the Self, because we possess spiritual wealth that can end all our woes. Secondly, we must inculcate a sense of unity and identity. Self-realization is the real definition of Hinduism. Taittiriya Upanishad declares in Tantra III-1 य��ो वा इमानि भूतानि जायन्ते येन जातानि जीवन्ति । यं प्रयन्ति अभिसंविशान्ति तज्जिज्ञासस्व तदेव ब्रह्म ॥ "That from which all those beings come into existence, that by which they live, that into which they are finally absorbed, know that be the eternal verity - the Absolute" Once in the Ashram of Ramana Maharshi a visitor made display of his knowledge by enumerating the various paths described by various masters along with quoting the western philosophers. He inquired "one says one thing and the other says something else, which way should I go?" Ramana Maharshi rose to leave the hall, he replied curtly "Go back the way you came". Speaking about the intellectual persons, Shri Ramana Maharshi has said, "They have made themselves like a gramophone. What else are they, Oh Arunachala? It is the unlearned who are saved, rather those whose ego has not subsided despite their learning. It is sincerity that is required and not brilliance or understanding of theory, humility, and not mental pride". Read the full article

[chrissciacca]

Adapting Walter Benjamin into Art Practice.

I am at a point where I have to come to terms with a few of the realities in my attempt to merge theory and practice. At the end of the day I am presenting "soundscapes" - a dubious concept and art form (sound recordings) in its past and current state. My fuel for trying something unique and challenging... where the practice is the research... is, in my opinion, the epistemological foundation of graduate research. What do the arts have to offer in terms of knowledge formation? Well, unfortunately not everyone will concede that art is even a small fraction as worthy as the sciences when it comes to this idea. Furthermore, I have raised the question - what would be the purpose of adapting such an enigmatic and complex, unfinished work such as The Arcades project into artistic practice? Not only that what does SOUND have to offer... a niche of a niche, underappreciated by most and dominated by our occulocentric culture.

Walter Benjamin took a unique approach to methodology because he wanted to SHOW the dialectic of the "golden age as hell" or "the new is the old is the old is the new" - not as an ostentatious display of theoretical theatrics. As Susan Buck-Morss points out The Arcades Project has "cognitive and politcal power." This is because he wanted the work to inspire real socio-political change in his lifetime.The real adaptation of The Arcades Project is better suited for looking at real world issues and not ego-driven artistry. My original concept was to look at commodity fetish, especially critical of modern-industrial bourgeoisie practice (of which I may be complicit - could I not also be using art to work this out for myself?)

The problem remains: an automatic reflexive reaction to anything conceptually difficult. Yes analysing the 900 plus pages of unfinished manuscript into a coherent theory is a major undertaking that can’t be summarised so succinctly. However I don’t think anyone is really barred from understanding it when put in perhaps “simpler” terms (frankly I think anyone can crack open The Arcades Project and skim through it to find something to relate to). Once again I recommend Susan Buck-Morss' superb interpretation/analysis. It does raise another concern I have, however.Can we not attempt to engage with complexity without concluding that complexity translates to vagueness? Is doing so automatically overwrought or overly conceptual? I don't believe so. I do think a level of complexity should be encouraged at this level. I am no philosopher but I certainly feel like Benjamin is a little more pragmatic and understandable than Kant and Hegel.Yet, I cannot expect anyone to engage with this text in their own free time and I cannot expect anyone to admire it either. Another question raised: how can one satisfy the "dialectical image" when Benjamin didn't satisfy "the dialectical image". This is about artistic treatement. While text is a language, so is sound, or images for that matter. I am translating the work into a different language. Things will be lost, but perhaps something will be gained. I am also defining it on my own terms. Terms and concepts I have tried clearly define myself (tensions - opposites).

I am working through this. I do not come with everything in a perfectly presented package - this is work, not perfection and this is not a cop-out for weak work. This is the beginning of a process. I understand in his own time Benjamin had his immediate detractors like Adorno... (not to mention traditional academic philosophy departments) yet a case is made that Adorno’s skepticism was off-base as Buck-Morss illustrates in “The Dialectics of Seeing”... he was not getting what Benjamin was doing - attempting to try something not one of his predecessors attempted to do, and not even Marx was trying to shake up history in the same way. I refuse to pigeonhole Benjamin with snap judgements of his "value" as a philosopher..."overrated" or "genius". This has nothing to do with some sort of hagiography for me. This is my attempt at an original work and concept.

As a unique work (as far as I know), this entire project feels as though I am at a loss to converse with other artists. I was really thrilled to discover another sound work adapting Benjamin. It was a relief to read Campbell Edinborough's thoughts on his Arcades Project through his piece: Being Human. A Roving Soul: Walking the City with Walter Benjamin.

QUOTE: When explaining to others that I wanted to adapt The Arcades Project, the looks I received suggested scepticism regarding the text’s suitability.

QUOTE: However, I would like to argue within this article that the method of dialectical analysis developed by Benjamin in the 1920s and 1930s can be used to establish a dramaturgical model that is relevant to participatory art and performance.

From here he has to go on defense as to why performance practice suits the dialectical image. So I take my cue. I think I can make a good case with the inherent dialectics in both the landscape concept (where soundscape is derived) and ethnographic/documentary film. This is why I'm writing a thesis and providing documentation for my practice.

QUOTE: ...Benjamin’s method sought out dialectical images that could hold opposing realities in dialogue.

Am I not trying to work with opposing realities in sound? I'm not sure I'm willing to go further in a defense if this basic premise is not capitulated to. Obviously there are degrees to success in adapting a multilayered concept such as the dialectical image, however if two oppositional soundscapes - of my chosing - are not obvious as ground zero then I'm not sure I will get far.

Is it that foreign and enigmatic if I changed the title to Yin/Yang?... but you see... the dialectical image is so much more than that and its created through a fascinating use of language - a language that is thought provoking and inspiring as potential grounds for artistic expression.

QUOTE: The Arcades Project is full of images and ideas that pull the reader’s attention in different directions in order to establish a productive space for questioning the ways in which our experience is shaped by the material world.

QUOTE: (This) dialectical reading of city space enabled Benjamin to perceive and articulate the tension between empowerment and disempowerment, poverty and wealth, public and private. In recognizing tensions within the images he collected Benjamin found a moment in which the construction of the present could be contextualized in relation to the past – perhaps illuminating lost choices passed over in the process of creating the status quo. In Benjamin’s thinking, when space is perceived dialectically it is no longer experienced as a single material point, but as one possibility within a constellation of historical and social options (Benjamin 2007: 253–64)

YES “one possibility”. It’s funny to work this out in a sound composition since I often find myself confronted with myriad was of editing and presenting the soundscape. There is often the feeling that it could go in so many equally stimulating directions. But are willing to conclude this is too lofty? This can't be shown? I have yet to hear a compelling argument. I am at the beginning of a process, not the end. If someone wants to come along and do this better than myself I welcome it. I can only give the best version as I see it... I have nothing invested in "solving" Benjamin but I do have an investment in keeping things critically engaging for myself and technically challenging (not that I believe technicality is inherently better). I'd rather grow in this way than repeat past success. Did a score of mathematicians fail at Fermats theorem? Again, lest I be caught aggrandising…I bet it was still time worth spending to some, even in failure.

[fionaharnett]

Journal Task Week 2 Philosophy

Week 2: Philosophy as Method: Ethics, Aesthetics, Ontology of Photography Blog task: Discuss what you learnt in class today: how can philosophy assist in analysing photographs?

I found this lecture really interesting. I realised that I had very little knowledge on this subject. I have included some notes from the lecture below, as a way of clarifying my learning. To challenge myself I have decided to do philosophy as both my essay and presentation group.

Philosophy is an activity; it is a way of thinking about certain sorts of questions. It’s most distinctive feature is its use of logical argument. Philosophers typically deal in arguments: they either invent them, criticise other people’s or do both. They also analyse and clarify concepts. They often examine beliefs that most of us take for granted most of the time. They are concerned with questions; about religion, right and wrong, politics, the nature of the external world, the mind, science, art and numerous other topics. We discussed how most people live their lives without questioning their fundamental beliefs such as that killing is wrong, but why is it wrong? Is it wrong in every circumstance? What is meant by ‘wrong’ anyway?

PHILOSOPHICAL METHOD

• Use of logical argumentation

• Systematic, rigour

• Questioning of even the most fundamental beliefs (not necessarily in order to subvert them, but to clarify why we hold them)

• Thoroughness

• Criticality

• Openness to re-examination of issues/to change of mind where this seems necessary

• CLARITY (hopefully)

HOW MIGHT YOU USE PHILOSOPHY TO ANALYSE A PHOTOGRAPH:

ONTOLOGY - ontology asks What is photography? What makes it different from all other forms of image taking? What defines photography as a medium? What is specific about photography? What is unique about photography.

ETHICS - most ethical questions pertaining to photography are questions of applied ethics and you would need to think and research case by case. Examples of questions are ; Who should photograph these events and their victims and how? Where should such photographs be shown and to whom and why? What should the viewers make of the images – how to respond? When looking closely at the answers to these questions they are often found to fall into two categories of ethics that is: Consequentialism: The moral value of an act is based on the act’s consequences: if the consequences are good, the act was good ( the ends justify the means) and Deontology: You have to do your duty, i.e., you have to do what is right in the first place, regardless of the consequences – and you need to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do (doing what’s right is the motivation for the act).

AESTHETICS - Is photography aesthetically valuable at all? Is photography in fact an art at all?

 AESTHETICS & PHOTOGRAPHY By Jonathan Friday deals almost exclusively with these two questions.

 Is photography different from painting/drawing, and if so, how? Is photography transparent? If photography is not different from other media of visual art, then it has no intrinsic aesthetic value. It may have aesthetic value, but this value does not derive from its being photography.  If photography is transparent, then it is not a representational medium and as such it cannot create aesthetically valuable representations.

GROUP F/64 

This was a group founded by seven 20th-century San Francisco Bay photographers who shared a common photographic style characterised by sharply focused and carefully framed images seen through a particularly Western (U.S.) viewpoint. In part, they formed in opposition to the pictorialist  photographic style that had dominated much of the early 20th century.  They wanted to encourage  a new modernist aesthetic that was based on precisely exposed images of natural forms and found objects.

                                        Ansel Adams F/64

SEBASTIAO SALGADO

Sebastiao  Salgado - in 1984 and 1985 this part of Africa underwent a terrible drought.  War was on in Chad and in Ethiopia, and because of the drought, war amplified the exodus and pushed the people out of the villages in which they could have hoped to survive.  Salgado stayed several months there to photograph in Mali, Chad, Ethiopia, Sudan and Erythrea.  I want to study Salgado in more detail, there are so many philosophical questions you can ask about these pictures.   I think I will look at Salgado in my presentation/essay.

I find these pictures deeply moving and I believe they play an important part in educating people into a life they may otherwise have no perception of.  There is an argument that asks why would you take a picture like this?   My own view is that life is there to be documented and as long as no harm is being committed it is an important job.  

                                            Sebastião Salgado

                                             Sebastião Salgado 

THINKING ABOUT MY GRENFELL TOWER PROJECT (Beyond the Frame) using philosophy as method:

                                         Fiona Harnett   

I thought about taking pictures of Grenfell Tower when it happened and then became aware of the stories around coaches stopping so that  tourists could take a selfie with the tower like the picture below.  Did I make the right decision?   It’s debatable  - I’m not a tourist who wants a selfie but the question is why am I taking pictures?  Who is my audience?  An answer to that could be that I am taking them to pass a module on a photography degree, maybe a picture will be  shown in the university gallery but that doesn't feel like my motivation.  I feel like I struggle with where my photographs might  be shown and to whom and why?  and what should the viewers make of the images?  That feels like a question for the audience not the photographer.  Who should photograph these events and their victims and how?  I feel like I am finding my way with this question, sometimes I feel I have strayed out of my depth e.g. I have learnt not to lead a conversation onto the night the fire took place.  So many residents suffer from post traumatic shock and I hadn’t realised how easy it would be to trigger flash backs.  I really need to find a way to answer these questions, as I feel it would be an important development in my journey as a photographer.

