From our current reading (Zangwill):
"...it may be worth saying something about “relativism”, according to which no judgments of taste are really better than others. It is common for people to say “There is no right and wrong about matters of taste.” Or people will express the same thought by saying that beauty is “relative” to individual judgment, or even that it is “socially relative.” Such relativism about value of all sorts is part of the Zeitgeist of a certain recent Western cultural tradition. It is part of the intellectual air, in certain quarters. And in particular, many intellectuals have expressed a dislike of the idea that judgments of taste really have any normative claim, as if that would be uncouth or oppressive. However, if we are describing our thought as it is, not how some think it ought to be, then it is important that philosophers should be persistent and insist — in the face of this Zeitgeist — that normativity is a necessary condition of the judgment of taste.
Two points ought to embarrass the relativist. Firstly, people who say this kind of thing are merely theorizing. In the case of judgments of beauty, relativist theory is wildly out of step with common practice. As with moral relativism, one can virtually always catch the professed relativist about judgments of beauty making and acting on non-relative judgments of beauty — for example, in their judgments about music, nature and everyday household objects. Relativists do not practice what they preach. Secondly, one thing that drives people to this implausible relativism, which is so out of line with their practice, is a perceived connection with tolerance or anti-authoritarianism. This is what they see as attractive in it. But this is upside-down. For if ‘it's all relative’ and no judgment is better than any other, then relativists put their judgments wholly beyond criticism, and they cannot err. Only those who think that there is a right and wrong in judgment can modestly admit that they might be wrong. What looks like an ideology of tolerance is, in fact, the very opposite. Thus relativism is hypocritical and it is intolerant."
Sunday, January 31, 2010
(CR) Aesthetics
From the Columbia Encyclopedia:
"aesthetics (ĕsthĕt'ĭks), the branch of philosophy that is concerned with the nature of art and the criteria of artistic judgment. The classical conception of art as the imitation of nature was formulated by Plato and developed by Aristotle in his Poetics, while modern thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, F. W. Schelling, Benedetto Croce, and Ernst Cassirer have emphasized the creative and symbolic aspects of art. The major problem in aesthetics concerns the nature of the beautiful.
Generally speaking there are two basic approaches to the problem of beauty-the objective, which asserts that beauty inheres in the object and that judgments concerning it may have objective validity, and the subjective, which tends to identify the beautiful with that which pleases the observer. Outstanding defenders of the objective position were Plato, Aristotle, and G. E. Lessing, and of the subjective position, Edmund Burke and David Hume. In his Critique of Judgment, Kant mediated between the two tendencies by showing that aesthetic judgment has universal validity despite its subjective nature. Among the modern philosophers interested in aesthetics, the most important are Croce, R. G. Collingwood, Cassirer, and John Dewey."
"aesthetics (ĕsthĕt'ĭks), the branch of philosophy that is concerned with the nature of art and the criteria of artistic judgment. The classical conception of art as the imitation of nature was formulated by Plato and developed by Aristotle in his Poetics, while modern thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, F. W. Schelling, Benedetto Croce, and Ernst Cassirer have emphasized the creative and symbolic aspects of art. The major problem in aesthetics concerns the nature of the beautiful.
Generally speaking there are two basic approaches to the problem of beauty-the objective, which asserts that beauty inheres in the object and that judgments concerning it may have objective validity, and the subjective, which tends to identify the beautiful with that which pleases the observer. Outstanding defenders of the objective position were Plato, Aristotle, and G. E. Lessing, and of the subjective position, Edmund Burke and David Hume. In his Critique of Judgment, Kant mediated between the two tendencies by showing that aesthetic judgment has universal validity despite its subjective nature. Among the modern philosophers interested in aesthetics, the most important are Croce, R. G. Collingwood, Cassirer, and John Dewey."
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Reminders to All Bloggers
1. Please remember to end each post -- including the posts that are answers to a question -- with a question.
2. Check the link to your site in the margins of this blog. Is the name right? The seminar? Does the link work? If there are any problems, please email me the corrections ASAP.
2. Check the link to your site in the margins of this blog. Is the name right? The seminar? Does the link work? If there are any problems, please email me the corrections ASAP.
(NHN) Okay, "less than 3%," not 1%. Same Difference!