                                                                   Taken from google image

                                     Taken from google image

Was it wrong to take this image?  I wonder who she is, what is her name?  An unidentified picture of a woman who comes up when you google Grenfell Tower.  I can imagine her story, but that would be imposing a narrative on the picture.  The picture certainly has a ‘punctum’ my heart lurches when I see it, I identify with the distress on her face, the tissue in her hand, and the yellow post it note.  Did she have the chance to say no to the photographer? probably not, would she care, whilst in this state of distress, again I don’t think so.  I think there is an argument that this woman is vulnerable and the photographer has taken and shared a picture of her.  If I saw my picture on the web like this, would I be happy it was there.?...no!  This is a similar argument to the Salgado pictures, and yet I was happy he took them, but unsure about the picture above.  The arguments are complex, and I can see how each picture would need to be considered individually, with people falling into different camps. 

ONTOLOGY - is the philosophical study of being.  It looks at concepts that directly relate to being, in particular reality, existence and becoming.  What is specific about photography? What is unique about photography?  

Are images that exist on the computer only even photography - there is no photograph to hold or display.   

 Roland Barthes (Camera Lucida, 1980).  On the very first page, Barthes writes that he “was overcome by an ‘ontological’ desire: I wanted to learn at all costs what photography was ‘in itself’.” 

AESTHETICS - Is photography aesthetically valuable at all? Is photography in fact an art at all?

Kant thought that for aesthetic opinions to be subjective they should be about form.  The work should show an undefined purposiveness,.  A purpose we do not have access to.  Composition and design were what mattered.

My understanding of this is that without a good composition and design, no amount of emotion, or post processing will rescue the image.  I think Salgado’s images show optimum levels of composition, design,  and undefined purposiveness.  Kant’s idea of aesthetics fits  perfectly the popularity of Salgado’s work.  I find it interesting how some pictures seem to gather an audience where others don’t.  The picture below which gathered viewers at The Photographers Gallery is another good example of Kant’s theory of aesthetics.  I need to think about this more in my own photography.  

       Migrants, Mayra, Picnic Across the Border, Tecate Mexico, USA,  by JR

[b0okish-world]

A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking

Synopsis: Was there a beginning of time? Could time run backwards? Is the universe infinite or does it have boundaries? These are just some of the questions considered in the internationally acclaimed masterpiece by one of the world's greatest thinkers. It begins by reviewing the great theories of the cosmos from Newton to Einstein, before delving into the secrets which still lie at the heart of space and time - from the Big Bang to black holes, via spiral galaxies and string theory. To this day A Brief History of Time remains a staple of the scientific canon, and its succinct and clear language continues to introduce millions to the universe and its wonders. Since its first publication in 1988, and it's last revision in 1996, there have been some remarkable new discoveries in physics. This new edition includes updates from Stephen Hawking with his latest thoughts about the No Boundary Proposal and offers new information about dark energy, the information paradox, eternal inflation, the microwave background radiation observations, and the discovery of gravitational waves.

My thoughts: I was looking for this book for a long time, and even more eager ever since I’ve watched James Marsh’s movie, “The Theory of Everything”. And now I can take a deep breath and enjoy myself with this fine feeling of having done with an onerous task of my life.Obviously I fell in love with the book and all the detailed description of modern physics’ theories. I remember when I was in high school an astute friend of mine used to discuss about relativity and four dimensional universe and though I enjoyed the subject it was almost the last time I tried cosmology related books. I guess I will do it from often from now on.

And about the book:

Hawking tried to describe all the important theories of modern physics as simple, brief and apprehensible as possible to common readership. His triumph is admitted by sales!

He started with classic theories, then the revolutionising relativity and then its flaws probed by the uncertainty principle. Now we find ourselves with the interesting subject on black holes and the possibility of time travelling and then with way more complicated mathematical theories related to quantum mechanics and the quantum theory of gravity suggested by Hawking himself, and even the latest and most baffling of them all the string theory. I suppose ever since the publication of this book they advanced even more rapidly and staggeringly.

I categorised this also as a philosophic book with regard to its notes to God’s role in creation. Though it seems Hawking doesn’t believe if there’s any. He was criticised a lot about his language regarding god and I heard he changed his tone in his later publications. I should see that for myself but for now I’d like to mention some quotes in this regard:

“One could say that free will is an illusion anyway. If there really is a complete unified theory that governs everything, it presumably also determines your actions. But it does so in a way that is impossible to calculate for an organism that is as complicated as a human being. The reason we say that humans have free will is because we can’t predict what they will do. However, if the human then goes off in a rocket ship and comes back before he or she set off, we will be able to predict what he or she will do because it will be part of recorded history. Thus, in that situation, the time traveler would have no free will.”

“We find ourselves in a bewildering world. We want to make sense of what we see around us and to ask: What is the nature of the universe? What is our place in it and where did it and we come from? Why is it the way it is?”

“When we combine quantum mechanics with general relativity, there seems to be a new possibility that did not arise before: that space and time together might form a finite, four-dimensional space without singularities or boundaries, like the surface of the earth but with more dimensions. It seems that this idea could explain many of the observed features of the universe, such as its large-scale uniformity and also the smaller-scale departures from homogeneity, like galaxies, stars, and even human beings. It could even count for the arrow of time that we observe. But if the universe is completely self-contained, with no singularities or boundaries, and completely described by a unified theory, that has profound implications for the role of God as Creator.”

“Einstein once asked the question: “How much choice did God have in constructing the universe?” If the no boundary proposal is correct, he had no freedom at all to choose initial conditions. He would, of course, still have the freedom to choose the laws that the universe obeyed. This, however, may not really have been all that much of a choice; there may well be only one, or a small number, of complete unified theories, such as the heterotic string theory, that are self-consistent and allow the existence of structures as complicated human beings who can investigate the laws of the universe and ask about the nature of God.”

“Up to now, most scientists have been too occupied with the development of new theories that describe what the universe is to ask the question why. On the other hand, the people whose business it is to ask why, the philosophers, have not been able to keep up with the advance of scientific theories. In the eighteenth century, philosophers considered the whole of human knowledge, including science, to be their field and discussed questions such as: did the universe have a beginning? However, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, science became too technical and mathematical for the philosophers, or anyone else except a few specialists. Philosophers reduced the scope their injuries so much that Wittgenstein, the most famous philosopher of this century, said, “The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.” What a comedown from the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant!”

“However, if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for them we would know the mind of God.”

Date finished: 5th May, 2019 Pages: 272 Rating: ★★★★★

[the-utmost-bound]

The Happiness Hypothesis: Chapter 8, “The Felicity of Virtue”

This chapter was about virtue, and the claim that leading a virtuous life will lead us to happiness.  Haidt points out that our idea of virtue has changed radically in the last few hundred years; he then evaluates this claim in light of both the old and new ideas of virtue.

Here’s the quotes he starts with:

Epicurus: It is impossible to live the pleasant life without also living sensibly, nobly and justly, and it is impossible to live sensibly, nobly and justly without living pleasantly.

Buddha: Set your heart on doing good.  Do it over and over again, and you will be filled with joy.  A fool is happy until his mischief turns against him.  And a good man may suffer until his goodness flowers.

Is this true, or is it just what authority figures want us to believe so that we’ll behave?  But virtue does not necessarily mean doing what we’re told; sometimes it means ignoring what our parents say, and running off on grand adventures, and building character in the process.

Haidt tells the story of Ben Franklin, who runs away from his apprenticeship with his brother (an unvirtuous act according to the “do what you’re told” model of virtue), but who actively works to cultivate virtue, and ends up very successful at life.  The story of Ben Franklin makes it sound like Haidt views virtue as an internal endeavor -- figuring out what’s important to you, and then cultivating your own virtues and living according to them -- rather than an external thing where you blindly follow whatever you’re told to do.

Haidt spends the beginning of the chapter explaining why our modern conception of virtue is weird.

In ancient Greece, people had a very different concept of virtue than we do today.

It was not all about selflessness, giving to charity, and repressing our sexuality.

Rather, Aristotle’s idea of virtue, called arete, was about excellence: about doing something well.  “The arete of a knife is to cut well; the arete of an eye is to see well[.]”

“He was saying that a good life is one where you develop your strengths, realize your potential, and become what it is in your nature to become.”

The Virtues of the Ancients

The ancients wrote about morality in a different way than we do today.

(1) They wrote about virtues (e.g. “honesty, justice, courage, benevolence, self-restraint, and respect for authority”), and “specified actions that were good and bad with respect to those virtues”.  The virtues were not just for helping others; they were supposed to “benefit the person who cultivates them.”

(2) They “rely heavily on maxims and role models rather than proofs and logic.”  This form of moral instruction inspires the elephant instead of reasoning with the rider.  This is good, because it’s ultimately the elephant that makes the decisions.

(3) The ancient texts “emphasize practice and habit rather than factual knowledge.”  You can know all the moral rules that you want, but it takes practice to become a virtuous person.  Practice is how you train the elephant.  So the ancient texts give exercises and activities that you can use to cultivate virtue.

How the West Was Lost

Two principles led Western thought (especially during the enlightenment) away from this conception of ethics.

(1) Parsimony: science teaches us to “search for the smallest set of laws that can explain the enormous variety of events in the world”.  People applied this thinking to morality, and started looking for a single moral principle from which all morality could be derived, instead of using these long lists of virtues.

(2) Rationality: reason was supposed to be the center of the human mind, the thing that separated us from animals, so naturally, reason should be in charge of morality as well.

Two enlightenment philosophers, Kant and Bentham, tried to propose a single moral principle from which all of ethics could be derived.

Kant suggested the “categorical imperative”: moral laws should apply universally to everyone at all times, so if you are trying to decide whether an action is moral, you need to ask whether it could be proposed as a universal law.  For instance, Haidt says “If you are planning to break a promise that has become inconvenient, can you really propose a universal rule that states people ought to break promises that have become inconvenient?”

Bentham proposed utilitarianism: the principle of creating the most good for the most people.  An action was moral if it increased global utility.

The followers of Kant (”deontologists”) still argue with the followers of Bentham (”consequentialists”).

But they agree on many important things:

(1) “Decisions should be based ultimately on one principle only, be it the categorical imperative or the maximization of utility.”

(2) “They both insist that only the rider can make such decisions because moral decision making requires logical reasoning and sometimes even mathematical calculation.”

(3) “They both distrust intuitions and gut feelings, which they see as obstacles to good reasoning.”

(4) “And they both shun the particular in favor of the abstract: You don’t need a rich, thick description of the people involved, or of their beliefs and cultural traditions.  You just need a few facts and a ranked list of their likes and dislikes (if you are a utilitarian).  It doesn’t matter what country of historical era you are in; it doesn’t matter whether the people involved are your friends, your enemies, or complete strangers.  The moral law, like a law of physics, works the same for all people at all times.”

These two philosophies have changed the way western society thinks about morality.

“The philosopher Edmund Pincoffs has argued that consequentialists and deontologists worked together to convince Westerners in the twentieth century that morality is the study of moral quandaries and dilemmas.  Where the Greeks focused on the character of a person and asked what kind of person we should each aim to become, modern ethics focuses on actions, asking when a particular action is right or wrong.”

“This turn from character ethics to quandary ethics has turned moral education away from virtues and toward moral reasoning.  If morality is about dilemmas, then moral education is training in problem solving.”

Instead of teaching children specific moral facts, we teach them how to solve moral problems on their own.

Haidt has two problems with this.

(1) “It weakens morality and limits its scope.”  Ideas of virtue used to infuse everything a person would do.  Now we only think about morality when confronting specific moral dilemmas, which are usually “tradeoffs between self-interest and the interests of others”.  Morality applies when we’re wondering whether to cheat on a partner, or whether to give to charity.  We no longer use morality to think about things like working hard for our own long-term gain, or developing a skill.

(2) “[I]t relies on bad psychology.”  We teach children moral principles, and show them examples of other people reasoning their way through moral quandaries.  And children are supposed to take away from this the ability to reason morally.  Which they do; when they sit down and think about it, people are able to apply the principles and come to a moral conclusion.  But this doesn’t translate into action; it takes more than reason to persuade the elephant.  Haidt gives an example of how he believed, rationally, in the virtue of vegetarianism, but never actually acted on that principle until he saw a slaughterhouse video that viscerally disgusted him.

The Virtues of Positive Psychology

There has been pushback against the modern idea of morality.

Some of it is from conservative Christians.

Some of it is from a philosopher named Alasdair MacIntyre who argues that “creating a universal, context-free morality was doomed from the beginning” and that we need specific virtues, grounded in a specific cultural tradition, in order to find meaning and purpose in life.

And some of it is from positive psychology.

Positive psychology was founded by Martin Seligman, who noticed that psychology was only focusing on the problems and pathologies we experience.  We have a whole book (the DSM) designed for classifying problems, but no equivalent diagnostic manual for recognizing the specific ways that people can live a good life.

So Seligman and another psychologist named Peterson tried creating a diagnostic manual of strengths and virtues.  Their goal was to make the list applicable to any human culture.  So they looked through every list of virtues they could find, and wrote down six very broad classes of virtues that every culture considers important.  Those virtues are: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence.  Cultures may disagree on how to weight these virtues, but they all agree that they are, indeed, virtues.

For each one, Peterson and Seligman also made a list of “strengths of character”, which are specific ways of achieving each virtue.  For wisdom, for instance, the list is curiosity, love of learning, judgment, ingenuity, emotional intelligence, and perspective.

One piece of research that’s come out of this list is: focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses.

It’s easier and more rewarding to cultivate strengths rather than weaknesses.

And sufficient strength in one virtue can compensate for weakness in another.

People who try to fix weaknesses will often find themselves giving up in despair.

But people who work on their strengths will often find themselves improving as a human being.

Haidt spends the end of the chapter trying to answer the “virtue hypothesis”, the claim that living virtuously will make us happy.

Hard Questions, Easy Answers

For the ancient idea of virtue, it’s easy to answer the virtue hypothesis.  If virtue just means cultivating personal excellence, and you focus on your strengths (things you find intrinsically rewarding), then of course living virtuously can bring you happiness.

But what about for “our restricted modern understanding of morality as altruism”?  Does acting against our own self-interest make us happy, or benefit us in some way?

Religious leaders say yes: if you act virtuously, you will go to heaven, or be reincarnated in a better form during your next lifetime.

But this belief in divine punishment / reward can be traced to various psychological principles (whether or not god is real).

(1) Immanent justice: this is the belief that, if you do something bad, then something bad will happen to you in return.  It’s very common among children at a certain stage of development but we see it in adults too, as people try to make sense of terrible things happening in their (or others’) lives.  It’s part of the human instinct for reciprocity.

(2) The myth of pure evil (discussed in Chapter 4): we think people are purely good or purely evil, but really, they aren’t.  “Moral motivations (justice, honor, loyalty, patriotism) enter into most acts of violence, including terrorism and war.  Most people believe their actions are morally justified.”  So Haidt’s argument is that, if heaven and hell existed, few people would qualify for either.

Science also gives us an easy answer: the virtues evolved because they are good for us, and help us to propagate our genes.  Kindness and cooperation help us either through kin altruism (helping others who bear the same genes) or reciprocal altruism (you’re kind, so someone else is kind to you in return).

But just because something is evolutionarily beneficial doesn’t mean it makes us happy.  Our genes also motivate us to seek status instead of happiness, and that definitely makes us less happy.

Also, what about practicing the virtues when they don’t lead to reciprocal altruism?  What about performing acts of kindness that you know will never be repaid?  Does that still make us happy?

So neither religion nor science’s easy answer is satisfying.

Hard Questions, Hard Answers

So does helping people really make us happy?

Studies have shown that altruism correlates with happiness, but this could just be because happier people are more likely to be altruistic.  Indeed, when you make people happier, they are more likely to behave altruistically.

Is there any evidence that altruism makes people happy?  Yes, but it depends on the life stage.  For teenagers, studies have found that volunteering increases prosocial behavior but doesn’t increase happiness; for adults volunteering does increase happiness; and this is especially pronounced for the elderly.

This could partially be because of the social benefits -- teenagers already have good social lives and don’t need to find a community through volunteering, but as people get older (and especially once they’re elderly), volunteering provides a valuable source of community.

It could also be because of life narratives.  Volunteering helps you build a good life narrative, so it matters more for adults who already have a solid life narrative to build on.  Also, “in old age, generativity, relationship, and spiritual strivings come to matter more, but achievement strivings seem out of place,” so volunteer work is especially fitting for an elderly person’s life story.

The Future of Virtue

"Scientific research supports the virtue hypothesis, even when it is reduced to the claim that altruism is good for you.”

“When it is evaluated in the way that Ben Franklin meant it, as a claim about virtue more broadly, it becomes so profoundly true that it raises the question of whether cultural conservatives are correct in their critique of modern life and its restricted, permissive morality.”

As a society, we’ve lost a strong sense of shared cultural values, and this has led us into anomie.

We’ve gone from a society of producers, with values such as self-restraint, to a society of consumers, where people are encouraged to seek personal fulfillment.

Also, our society is increasingly diverse, and values inclusivity.  This leads people to seek out a least common denominator of virtue, thereby ignoring some of the specific ones that give each culture its flavor and give people a strong grounding in their values.

So, as a society, we have undergone tradeoffs: we’ve chosen inclusivity, which makes life much better for immigrants, women, African Americans, gay people, etc., even if it erases our strong foundation of virtues.

Even if you don’t think the tradeoffs were worth it, there’s no way to go back to the 1950s, or to an ethnically homogeneous pre-consumer society.

“Diversity” has become a positive buzzword in liberal culture, but there are two kinds of diversity, demographic and moral.  Demographic is good; it helps us include groups that were previously mistreated.  But moral diversity is what causes anomie and conflict.

“Liberals are right to work for a society that is open to people of every demographic group, but conservatives might be right in believing that at the same time we should work much harder to create a common, shared identity.”

Haidt thinks there’s something to the conservative view that we ought to teach children morals and values, instead of leaving them to figure it out themselves.

It may be too late for this now, given the current state of the culture war.  If this is going to happen, it will need to come from some sort of grassroots movement where a community joins together to educate children according to a particular set of virtues.

Maybe we won’t have as solid or cohesive of a culture as we would if we abandoned our commitment to diversity, but we will be a more just culture.

[khrsnabagus]

False Rationality Within Irrationality

Title: The Dilemma of Rational Human Effort: The Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School

Author: Sindhunata

Publisher: Gramedia Pustaka Utama

Published Year: January 2, 2020 Print

ISBN: 9786020630120

Thickness: XXXV+292 pages

Price: Rp. 80,000

Has it ever occurred to us, "Does this history lead to progress or setbacks?" "Is our life in this post-modern era better than in the pre-modern era?" or maybe “I wish I had never been born into this world because this world is getting worse and not getting better?” If the above questions have ever crossed your mind, then this book is suitable as an analytical knife and surgical tool to criticize the world and ourselves.

Critical theory first shocked the world of German philosophy in the twentieth century, the theory pioneered by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno from the Frankfurt School, Germany is still being studied and is suitable as a new point of view to see the symptoms of post-Modernism, post Truth, consumerism, and identity politics that have been very disturbing.

The advantage of this book is that the author can describe the development of critical theory from its inception, although perhaps some readers have never or have not heard of philosophical figures such as Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, and Sigmond Freud. With simple languages, all readers, including ordinary philosophy book readers can follow this book.

However, the weakness of this Sindhunata book is in the explanation of the material and words that are repeated, even though without repeated explanations the reader can understand from the material presented and there are still some typos in some words.

What's the page, other than that it's unfortunate that there is no section on "critical questions" to criticize Horkheimer and Adorno's Theory, it's natural as a scientific science every theory must able to be validated, the rest I don't see any problem in this book.

So this book is divided into 6 Chapters, and from each of the chapters it is divided again into several parts, I will get to the gist of each part of the chapter.

Chapter 1 Introduction

Here we are introduced to the origins of Max Horkheimer finding his career as a philosopher, he is a Jew and his father is a businessman, by the time Horkheimer was just 21 years old he had become a Director at his father's company.

As a man born into a genuine Jewish family, his father from childhood educated him harshly and authoritarianly, besides that Horkheimer had a sense of compassion for one of the workers in his father's company who had an epileptic seizure, this is where the desire to create a new society emerged from Horkheimer's self, and also the origin of his thoughts. theoretical at the Frankfurt school.

Chapter 2. Historical and Theoretical Background of the Frankfurt School

In this chapter, it is explained, the journey and how the Frankfurt school formulates critical theory, they combine 4 philosophers' thoughts, Immanuel Kant's Critique, Friedrich Hegel's Dialectic, Karl Marx's Political-Economic Criticism, and finally Immanuel Kant's Psychoanalysis. By combining the 4 thoughts of the philosophers above they can create an analytical knife to critical of society.

Chapter 3. Critical Theory as Emancipatory Theory

Critical theory is different from traditional theory, traditional theory is neutral to external facts and does not intend to influence these facts. For Horkheimer the traditional theory failed to become an emancipatory theory. Horkheimer established the goal of critical theory which

Later it will create a new awareness which then tore the irrationality of this era.

For Horkheimer today's society has lost its rationality, it can be revealed if we tear the current economic system, and Horkheimer believes that critical theory can be an emancipatory theory that helps society.

Chapter. 4. The Dilemma of Rational Human Effort: The Emergence of Objective Intellect and the Rise of Instrumental Intellect

Well, this chapter is my favorite part of this book, because it explains the essence of critical theory criticism. Horkheimer divides the mind into two, namely the objective and the instrumentalist mind.

Objective reason is the mind that exists in the objective world outside the individual and the opposite of objective reason is the instrumentalist mind which emphasizes itself as a tool to produce use, and in the human journey, objective reason gradually becomes instrumentalist which ultimately preserves the system. and circumstances, we can see examples of this in various tragic events in modern times.

We make religion a mere commodity, for example, Eid al-Fitr, where a large discount is held, Eid al-Fitr is only a mere skin, the big discount is not to celebrate the day of victory, but there is a goal of how to increase production for the owners of capital, and on the consumer side to vent consumerism lust to buy new clothes.

In addition, Horkheimer also explains how we who initially wanted to control nature for the sake of production ended up oppressing nature AND SUCCESSFUL but eventually nature turned to oppress us, as well as the era of the Technocracy government, where currently the Technocrats who hold power, often not paying attention to society.

Chapter 5. The Dialectic of Rational Human Effort: Rational Human Effort is a Myth

In this last chapter, Horkheimer finally fell into pessimism, he who initially believed that his Critical Theory would become an emancipatory theory thought it would be useless, because in the history of mankind, it began when Greek philosophers developed the science of philosophy which at its peak was the Aufklarung Age, when people think they have attained enlightenment, when in fact it is the opposite!

Rationality turns into Irrationality, and enlightenment becomes myth, human history has always been like that based on its Dialectic of Enlightenment method, because every rational human effort results in irrational, Horkheimer's critical theory eventually becomes irrational because it includes that effort!

Closing. Analyzing the Technocratic System in the World Using Critical Theory

In the last part of this book, actually, the author wants to invite us to criticize today's phenomena by using the Dialectic of Enlightenment method. However, I feel that I should not discuss the last chapter in this book review because it is better for the reader to read on their own so that they feel slapped and critical when thinking.

Instead, I will replace the topic of the last chapter with a critique of the Technocratic system which the author regrets not discussing, even though the Technocratic system is currently running rampant due to the Covid-19 Pandemic and I will use the example of Indonesia where Technocratic first appeared during the New Order government.

For those of you who don't know what technocracy is, technocracy itself is a form of government when technical experts master decision-making in their respective fields. Engineers, scientists, health professionals, and people with knowledge, skills or abilities will form governing bodies. The critique of the technocratic system itself is one of the criticisms developed by Max Horkheimer which does not contradict the political-economic critique of Karl Marx,

Why does the technocratic system happen? There are two main reasons, namely that technological developments are increasingly obeying their own laws and getting out of human control and thus modern technology does not humanize the work process, instead enslaving humans. This is what brings us back to Chapter V, because Horkheimer deeply regrets when efficiency, productivity, and planning and technocratic policies are highly upheld, even though technocrats are "gods of instrumentalist reason" humans are willing to obey what the technocrats say whose truth is guaranteed from politics and economics?

But is it true? Should we reject Technocrats and Technocrats? If we look back, technocracy in Indonesia was born by the authoritarian New Order regime, so the word technocracy is synonymous with the government of that regime. At that time, Suharto asked for the help of Widjojo Nitisastro, Ali Wardhana, Emil Salim, Moh Sadli, and Subroto as the President's Team of Economic Experts. They were dubbed the “Berkeley Mafia” by David Ronsom in reference to the University of California at Berkeley in the United States, where most of these economics technocrats received their doctoral education.

The four technocrats in the economic field initiated the "Developmentist Country" project which relies on Indonesia's economic planning on the Neo-Classical economic paradigm, Keynesianism, and the five-stage theory of development by Walt Whitman Rostow. Unfortunately, like the “Developmental State”, the “Technological State” project also failed in the end.

The reason is the failure of the group of engineers or technologists to determine the right technology development priorities. Trillions of rupiah are spent on developing aerospace technology. Meanwhile, the budget for developing appropriate technology that has a direct impact on society is ignored. The failure to prioritize technology development is also supported by symbolic nationalism in the style of the New Order which is more concerned with the grandeur of technological development achievements than its benefits to society (tends to lead to a Fascist government system).

In the 21 years of the collapse of the New Order, the technocratic system reached its peak at the end of 2019, when the Covid-19 Pandemic grew. The COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia and other countries has again made people worry about the involvement of scientists in public policy making. COVID-19 is a phenomenon that requires the intervention of experts in the fields of science and health to make policies with the scientific method. The discussion about the involvement of scientists and experts reminds us of the form of public policy making that was popular during the New Order era, namely technocracy.

A good question is not, “Should we submit to technocrats?” but "How can we participate in order to control the policies of technocrats for the public interest?". The public must have a high and objective political sensitivity that is not based on scientific conspiracies against technocrats as they do with politicians.

No matter how much the technocrats claim to be "neutral" and "free of interests", in essence, when they are given the opportunity to formulate public policies, they are determining the lives of many people. Here we can refer to Horkhemier's criticisms and concerns when he considers that the technocrats do not understand humans in themselves, they only see humans as mere tools. Therefore, it is our duty to monitor them and if necessary give criticism as society does to politicians.

Even though Horkheimer uses the notion of totality to formulate his critical theory, it is unfortunate that this also makes him a pessimist, he is trapped in 2 conditions, completely free or completely isolated. As a scientific theory, we have the right to criticize Horkheimer's Critical Theory, because criticism of a theory does not mean that the theory is "useless!"

[yangjiao0711-blog]

Unknown to People, Hiroshi Sugimoto

The side of Hiroshi Sugimoto that you're not familiar with

Sugimoto was born in 1948 in oto machi (today's taitou district), Tokyo, the family is a successful ginza beauty supplies business "yinmei", his father for entrepreneurs.He grew up in a few unbombed areas and considers himself a pre-war Japanese.The bleak perception of post-war ruin and future is what remains of sugimoto before he decided to become a photographic artist.The fatalistic feeling caused by this kind of memory led to sugimoto's lack of compassion for "reality" and "humanity" in his artistic creation in the future -- almost all people who have seen his works will be touched by the hard side of the truth he deliberately created.Under the influence of his mother, sugimoto entered a famous private Christian school to receive western art education in painting and sculpture.He joined the photography club when he was in high school.Considering the possibility of inheriting the family business in the future, I studied in the economics department of lijiao university. 70s is the trend of Japanese student movement, the sugimoto bosi graduated from college without the intention of inheritance, in the mother agreed to go to the United States.When Mr. Sugimoto went to California in 1970 to study, the hippie movement had just died down with the street protests of the 1960s, and he was greeted by a countercultural trend in California in the 1970s, in which young people saw western materialism as overdone and began to move toward eastern mysticism.After studying photography for four years at the Los Angeles art school, and graduating from college in 1974, Mr. Sugimoto drove his Volkswagen trailer, packed it with furniture and a few friends across the country to New York.At that time, New York was the center of the world of art. Although the pop art trend in the American art world had just ended, an intellectual atmosphere such as minimalist art and conceptual art was emerging. The atmosphere of New York shocked hiroshi sugimoto and made him seriously consider and determine the development path of artistic creation as his life.

In 1975, he won a guggenheim scholarship and began traveling around the United States to film the theater series.In 1976, he received a government-funded national endowment for the arts scholarship, allowing him to travel the world and begin the seascape series.In the same year, hiroshi sugimoto published his first series of works, "the museum of perspective", which confirmed his theme of visualizing time and history through photography.In 1977, sugimoto held his first solo exhibition at the south gallery in Japan.In 1980, sugimoto held his first overseas solo exhibition at Sonnabend art gallery in New York, and successively exhibited in modern art museum in Los Angeles, metropolitan museum of art in New York, guggenheim art museum in Germany, Cartier foundation in France and other places, receiving high praise.Through sugimoto's creation, what was originally seen as a low-freedom photographic medium has revealed new possibilities.In 2001, sugimoto became the second Japanese to receive the hasu camera foundation international prize for photography, known as the Nobel Prize for photography.

Series, philosophy, reality

In 2005, Tokyo, Japan's mori art museum held a very important and successful large-scale photography retrospective - the End of Time (End of the Time), sugimoto bo exhibition company across the 1975-2005 series of different period of 30 years, over 100 units, new and unpublished works on display at the same Time, is the work of the most complete his life.In 2009, hiroshi sugimoto founded the "odawara cultural foundation" and began to conceive the natural space "jiangzhipu observatory" in his heart. From the conception to the completion, it took hiroshi sugimoto many years.Mr. Sugimoto wants the audience to return to their original purpose here, to think about their relationship with the world and the universe through nature.

The point of photography is to capture the image of a moment.Yet sugimoto has been exploring time, matter, existence, memory and eternity.In other words, it's the opposite of what photography is all about."Seascape" series originated from exploring the common memory of mankind for the ocean, and the subsequent series of "portrait" and "theater" all revolve around the theme of these approximate philosophical propositions.With the help of cool photography technology, the artist highlights the calm texture of the original machine in the photographic works, and presents the poetic of zero-degree machine with a silent and fading time vision.Sugimoto has been photographing at the American museum of nature since 1975.The natural specimen scenes he chose were recreated from real images taken by the builders during their field trips.Through the lens of the camera, these lifeless, motionless imitations regain their true vitality.In the process of creation of such artistic concept, a weird reality born of illusion is reshaped again.Through this series of works, sugimoto has made a profound exploration of the mysterious and unspeakable nature of the real world.

It was a hit

Although doing things with the Japanese have always been cautious and low-key, sugimoto is the major international auction house the most popular photographer.Since his first foray into photography in 1974, his prices have soared, sweeping international auctions and setting Asian auction records for contemporary photography that no one has yet surpassed.He is the only photographer among four Japanese artists on The Times' list of the 200 greatest artists of the 20th century, along with takashi murakami, yayoi kusama and yong noguchi.His seascape series, which seems to have no technicality at all, like very ordinary snapshots of landscapes, is the most time-consuming and difficult of all his creations, and the most expensive of all his series."Black Sea, Ozuluce/Yellow Sea, Cheju/Red Sea, Safaga," a trio of Mr. Sugimoto's seascapes, sold for $1.65 million in New York in 2008, setting a record for a contemporary Asian photograph.The "seascape" series made up seven of the top 10 highest bids at a public auction.

Sugimoto's work is also popular with artists in many other fields.Irish band U2, which has been the power of rock music for 30 years, released the album "No Line on the Horizon". They chose "boden sea", one of the works of hiroshi sugimoto's "seascape series", as the album cover.The photo was also featured on a 2006 album by experimental electronic musicians Richard Chartier and Taylor Deupree.

As a concept artist, sugimoto bo chose to use photography as a medium of expression, and is different from general post modern artists generally to the process of contempt, he has a Japanese folk art aesthetics in the traditional craft of persistent and stuck, he abide by traditional photography, with 8 x10 large format cameras, the old silver halide washing technology, carefully study the safeguard its creative ideas in translated into works perfectly.His high-quality works have won him the favor of the world's top galleries such as pace and gagosian, and the galleries, museums and art institutions that make exhibitions for him are also the first line of the world and spread all over the world.Sugimoto finally captured the spiritual world of the human mind and restored some kind of visual memory, which is the value of his works.

What distinguishes Mr. Sugimoto from other artists

Sugimoto, department of life grew up in Japan a few untouched by bombing areas, since the childhood to accept western oil painting art education, and in the graduate study in the United States, after the study, become a famous photographers, artists, the establishment of the concept of photography, form a little affected by Japan's domestic photography circle, is one of the few independent of Japanese photographer photography development system.Although sugimoto received a complete western education, he had a deep knowledge of Japanese ancient art, architecture, literature and history. He brought eastern and western historiography, philosophy and aesthetics into photography, which was of great significance. He tried to use photos to present the depth of human memory and elevate photographic works to the level of artworks.

With the rapid globalization of the world today, Japan's world-class contemporary art creation, in addition to yayoi kusama's wave point, nara meizhi's child face, takashi murakami's cartoon, minghe kohei's deer, miyashima's installation and so on, naturally, sugimoto hiroshi's photography.Hiroshi sugimoto received a kind of courtesy that Japanese photographers never had in the art world, which may be attributed to the cosmopolitan nature of his creation: he considered the origin of human consciousness and memory by taking time as the core of his creation.His creation transcends the eastern and western philosophies, including the thinking of Hegel, Kant and Marx, as well as the artistic conception of eastern zen.Although he was a Japanese artist, hiroshi sugimoto did not stick to his exploration of Oriental culture and identity, nor did he respond to the social status quo in the United States at that time. Instead, he looked at human history from a more macro perspective, and what he discussed was how art could establish a connection with the whole human world.This is another reason why he was different from the photographer community and even the Japanese photographer community.

What sugimoto is looking for is a concept that separates the camera from the world.He is no longer concerned with his own problems, but with his relationship to the world of ideas we perceive.Photography and the human feeling are not two different things, photography just extends our process of facing the world.His work also looks easy to learn: defocus, plus long exposures.The seascape series has spent 20 years photographing the sea around the world, but the composition is almost identical, with the sky and the sea splitting the picture in two.He shot the theater, which was exposed from the screening to the end of the film, and the dark theater in the final picture was illuminated by the screen light in the middle, and the film screen became a dazzling white light due to overexposure.He shot architecture series, the idea comes from his idea that "buildings are the tombs of buildings", so he set the focus to infinity, and these hard giants only left a blurred shadow in his lens, "photographing the haunting architectural soul."For duchamp's master, hiroshi sugimoto, how to create a new world by taking the image away from the symbolic form of the object was his concern.And the invention of this photographic language is where he really shines.

Mr. Sugimoto's success is not just because his photographs command the highest auction prices in Asia, but because his experience is particularly intriguing.This world-class photographer combines western conceptual art with eastern zen philosophy, using photography to express time and memory, giving people endless thoughts.Just a black-and-white image of the world, but very quiet shocking!

[pluresmundos-blog]

Philosophy of space and time

Philosophy of space and time is the branch of philosophy concerned with the issues surrounding the ontology, epistemology, and character of space and time. While such ideas have been central to philosophy from its inception, the philosophy of space and time was both an inspiration for and a central aspect of early analytic philosophy. The subject focuses on a number of basic issues, including whether time and space exist independently of the mind, whether they exist independently of one another, what accounts for time's apparently unidirectional flow, whether times other than the present moment exist, and questions about the nature of identity (particularly the nature of identity over time). The earliest recorded Western philosophy of time was expounded by the ancient Egyptian thinker Ptahhotep (c. 2650–2600 BC) who said: Follow your desire as long as you live, and do not perform more than is ordered, do not lessen the time of following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit... — 11th maxim of Ptahhotep [1] The Vedas, the earliest texts on Indian philosophy and Hindu philosophy, dating back to the late 2nd millennium BC, describe ancient Hindu cosmology, in which the universe goes through repeated cycles of creation, destruction, and rebirth, with each cycle lasting 4,320,000 years.[2] Ancient Greek philosophers, including Parmenides and Heraclitus, wrote essays on the nature of time.[3] Incas regarded space and time as a single concept, named pacha (Quechua: pacha, Aymara: pacha).[4][5][6] Plato, in the Timaeus, identified time with the period of motion of the heavenly bodies, and space as that in which things come to be. Aristotle, in Book IV of his Physics, defined time as the number of changes with respect to before and after, and the place of an object as the innermost motionless boundary of that which surrounds it. In Book 11 of St. Augustine's Confessions, he ruminates on the nature of time, asking, "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not." He goes on to comment on the difficulty of thinking about time, pointing out the inaccuracy of common speech: "For but few things are there of which we speak properly; of most things we speak improperly, still the things intended are understood."[7] But Augustine presented the first philosophical argument for the reality of Creation (against Aristotle) in the context of his discussion of time, saying that knowledge of time depends on the knowledge of the movement of things, and therefore time cannot be where there are no creatures to measure its passing (Confessions Book XI ¶30; City of God Book XI ch.6). In contrast to ancient Greek philosophers who believed that the universe had an infinite past with no beginning, medieval philosophers and theologians developed the concept of the universe having a finite past with a beginning, now known as Temporal finitism. The Christian philosopher John Philoponus presented early arguments, adopted by later Christian philosophers and theologians of the form "argument from the impossibility of the existence of an actual infinite", which states:[8] "An actual infinite cannot exist." "An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite." "∴ An infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist." In the early 11th century, the Muslim physicist Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen or Alhazen) discussed space perception and its epistemological implications in his Book of Optics (1021). He also rejected Aristotle's definition of topos (Physics IV) by way of geometric demonstrations and defined place as a mathematical spatial extension.[9] His experimental proof of the intro-mission model of vision led to changes in the understanding of the visual perception of space, contrary to the previous emission theory of vision supported by Euclid and Ptolemy. In "tying the visual perception of space to prior bodily experience, Alhacen unequivocally rejected the intuitiveness of spatial perception and, therefore, the autonomy of vision. Without tangible notions of distance and size for correlation, sight can tell us next to nothing about such things."[10] A traditional realist position in ontology is that time and space have existence apart from the human mind. Idealists, by contrast, deny or doubt the existence of objects independent of the mind. Some anti-realists, whose ontological position is that objects outside the mind do exist, nevertheless doubt the independent existence of time and space. In 1781, Immanuel Kant published the Critique of Pure Reason, one of the most influential works in the history of the philosophy of space and time. He describes time as an a priori notion that, together with other a priori notions such as space, allows us to comprehend sense experience. Kant denies that neither space or time are substance, entities in themselves, or learned by experience; he holds, rather, that both are elements of a systematic framework we use to structure our experience. Spatial measurements are used to quantify how far apart objects are, and temporal measurements are used to quantitatively compare the interval between (or duration of) events. Although space and time are held to be transcendentally ideal in this sense, they are also empirically real—that is, not mere illusions. Some idealist writers, such as J. M. E. McTaggart in The Unreality of Time, have argued that time is an illusion (see also The flow of time, below). The writers discussed here are for the most part realists in this regard; for instance, Gottfried Leibniz held that his monads existed, at least independently of the mind of the observer. The problem of the direction of time arises directly from two contradictory facts. Firstly, the fundamental physical laws are time-reversal invariant; if a cinematographic film were taken of any process describable by means of the aforementioned laws and then played backwards, it would still portray a physically possible process. Secondly, our experience of time, at the macroscopic level, is not time-reversal invariant.[11] Glasses can fall and break, but shards of glass cannot reassemble and fly up onto tables. We have memories of the past, and none of the future. We feel we can't change the past but can influence the future. Causation solution Edit One solution to this problem takes a metaphysical view, in which the direction of time follows from an asymmetry of causation. We know more about the past because the elements of the past are causes for the effect that is our perception. We feel we can't affect the past and can affect the future because we can't affect the past and can affect the future. There are two main objections to this view. First is the problem of distinguishing the cause from the effect in a non-arbitrary way. The use of causation in constructing a temporal ordering could easily become circular. The second problem with this view is its explanatory power. While the causation account, if successful, may account for some time-asymmetric phenomena like perception and action, it does not account for many others. However, asymmetry of causation can be observed in a non-arbitrary way which is not metaphysical in the case of a human hand dropping a cup of water which smashes into fragments on a hard floor, spilling the liquid. In this order, the causes of the resultant pattern of cup fragments and water spill is easily attributable in terms of the trajectory of the cup, irregularities in its structure, angle of its impact on the floor, etc. However, applying the same event in reverse, it is difficult to explain why the various pieces of the cup should fly up into the human hand and reassemble precisely into the shape of a cup, or why the water should position itself entirely within the cup. The causes of the resultant structure and shape of the cup and the encapsulation of the water by the hand within the cup are not easily attributable, as neither hand nor floor can achieve such formations of the cup or water. This asymmetry is perceivable on account of two features: i) the relationship between the agent capacities of the human hand (i.e., what it is and is not capable of and what it is for) and non-animal agency (i.e., what floors are and are not capable of and what they are for) and ii) that the pieces of cup came to possess exactly the nature and number of those of a cup before assembling. In short, such asymmetry is attributable to the relationship between i) temporal direction and ii) the implications of form and functional capacity. The application of these ideas of form and functional capacity only dictates temporal direction in relation to complex scenarios involving specific, non-metaphysical agency which is not merely dependent on human perception of time. However, this last observation in itself is not sufficient to invalidate the implications of the example for the progressive nature of time in general. Thermodynamics solution Edit The second major family of solutions to this problem, and by far the one that has generated the most literature, finds the existence of the direction of time as relating to the nature of thermodynamics. The answer from classical thermodynamics states that while our basic physical theory is, in fact, time-reversal symmetric, thermodynamics is not. In particular, the second law of thermodynamics states that the net entropy of a closed system never decreases, and this explains why we often see glass breaking, but not coming back together. But in statistical mechanics things become more complicated. On one hand, statistical mechanics is far superior to classical thermodynamics, in that thermodynamic behavior, such as glass breaking, can be explained by the fundamental laws of physics paired with a statistical postulate. But statistical mechanics, unlike classical thermodynamics, is time-reversal symmetric. The second law of thermodynamics, as it arises in statistical mechanics, merely states that it is overwhelmingly likely that net entropy will increase, but it is not an absolute law. Current thermodynamic solutions to the problem of the direction of time aim to find some further fact, or feature of the laws of nature to account for this discrepancy. Laws solution Edit A third type of solution to the problem of the direction of time, although much less represented, argues that the laws are not time-reversal symmetric. For example, certain processes in quantum mechanics, relating to the weak nuclear force, are not time-reversible, keeping in mind that when dealing with quantum mechanics time-reversibility comprises a more complex definition. But this type of solution is insufficient because 1) the time-asymmetric phenomena in quantum mechanics are too few to account for the uniformity of macroscopic time-asymmetry and 2) it relies on the assumption that quantum mechanics is the final or correct description of physical processes.[citation needed] One recent proponent of the laws solution is Tim Maudlin who argues that the fundamental laws of physics are laws of temporal evolution (see Maudlin [2007]). However, elsewhere Maudlin argues: "[the] passage of time is an intrinsic asymmetry in the temporal structure of the world... It is the asymmetry that grounds the distinction between sequences that runs from past to future and sequences which run from future to past" [ibid, 2010 edition, p. 108]. Thus it is arguably difficult to assess whether Maudlin is suggesting that the direction of time is a consequence of the laws or is itself primitive.

[rosejardine-blog]

Research in Practice Dissertation: Traces (photos referred to appear elsewhere in this blog)

Section One] Introduction to Practice. Discussion & Context.

This practice led dissertation explores interaction between art, psychological and philosophical theories with personal arts practice. Relevancies to practice are selected which articulate critical and developmental thinking. The key focus of the work is emotion. The vastness of area, in conjunction with length regulations, places some restriction on outcomes. It is out with the scope to address this whole complex topic. However it will  address aspects relating to practice. The work seeks out that which is within, and that which is beyond understanding and reaction. It embeds and synthesises emotional explorations and personal visual arts practice within theoretical contexts.  In pursuit of wider realisation and transformative understanding, the task draws on communication between experiential, theoretical, perceptual, and tacit knowledge. To facilitate fluid discussion, detail of the methodologies involved are listed in Appendix One.

Different forms of knowing are explored and intertwined in the work. It takes principle stance that demarcations in awareness’s from e.g. phenomenology, poetry and painting are artificially imposed. This is discussed throughout the literature in various guises. Fortnum (1) has advocated that we resist automatic ideas of knowledge and that we attempt to understand more about the space we need for 'not knowing'.Further, According to Bourdieu (2) theory without empirical data is ‘empty’, and empirical research without theoretical insights is equally blind. He refers to the necessary ongoing interaction of these components as ‘Praxis’.It means that theory and artistic practice mesh with each other and interpenetrate each other organically. Marx (3) views praxis as a relation of continuous interpenetration of theory and practice which leads to a form of ‘embodied knowledge.’ This is explored further from in Sections two and three. The work draws on personal reflections and wider theoretical perspectives, therefore aspires to address both the personal and collective. Collingwood (4) has stated that:

The artist’s business is to express emotions; and the only emotions he can express are those which he feels, namely his own. If he attaches any importance to the judgement of his audience, it can only be because he thinks that the emotions he has tried to express are . . . shared by his audience. . . . In other words he undertakes his artistic labour not as a personal effort on his own private behalf, but as a public labour on behalf of the community to which he belongs.

Collingwood’s statement adds support to Kant’s (5) original theory of census com-munis. This refers to a ‘sense held to unite the sensations, of all senses’, in sensation or perception. This is vital to arts practice which incorporates comprehension of theory and context beyond self-knowledge towards a social consciousness.

Practice considerations include deliberate bypass of mimicry (6) co-opted image, and word (7).  Disparate, medium and materials are used to transcend these constraints. There is an ongoing quest for malleability complexity and depth. These practice pursuits can be witnessed in earlier work around abstract expressive works of the sea and landscape which appear below. Further thinking around these pieces is discussed in Appendix 2.

When painting, I have no real vision of how the final piece is going to appear before I begin. Frequently I scrape down the whole surface of the canvas before I make another attempt it. I continue to do this until I find acceptable resolution in the work. Sometimes I may have later preferred earlier versions of the work. These had been initially rejected and have now disappeared below the surface. Experimentation continued throughout the module in ethereal blobs, ghostly faded mountains and direct screen printing. Layered impasto, plaster and resins worked to pursue resonance.

Prior practice has focussed on aspects of form and gesture in relation to emotion. Over the course period work became increasingly expressive and abstract at times. It also expanded to incorporate related aspects of the environment. Much of the work visually and metaphorically references land.  I also used stone, rust, slate and cement in later pieces. I became interested in how my sea paintings were similar to the natural qualities of rock.

The work immediately above was inspired by the painting below. However it also lacked the colourful jewelled relief of fireworks and spectator.

James Abbot McNeill Whistler. 1872-77. Nocturne in Black and gold.  The Falling Rocket

A simple observation I made when reviewing these earlier paintings, and in considering the subject matter of this dissertation, is that they do not appear to be particularly ‘happy’. I can see lightness within them, but a sense of gravity and foreboding frequently dominates. Bourgeois’s (8) has claimed that her work on metaphoric abstraction was an attempt to access to the unconscious, as well as function as psychological release. However, it is incoherence, and the impossibility of ‘knowing,’ most cogently expressed in her work. Bourgeois considered art as her parallel ‘form of psychoanalysis’ offering her privileged and unique access to the unconscious, as well as a form of psychological release. On a piece of pink paper she scratched the slogan, "Art is a guarantee of sanity." Her artwork was intended as reparative, a form of mental mending .

Louise Bourgeois, Art is a Guaranty of Sanity, 2000, Pencil on pink paper, 27.9 x 21.5 cm. Collection Museum of Modern Art, New York, Photo: Christopher Burke.

While aspects of resolution may be attained in the work, the content may be that of something unresolved. This analysis concerned me as I want my work to be about psychological freedom. Nevertheless traces of this continued to pervade practice. Reviewing the literature led me to doubt if there could be such a thing as psychological freedom, when we ourselves are drawn from experiences. For example in reviewing a recent piece, I questioned if the haunting, dancing, perhaps  writhing, forms, and oddly shaded opaque egg whites on black card. This may have been influenced by recent reading and analysis of Paul Celan’s ‘(9) Black Milk’ in Death Fugue

Work involving the use of cement and the encasing of objects within resins stemmed from a play on Picasso’s (10) ‘Still Life’ constructions. The thinking behind these practice experimentations is discussed in Appendix 2. Key to the thinking is the recognition that it is not only physical senses which perceive and interpret experience, but a vast range of other influences. These contribute to, and generate our emotion, meaning and knowledge. Such influencers include our cultures, genders, experiences, families, education and religions. It would take countless dissertations to even begin to address these multi-facetted areas. However we must acknowledge this range of disparate relevancies and influencers. This awareness is crucial to developing visual arts theory and practice and indeed to feeling, seeing and knowing (11). Many artists attempt to create meaning free from these obstacles and attempt to find a new language to express untranslatable things.

My practice utilises a range of materials. These include experiments in the stark ‘blocking out’ of qualities of Tippex correction fluid, or cement, resin, eggs, tar, rust, old tools, slate, bitumen, oil, talcum powder, straw, hair latex, fading photographs and thick layers of paint and plaster. Such explorations are a core mechanism of inquiry. Process and application are also significant. There is variously quest for malleability, translucency, surface superficiality, complexity and depth. The process of mark making and sensitive or harsh application are attempted evocatively and purposely. There is an ongoing, possibly pointless, quest for liberated individual ‘uninfluenced meaning.  Equally, to fully consider the material world in addition to that of the ‘human’ one.

In summary therefore, reflective practice and choices of materials have attempted to consider risks inherent in the exposure to a range of influencers, including our own subconscious defences.  Because of e.g. the recognized power of words in meaning creation, among many influences, it feels important for work to be visual or experienced differently from words. Visual construction is less subject to the polluting factors of language (7) and bombarded image. This area is expanded in the next section. Interestingly nonverbal seems also less subject to dilution by ones owns denial and fears.For Freud (12) the unconscious was seen as the true psychical reality. He argued that its innermost nature is as unknown to us as the reality of the external world. It is as incompletely presented by the data of the consciousness as is the external world by the communications of our sense organs. Lacan’s (13) observations of our reality further contextualise and develop this argument. He delineates how our realities are radically subjective, that our reality is in fact structured by fantasy which serves to protect us from ‘the raw’. He concludes therefore that reality itself can function as an escape from countering real. The ‘actual real’ filters through in our dreams and in our art.

These findings emphasise that despite our influencers and oppressors, at a subconscious level, the real language of desire emotion and feeling continues. However to reach wider realisation it is imperative to set arts practice within contextual awareness.  It is this which makes it a quest for undigested reality rather than that of simply imagination. Iconclude this section with a powerful and pertinent quote from the controversial Scottish psychiatrist R D Laing (14)

We are so desensitized to being pressured that we are unaware when someone makes a bid to control or dominate us. We have been trained that the polite response is to overlook the violence of persuasion. We have been domesticated into obedience and submission.

Pressure, when applied by one person onto another, inevitably forces the recipient to react. All authentic action from one’s creative centre is suspended, until after the pressure has been dealt with……Some of us are still waiting

Section Two] Emotion

Emotion and meaning are closely related in research literature. Relevant movements and influences are well documented and themes include cultural, political and philosophical movements. It includes e.g., work on phenomenology (15) existentialism (16) post structuralism and post modernism (17). Background developments in this area draw from aspects of literature, linguistics (particularly semiotics), politics, psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, epidemiology and the arts. The subcategorization even within the visual arts incorporates as wide-ranging issues iconography iconology language philosophy philology phenomenology socio cultural politics materials aesthetics and class. Furthermore within these multifarious areas includes subsets such as language biotope lexicon biotopes and habitats!

Panofsky (18) was perhaps the first to attempt categorisation of such mechanisms in the visual arts. He developed the understanding and interpretation of meaning in visual representations, breaking these into three increasing levels of depth. These include the interpretation of meaning through factual descriptions and what we derive and interpret from with our own experiences.His theory progresses toa deeper understanding the motifs and messages within an image and recognition of events taking place within it. His final level communicates things that the artist may not have been consciously thinking about. This level allows us to reveal what he describes as the underlying:

Basic attitude of a nation, a period, a class, a religious or philosophical persuasion unconsciously qualified by one personality and condensed into one work”

The word emotion is used in many different ways. As described from above I am unable to separate it entirely from language. However I do not consider it necessary to extricate it entirely, as long as the limitation and power of language is recognised and considered. It is for this reason that work has been set among selected poetry in this dissertation.Painting and Poetry are closely correlated. Leonardo da Vinci has been cited as saying that says, "Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen and that ‘Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.’

..Our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost

Gaston Bachelard

Both of these endeavours explore the essential qualities of what it means to be human. According to Hepworth (19) ‘Painting not what you see but what you feel in your body.’ It concerns the psychological subtext to our lives, what makes us tick. Randell (20) has also talked about the emotional subtexts of time and space speaking directly across time and space. His sculptures are about direct physical experience and creating rather than illustrating.

Otto Dix The War

However, while it may be colloquial to state here, in reference to Emotion, that ‘you will know it when you see it’ I believe this to be true. Viewing the work of Otto Dix affirms this for me. This painter, who fought in the trenches, used etching and aquatint mediums to heighten the emotional and realistic effects of his images of terror. His use of multiple acid baths ate away at the images, and mimicked decaying flesh. The emotions of fear horror and empathy are cogently conveyed.

For Rothko (21), there were no visible prototypes for that which he aspired to depict, so he had to create them. His conveys a huge emotional range. He surrounded viewers both with massive, imposing visions of darkness, and with blissful luminosity. His work utilises movement texture translucency and plasticity to achieve these ends.

If you are only moved by colour relationships, you are missing the point. I am interested in expressing the big emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom."          

                                                                                                                        Mark Rothko

It has been observed that Rothko’s (21) work could represent the opposition between a rational or abstract element and an emotional, primal, or tragic one. By softening the contours of his figures, and enveloping them in a nebulous haze, he let his viewers know that these allusive images asked metaphysical questions about meaning, emotion and the purpose of existence. Hisworkhighlights that certain qualities such as radiance or the duality of light and dark have symbolic meanings to us. His impression of vast space was said to represent the historical artistic concept of ‘the sublime,’ a quasi-religious experience of limitless immensity. The installation of Rothko’s canvases also produces their own sacrosanct environment. An image of his ‘Dark Palette’ is shown below:

Keifer’s (22) work is also noted for its symbolic potency. The use of materials such as straw, earth, and  tree roots reference both time and patterns of life, death, and decay. They provoke strong emotional and psychological effects on viewers.Brisley (23) also pursues deep questioning in relation to those who are forgotten, alienated and dispossessed. His uses of materials include sand, bitumen, and sacking. Brisley’s works are a useful vehicle in which to observe materials in both physical and psychological form. His website (24) highlights:  

Concern for the everyday and for things that have fallen down (detritus on the streets, human excrement) and the marginalised (miners, bin men, homeless).

He selects his materials to explore emotion and humanness. His critical motivations remain unchanged, the production of a political art that in its richness of metaphor and range of expressive resources is capable of capturing the 'morbid symptoms' of capitalist culture.

The practice of these artists has been a catalyst in my artistic development. Much of the subconscious subtext of my work is that emerging through and complex multi layered aspects of emotion. It consists of tapping into subconscious feelings and images through an unself conscious dialogue in the process itself. However as we have seen, emotion while perhaps not fully understood, is not blind. It too is contextualised in experience.Practice requires the development of Integrity and of knowing why you are selecting things and doing things, but not in a paralysing or inhibiting way. Ongoing studio experimentation forcefully accentuates the dichotomies between mind and body. Studio practice magnifies the unsettled relationship between what we see, and what we know. Handling and listening to materials become a catalyst in the recognition and liberation of emergent ideas. This works to nurture and reveal nascent and embryonic inklings that can produce new and unexpected knowledge.Research in Practice has required time and space to allow the materials to fulfil their capabilities. I did not want to rush in and narrow the vision. Handling materials allowed me to feel and inhabit them as they imparted physical, tacit embodied knowledge. Moments which invigorate the interiority of the imagination? This examination of their potentiality is crucial to my desire to create and unveil, rather than produce or and fabricate. The work attempts to capture and harness aspects of fragility, subtlety complexity, connection and changing memory. This involves a creative persistence in new combinations. Key to this is a pursuit of thatbeyond the subconscious, the raw, unspoken, embodied knowledge,

Most recent work has involved a series of drawings in charcoal, ink and water. Originally I carried out these experiments with coloured chalks, paints and melted crayons. Observation of Riley’s (25) work encouraged my experimentation in black and white.   From 1961 to 1964 Riley worked with black and white, sometimes adding tones of grey. I enjoyed her combinations of relaxed gentle curves the increasing rapid compressions within her work. I was particularly intrigued by her compositions at their verges, on the edge of disintegration without collapse.Some of the recent charcoal works appear below.  They seem to take on aspects of motion and organic, wing like, formations.

Section Three] Traces

3.1 Traces

This paper has worked towards deconstruction of aspects of emotion and meaning in visual arts practice. To develop this further it is necessary to think about the nature of knowledge itself.  Hume (26) has stated that reports of factual knowledge e.g. "triangles have three sides" are not knowledge at all. Rather they are definitions.  They provide us with no knowledge other than what specific terms mean. In his discussion on relations of ideashe states:

All ideas, especially abstract ones, are naturally faint and obscure: the mind has but a slender hold of them: they are apt to be confounded with other resembling ideas; and when we have often employed any term, though without a distinct meaning, we are apt to imagine it has a determinate idea annexed to it. On the contrary, all impressions…are strong and vivid: the limits between them are more exactly determined: nor is it easy to fall into any error or mistake with regard to them. When we entertain, therefore, any suspicion that a philosophical term is employed with any meaning or idea (as is but too frequent), we need but enquire, from what impression is that supposed idea derived?

Here he equates impressions roughly to feeling, and ideas to thinking. According to Hume ideas are ‘faint copies’ of impressions. They are ‘less forcible and lively’ and weaker fainter. However each faint impression/mark is crucial to wider conceptualisation and thinking.

I have been intrigued by these notions when analysing historical and ongoing practice. Thinking and feeling work together in personal practice, and I consider that this theory can be applied to it in a novel way.  For example, the metaphor might be applied that each faint mark/impression is working towards a wider body of work/idea, or working backwards and becoming detangled from that concrete mass of emotion and cognition. Despite my work changing and developing, edit has often resulted in the revisiting of earlier stages. It may involve the uncovering of an earlier mark and bringing faintness to the surface once more, for example in paintings below chalky and oily translucencies were built up, covered and then recovered in parts. In these way aspects of fragility, connection and depth is uncovered.  

Fool’s Gold  Rose Jardine 2018

Hamilton (27) has highlighted how it is these moments which invigorate the interiority of the imagination. This post examination of their potentiality was crucial to my increasing desire to create and unveil, rather than produce or fabricate.  Kaur (28) and other theoreticians have highlighted that a difficulty we currently face in the west, is the lack of direct sensory experience. We have become increasingly reliant on processed second hand information in our everyday lives. He concludes that this experience gap has led to erosion of natural mental resources.   As commented by my previous supervisor, it may because of the many exploratory aspects of disparate work and experimentation that my more recent pieces have not been forced into over-determined ‘final pieces’.  He considered that this allowed them to retain a suggestiveness, an open-ended ambiguity, which made them more intriguing as images or objects.  The softness and roundness of their shapes inevitably calling to mind the female form without over-prescribing this as a way of seeing it. A useful outcome of this is that it may assist in the work containing multiple meanings, open to several interpretations. I quickly became aware that I needed to be alert to how my work could escape from my intentions to take on a life of its own and become different things to different people. This is detailed in Appendix 2. I did not consider this a negative thing. It often meant that the work had richer content than I had assumed. This led me to working directly with materials, inventing new forms, creating new objects.Often these can involve many iterations of the same idea, investigating different combinations of materials, being as ‘unprescriptive’ as possible, leaving room for emergence, and trying to get a sense of what to keep and what to leave out. Some of this work appears below. A fuller account is given in previously submitted critical evaluations, exploratory publications and presentations.

This overall body of this subsequent work has been entitled Traces.  Practice and this paper, have built towards this reflection. The original meaning of the term ‘traces’ refers not only to the trace marks and residual evidence of what has taken place, but also to a path followed. Paths are equally about meandering journeys as destinations. Sometimes they lead nowhere. It is possible that enduring remnants or ‘Traces’ in my visual arts practice to be analysed from differing perspectives. For example to consider them as that which is known and distant, that shrouded and not fully known and underpinnings unearthed or built upon. In some ways it attempts to explore what are both there and not there. However the work also addresses the spaces in between. It attempts to reach that which is renounced, disavowed and denied. This search beneath the surface appearance of physical reality draws upon sources of theoretical and practice knowledge. The work seems to sit comfortably within Merleau Ponty’s (29) notions of embodiment. This relates to the visible and the invisible, the space in-between the different bodies of experience and the intertwining of those different bodies. In my practice this involves strong and contrasting emotions. I conducted experiment in automatic writing which can be seen at the front of this paper. Words such as vestigial, veiled, memory, and persistence emerged. It bears testament to latent time and, intracorporeally, to the experience being embodied but mediated by continual interactions of perception and practice. There seems to be relationality between temporal dimensions in the work. It touches on aspects of temporality and phenomenology. Bachelard’s (30) landmark work, The Poetics of Space, evokes metaphysical elements which incorporate identify how knowledge of the world is based ultimately on experience. In his analysis he tried to consider images without personal interpretation. He concludes that the Trans subjectivity of the image could not be understood through subjective reference alone. The theme of traces is continued in altering guises. I have entitled the final two subsections Reverberation and Engram

3.2 Reverberation

Reverberation is defined as a resonance, an echolikeforceor effect or repercussion.It refers to something which persists after its source has stopped. This links past and future.  It incorporates that beyond a current physical presence into the traces, echoes and repercussions of prior that knowledge and experience. Repetition seriality and pattern is well documented in the research literature (31). Breaking up a surface into increments (pattern) makes one more aware of the forms innaccessible interior.  Earlier work and exhibition has explored this area in further depth (see Appendix Two). It relates to areas such as domesticity, repetition, communication, connection and trauma. It is about working out how things make us feel as well as thinking about the interconnectivity of factors

The artist I would like discuss under this section is Shozo Shimamoto (32). He and his fellow artists, such as Kazuo Shiraga, turned the energy of war into that of a new art accessible to all. It was their intent to renew the tradition of Japanese art (particularly the Zen culture) through performance, experimentation, and play; they strove to rip apart the demarcations between art and life. The Guatai Manfesto (33) describes how this was done in an effort to break free from the past. It searched for different energies and forms. The artists ripped, tore, smashed, cut, burned, or affixed objects to canvas. It is testimony to process and relationship between gesture and matter. Below is part of Shozo Shimamoto’s Holes series.

3.3 Engram.

The concluding section of his work is Engram, not endgame. ‘There are miles to go before I sleep’. The existence of Engrams is posited by scientific theory (34) as the means by which memoriesare stored. The hypothesis postulates a change in neural account for persistence of memory.It seems appropriate to conclude our analysis of Tracesin this focus on that which eventually engrained. Interesting researchers are studying not only how individual memories form, but how memories interact with each other and change over time. Work has started to look that related memories can merge into a single representation, especially if the memories are acquired in close succession. These findings gain potency, when we consider aspects of emotion and meaning in visual arts practice, and wider research theory which we have attempted to unpick and also synthesise in this work. They relate to inherent non-translatable things.

It is interesting to apply these neuroscientific theories more generally to the world, and to visual arts practice. The authors (34) conclude that:  

Our memory is not just pockets and islands of information, we actually build concepts, and we link things together that have common threads between them.

Perhaps these threads are also Traces.

Ends

Word count 4330.

This is to the prescribed limit of 4000, plus the additional 10 % allowance, which brings the allowance to 4400. Decorative Cover/Sectioning Format Pages & Images not included in word count.

References

1)

Fortnum, R. On not knowing: how artists think London: Black Dog Publishing. (2013).    

2)

Bourdieu, P. The Logic of Practice, Oxford: Polity Press. (1990).

3)

McBride, W. The philosophy of Marx London: Hutchinson, (1977).

4)

Collingwood, R. G.

(Robin George), 1889-1943

The principles of art

       OxfordUniversity Press, (1958).

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Kant, I. The critique of pure reason. Pacific Publishing Studio. (2011).

6)

Foster, H. Available from:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcdmq8U4cOM&t=9s. (accessed December 2018).

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Foucault, M. Power/Knowledge, Brighton: Harvester. (1980).

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Larrat-Smith, P.  Louise Bourgeois, the theory, and practice of psychoanalysis

Available at:http://arttattler.com/archivebourgeois.html   (accessed January 4th  2019).

9)

Celan, P. 1920 – 1970. Death Fugue (1944)

10)

Heuman, Jackie.  A Technical Study of Picasso’s Construction Still Life, 1914. Tate Papers No 11 Sping 2009 (accessed Dec 2018)

11)

Berger, J. Ways of seeing London:Penguin. (2008)

12)

Freud, S. The psychopathology of everyday life; translated by Anthea Bell with an introduction by Paul Keegan. London : Penguin. (2002)          

13)

Groves, J. Lacan for beginners Cambridge: Icon, (1995)

14)

Laing, R. D. (1960) The divided self : an existential study in sanity and madness.Tavistock.      

15)

Husserl, E. (1913) Collected Works: Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy. Translated by F. Kreston Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Kluwer Academic Publishers Group. (1983)

16)

Satre, J.P. (1991). Critique of Dialectical Reason Volume 1: Theory of Practical    Ensembles. London: Verso

17)

Sarup. M   An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism.

Pearson Education. (1993)

18)

Panofsky, E Meaning in the visual arts, 1892-1968 Published London: Penguin, (1993)

19)

Smith, R. Figure and Landscape: Barbara Hepworth’s Phenomenology of Perception  TATE PAPERS NO 20

20)

McAvera, B. Emotional Subtext of Form and Space: A Conversation with Peter Randall-Page International Sculpture Center Vol.22 No. 6 (2003)

21)

Rothko, M. The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art. Yale University Press, New Haven (2006)

22)

Biro, M. Anselm Kiefer London: Phaidon, (2013)

23)

Aesthetica Magazine [Accessed April 6th 2016] Available at:   www.aestheticamagazine.com/stuart-brisley/

24)

Brisley S http://www.stuartbrisley.com

25)

Riley, B. available at http://www.artnet.com/artists/bridget-riley/. (Accesed December 2018)

26)

Hume, D, 1711-1776; A treatise of human nature Harmondsworth: Penguin,

27)

Hamilton, Ann. Available at https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/12/12/making-not-knowing-ann-hamilton/ (accessed December 2018)

28)

Kaur, R. Ecological psychology: New trends and innovations New Delhi: Deep &     Deep Publications, (2005)

39)

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962) The Phenomenology of Perception, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.

30)

Bachelard, G. The Poetics of Space Gaston Bachelard; Translated from the French by Maria Jolas; with a new foreword by John R. Stilgoe. Boston:Beacon Press. (1994).          

31)

Araujo, A. Repetition, Pattern, and the Domestic: Notes on the Relationship between Pattern and Home-making, Textile, 8:2, 180-201, DOI: 10.2752/175183510X12791896965574 (2010)

32)

Guatai Manifesto [Accessed December 2018] Available at: http://www.csus.edu/indiv/o/obriene/art112/Readings/Yoshiharo_GutaiManifesto.pdf (1956)

33)

Schimmel, P Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void 1949-1962. Audiobook      Publishing  (2012)

34)

Bruce, Darryl ‘Fifty Years Since Lashley's In Search of the Engram’. Journal of the History of the Neurosciences. 10 (3): 308–318. doi:10.1076/jhin.10.3.308.9086.(2001).

[angrycollectordaze-me-blog]

Essay代写：The ancient Greek definition of happiness

下面为大家整理一篇优秀的essay代写范文- The ancient Greek definition of happiness，供大家参考学习，这篇论文讨论了古希腊的幸福定义。古希腊人的幸福观经历了早期的神性幸福观，再到自然主义幸福观、最后到具有人文主义因素的幸福观的转变。古希腊人所认同的幸福是人的权利；是以节制、正义、勇毅、明哲为内涵的善德，与德性密切相关。而绝对的幸福是不存在的，人们要对幸福有一个正确而全面的认识。

Happiness view refers to people's general view and basic view of happiness. Since ancient times, people have never stopped the pursuit of "happiness", throughout their lives, everyone is in pursuit of their own happiness. But what exactly is happiness? How to achieve happiness? On these issues, it can be said that there is no uniform standard. According to Fourier, there were 287 conflicting definitions of "happiness" in Nero's time in Rome alone. Hence, the famous philosopher Kant said helplessly, the concept of "happiness" is so vague that although everyone wants it, no one can speak clearly and coherently about what he is determined to pursue or choose. This paper summarizes the meaning of "happiness" from the perspective of the ancient greeks, so as to provide some useful references for readers.

In the history of western thought, Solon in Athens, ancient Greece, was the first person to make a theoretical discussion on the category of "happiness" and initiated the theory of "happiness". Solon believed that true happiness lies in "the man who has the most things, and keeps them until his last day, and then dies in peace. Only such a man, I think, can give the title of happiness to him." Solon believes that the true meaning of "happiness" lies in starting well and ending well. However, the definition of "happiness" varies from person to person. In general, the ancient greeks' concept of happiness experienced a transition from the early concept of divine happiness to the naturalistic concept of happiness and finally to the concept of happiness with humanistic elements. Specifically, the ancient greeks believed that the concept of "happiness" contained the following meanings:

In the early ancient Greek world, people began to pay attention to the issue of "happiness". However, due to the backward productivity at that time, people's concept of "happiness" was mostly related to god, believing that "happiness" was the embodiment of god's gift and divine intention, which was reflected in the early works of the ancient greeks. For example, Homer tells the story of Odysseus, a hero with both wisdom and courage, who finally returned to his hometown under the guidance of god after ten years of hardships after the end of the Chloe war. For example, the god spectrum by Hesiod records Greek myths and legends, expressing people's reverence for god and their happiness under the blessing of god and so on. With the development of productive forces and the improvement of people's cognitive ability, the ancient greeks began to get rid of the influence of "divine" happiness view and pay more attention to people's own "happiness". In ancient Greece, the earliest group with human-based happiness view belongs to the wise school, which is the earliest group to study human and pay attention to human value. Protagoras, the founder of the wise school, first put forward theoretically in the dialogue of Truth, or the Throwers: "man is the scale of all things". Influenced by the wisdom of the wisemen, Pericles also believed that "man is the most important thing, and everything else is the fruit of man's labor" and so on. All these show the ancient greeks' respect and appreciation for man and his value.

Under the influence of the thoughts of the group of wise men, other ancient Greek sages also put forward their humanistic happiness views from different angles. As the famous philosopher Heraclitus once said, "I have sought myself. It is the duty of all men to know themselves and to think right. For another example, Aristotle believed that "happiness is the activity of the soul". He stressed that happiness is the happiness of people and their psychological feelings. He said: "the pursuit of happiness, is the well-being of mankind. ... That's why we call happiness an activity of the mind." Moreover, Aristotal, referring to the prevailing view in contemporary society that the desire for happiness was a vulgar, disgusting, undeserving of man's happiness, pointed out that all man's pursuits were natural and rational pursuits; The pursuit of happiness is a natural demand of human beings, is the normal demand of human physiological organs, the human mind must be driven by this demand to carry out activities. If you leave the specific spiritual feelings, there will be no happiness. In short, the ancient greeks told people through theory and practice that "happiness" is the birthright of people, and everyone has the right to pursue his happiness. If you want to get happiness, you must try your best to strive for it, instead of praying for god's blessing.

The Greek word for "virtue" is "arete", which means "virtue" and "virtue" in Chinese. When the ancient greeks studied the question of "happiness", they paid a lot of attention to the relationship between happiness and virtue. They believe that people's spiritual pursuit is an indispensable means to obtain happiness, and the acquisition of happiness is inseparable from people's moral cultivation. For example, Aristotle, a famous ancient Greek philosopher, wrote at the beginning of the nicomachean ethics that "happiness is an activity of the soul to fulfill its perfect virtue". He holds that the happiness of every man is exactly equal to his virtue, practical wisdom and ability to act in turn; He went on to explain: "the world will never call a man blessed if he does not have the least bit of courage, the least bit of moderation, the least bit of justice, the least bit of wisdom." In addition to Aristotle, other scholars have expressed the inner relationship between virtue and happiness. As democritus believed, man should pursue a kind of spiritual happiness, because man, after all, is different from animals. Plato also pointed out that "virtue and wisdom are the true happiness of life"; "God will look out for anyone who wants to be just, who wants to be like god, and man will try his best to be like god through virtue." He believes that human happiness is to make their own behavior in line with the requirements of virtue, in order to make their own happiness, we must pursue good character, virtue is the necessary means to get real happiness, only a person with virtue can be happy. Therefore, everyone "whether in private life or public life, should set aside everything and pursue the reality of virtue first"; "Only in this way can we achieve the happiness of life and death." Socrates also emphasizes the relationship between happiness and virtue. He believed that "knowledge is virtue, and the acquisition of knowledge about virtue is the basis of happiness." And so on. In short, when studying "happiness", the ancient greeks attached great importance to the moral character in human spirit. They believed that "virtue" was a virtue of moderation, justice, courage and wisdom, and that people's happiness was closely related to virtue. As long as people have the above several factors, will become a virtuous person, will be happy. A man cannot be happy if he has material comforts but no spiritual comforts, if he has rich possessions but no noble virtues.

Since ancient times, people have never stopped pursuing for happiness, and people have created a lot of theories about "happiness" according to their own feelings and objective reality, and carried out many effective practical explorations on how to obtain happiness. Still, people often feel confused and don't get the happiness they want. Even ancient Greek sages who had studied the concept of happiness deeply sometimes lamented how difficult it was to be blessed. Why does this happen? The ancient greeks believed that there was no absolute happiness, but only relative happiness. Relativity of happiness refers to that people should have a correct and comprehensive grasp on the issue of treating happiness. They should not only see happiness and other "good" factors in happiness, but also have an objective and fair understanding of pain, death and other "evil" factors in the eyes of others. Therefore, in the study of ancient Greek happiness theory, ancient Greek sages insisted on associating pain with happiness and opposed those wrong views that there can be no happiness in pain and no pain in happiness. As the ancient greeks believed, human happiness was largely a matter of pleasure rather than pain. They believe that man is a product of nature and it is his natural nature to seek pleasure and avoid suffering. Everyone desires happiness without pain. However, they do not blindly emphasize the role of happiness and other "good" factors in happiness, and ignore or minimize the positive role of pain, death and other "evil" factors in people's eyes. They think it impossible to be happy without suffering. For everything is one of opposites, and everything has its pros and cons. Pleasure and pain, as the positive and negative sides of happiness, are interdependent from beginning to end; If anyone wants to avoid pain, then he will not get the happiness he expected. Therefore, we should not simply think that pain is not happy, sometimes happiness can not be obtained without the help of pain; In order to get their own happiness, sometimes feel some pain is very necessary; only those who have experienced pain can realize true happiness.

Therefore, in the treatment of happiness, we should not blindly pursue those idealized things, but based on the social reality to pursue happiness in line with our own. Some people expect too much, out of the specific conditions to pursue those impossible happiness, or a considerable amount of energy to obtain happiness, the result is only self-trouble and pain. As democritus said, "it is through hedonistic temperance and the quiet detachment of life that man obtains pleasure, abject poverty and opulence habitually change places and cause great disturbance in the soul, so that the wavering soul from one extreme to the other is neither stable nor pleasant. We must therefore concentrate on what is possible, and be content with what is within our reach." At the same time, we should also have a good state of mind, know how to meet, contentment.

To sum up, the ancient greeks recognized "happiness" as a human right; Virtue, which is the connotation of temperance, justice, courage and wisdom, is closely related to virtue. At the same time, absolute "happiness" does not exist, people should have a correct and comprehensive understanding of "happiness", think we point out the right direction on the road of pursuing happiness.

The question of "happiness" is an old but often new one. Through the ages, people have never stopped pursuing their own happiness. Until today, scholars all over the world have not stopped to study it. On the road of human pursuit of happiness, countless theories about "happiness" have been put forward, which enriches our thoughts and confuses many people at the same time. As the famous ancient Greek scholar Aristotle said, "Different people have different understanding of happiness. Sometimes even the same person doesn't give the same explanation. When ill, take health as happiness; when he is poor, he is happy with his wealth. While conscious of his ignorance, he envies those who can promote a great idea which he could not think of one week." Although these theories are different, but taken together, they all have the same foothold in the macro level. The ancient greeks were the first group in the western history to pay attention to the issue of human happiness. They also left us a lot of theoretical works on "happiness", and their concept of "happiness" had an important impact on the world, especially the western world. Therefore, the research on their concept of "happiness" is quite representative. Based on this, this article from a macro perspective to grasp the ancient Greek understanding of "happiness", ultimately "happiness" is the right of people; "Happiness" is a virtuous life; "Happiness" has three aspects as the foothold, summarizes the ancient Greek definition of the concept of "happiness", hoping to provide us with a useful reference on the road of pursuing happiness in the future.

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[seanchou77]

To All The Boys I've Loved Before

I could write a whole book about the men in my life, that are either real or I’ve imagined. I dream about men, in scenarios too intimate to say here. I’ve dreamed about being rescued by men - literally swept off my feet and carried off. Everyone feels empowered in different ways, I suppose. The most important dream I’ve had of a man was with Freud. In one of my dreams, he gave me a notebook and told me to write my own story in it. And now I’m doing it.

There will be a time when I’m able to write fairly and objectively about my relationships with both men and women. This is not such a time: this essay will articulate my thoughts and feelings about the men in my life, and how they can be framed as routes of becoming, self-actualisation and coming-of-age.

Some of this has theoretical background. Eve Sedgwick argued her theory of the ‘homosocial’, where particularly among males, competition and rivalry for females creates a sense of intense social and intimate bonding; the female performs the symbolic role of token, as evidence of homosocial desire among men for each other.

It is within this framework that we should understand man-to-man relationships in the framework of mentorship, friendship and solidarity - the subtext of tacit homosexual desire may be read but is not intentional.

An important psychoanalytic scene which constitutes man-to-man relationships is the Oedipal complex, which constitutes the roles in the child-father relationship. The meaning the Oedipal complex depends on the psychoanalytic author, so three main perspectives will be drawn upon: Freud, Lacan and Zizek.

Sigmund Freud argued that the Oedipal complex begins as a rivalry between the father and child for the mother. The father however threatens to castrate the child if he pursues. The child accepts his inferior status and learns to internalise the father’s sense of morality and purpose, which the son uses to eventually find his own partner. Freud was unable to resolve where attraction for the father came from however: fantasy theory suggested that the child imagined being forced upon and dominated by the father; whereas seduction theory suggested that the father entices the child as the agent of society and culture.

Jean-Jacques Lacan builds upon the symbolic role of the father, arguing that the father is an epistemological and symbolic agent. The Real father castrates the imaginary phallus of the child, which creates a symbolic debt where the child accepts the name-of-the-father (or his cultural knowledge) and they cooperate to eventually integrate the child into society where he can eventually marry and have sex with his own wife.

Lacan’s reading of the Symposium helps to elucidate his thoughts on desire in mentorship. In the Symposium, Socrates refuses Alcibiades' declaration of love and therefore refuses to mask his lack. Socrates does two things: firstly, he is the Other to Alcibiades’ unknowing desire which constitutes him as erosmenos (younger male) as the manifest effect of desire. Secondly, Alcibiades understands his desire for Socrates and becomes constituted as erastes as the latent effect of desire. Mentorship is therefore the desire for the isolated object of desire (or, Agalma) which is seen to transcend the ‘dialectic of desire’; it is the role of the subject to desire, but the Other’s responsibility to disappoint his desire.

Slavoj Zizek wants to deconstruct the structural analysis performed in both Freud and Lacan’s work. Zizek argued that structuralism was concerned about analysing surface structures to reveal a universal, deep reality which could generalise all human behaviour. Zizek was critical of this view and said that postmodern society had so enfeebled the authority of men, the presence of the Oedipal Father had been overtaken by the Anal Father. The Anal Father is concerned about behind-the-scenes work, practically useful but no longer ideologically convincing. Seduction had therefore failed; we are no longer convinced by our fathers, but we are still obedient to their law because we know no alternative.

Thus so far, we have understood the meaning of the father in three main ways. Firstly, if we take Freud, the father breaks the mother-child dyad and the son internalises the morality principle in the superego. For Lacan, the father performs the imaginary role who castrates the mother’s penis and the symbolic role as agent of culture and society. Finally, if we understand Zizek, the father is an example of an ideological metaphor which is no longer convincing - but keeps working like it is.

Given the connotations of the father as a person with wisdom, knowledge and expertise, perhaps this opens wider questions about how meaning of life can be constructed through the father’s social subjectivity. This relates to questions of coming-of-age and maturity into adulthood; the father provides a model for growth and established security and integration into society, a symbolic debt which according to psychoanalysis must be repaid.

Erik Erikson provides perspective with his thoughts on the eight psychosocial stages of development. Each stage details the main conflicts and social value learned each person goes through at different stages; fixation or interruption to growth in each stage can create wider emotional problems. Erikson was well-known for this theory; indeed, he is credited for coining the phrase ‘identity crisis’.

The stages most relevant to the Western coming-of-age narrative is the late adolescent stage, concerning the crisis of identity and role confusion; and young adulthood, concerning the crisis of intimacy and isolation.

This could be related to how life-changing events are understood, which makes puberty and adolescence particularly special. Joseph Campbell argued in ‘The Hero’s Journey’ there were seventeen stages to the ‘hero’s journey’ which can be divided into three main parts: departure, initiation and return.

This reflects on Arnold van Gennep’s work on the rituals where he argued rites of passage like initiation could be divided into three main stages: separation, liminality and reintegration. Thus, it could be argued that during the stage of separation, symbolic death of a previous social status is achieved, creating an ambivalent, transitional status during liminality, until a new identity is eventually enforced and encoded into the social order through reintegration.

This suggests that coming-of-age and growing up can be transformative processes of self-discovery and meaning-making, and internalise codes of determination, resilience and purpose.

However, what if growing up is refused? What if it is critiqued as socially normative? Or risks losing our individuality and freedom?

Theodor Adorno was critical about such concerns and argued that it is part of our responsibility as adult citizens to critically engage and challenge existing authority structures which constrain possibilities for human emancipation. Indeed, in his critique of consumer popular culture, he argued that media like TV shows produced such standardised content, it de-intellectualized people and infantilised audiences into passive, childish breathlessness at media stars so removed from everyday active political engagement.

According to Kant’s theory of reason, we begin life as children with absolute faith in authority, believing obediently to dogmatism. Then, during adolescence our attitudes turn to scepticism. Kant believed that we had three categories of the mind: sensibility, reason and judgement. The latter two allows us to discern between what is/ought to do, and the necessary courage to make sense of the world and try to correct it.

Thus, this essay has covered different perspectives on men and the meaning of masculinity. It has firstly understood the meaning of the father. It has understood the meaning of the father as a challenge for personal self-actualisation through psychosocial stages of life. Finally, it warns about the refusing the task of maturity and integration into adult society, without which will lead to passivity, obedience and non-participation in engaging with social issues.

***

Sometimes it’s like being pinched really hard. I wish I could fill that lack, that feeling something should be filled but you don’t know how or what.

I’m honoured to take on my mission in life though. I think about people who don’t have the opportunities I have, to study, make friends or have experiences some people could only dream of.

I’m thinking of them the next time I want to complain. My ultimate goal is to be the person I wish was there for me when I really needed someone.