"The most troubling example yet is his sudden turn toward a spending freeze, which appears to be nothing more than pandering to the angry right. There are many reasons why this will not work as policy or politics, beginning with the nature of the proposal and concluding with its certain impact.
By exempting the military, homeland security, veterans and international affairs, the plan will affect less than one-fifth of the entire federal budget, total less than 3 percent annually and save about $25 billion per year over the coming decade. The president’s conservative critics in Congress and the media will eagerly and easily lampoon this level of cutting as insignificant and insufficient (although the Republicans will offer no realistic alternative).
As a sop to citizens concerned about the deficit, the Obama freeze is unlikely to make any impression. It smacks of a cynical gesture designed to respond to the latest polls."
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/hope_in_the_deep_freeze_20100127/
By exempting the military, homeland security, veterans and international affairs, the plan will affect less than one-fifth of the entire federal budget, total less than 3 percent annually and save about $25 billion per year over the coming decade. The president’s conservative critics in Congress and the media will eagerly and easily lampoon this level of cutting as insignificant and insufficient (although the Republicans will offer no realistic alternative).
As a sop to citizens concerned about the deficit, the Obama freeze is unlikely to make any impression. It smacks of a cynical gesture designed to respond to the latest polls."
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/hope_in_the_deep_freeze_20100127/
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
(CR) The World of Ideas
A post from the last time I taught CR, along with some interesting comments from readers:
http://critojazz.blogspot.com/2008/01/cr-ideality-vs-reality-introduction.html
http://critojazz.blogspot.com/2008/01/cr-ideality-vs-reality-introduction.html
Thursday, January 21, 2010
(AP-Honors, CR, NHN) Note to All Student Bloggers
To those students who choose the blogging option: once you've set things up, please send me a link to your blog along with your name as you would like it to appear on my student blogger list and the name of the seminar.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Someone Get this Man a Philosophy Toolkit!
Pat "Blame-it-on-Satan" Robertson is at it again:Help is on the way:
Sunday, January 10, 2010
A Failure of the Imagination
David Michael Green:
"[The American] condition represents an utter failure of the imagination, and therefore the startling ‘success' of the regressive framing effort. This limitation of what is conceivable and the concomitant diminishing of expectations is the greatest triumph of right-wing marketing, and it's Orwellian to its core. What makes it especially startling is that the alternatives in question are so commonsensical and so proximate in real life form, and yet even some progressives in America have been trained to lower their expectations enough to ignore the existence of these ideas and models. What could be more basic than removing gushing profits and massive bureaucratic waste from a country's healthcare system, especially one that is groaning so clangorously under the burdens of runaway costs? What could be easier to figure out than nationalized healthcare, when every other developed country in the world already does it? And yet such ideas were nowhere remotely near consideration throughout these long months of tortuous negotiations over ‘reform' of what actually amounts to the care of corporate health in America. And yet even the most pathetic feints in the direction of real solutions - a public option or the extension of Medicare benefits - were immediately dispatched with, so that the profiteers' victory could be unequivocally complete.
Military spending is another excellent example. This country drops twice as much on ‘defense' as what is spent by every other country in the world combined, and we do that despite having not a single state enemy (you know, the kind you could actually use such a military against) anywhere on the horizon. And we do that despite having a nuclear deterrent arsenal that means sure suicide for anyone stupid enough to invade America or even seriously provoke the country. But even if none of that were true, and even if we were spending just a little bit more than necessary for national defense, what might one logically expect of the character of political debate in a country that cannot afford to educate its students, cannot provide healthcare for its citizens, and cannot maintain its infrastructure? What about in a country that cannot do those things, and which also happens to be so deeply in the hole financially that the Treasury Department has been relocated to the floor of the Pacific Ocean? What would you expect to see in a country like that? Perhaps a wee discussion of spending those bucks a bit differently? Would that be so bizarre?
And yet, do we see such a conversation about reducing these obscene expenditures anywhere on the political landscape? Can anyone name a mainstream politician who advocates these views? Can anyone find a major political party saying we need to cut defense spending in half - so that we ‘only' spend as much as all the other 195 countries of the world combined - and then use the proceeds to provide healthcare for all?
We could go on and one here. Where is the great movement for saving the planet from the destruction of global warming, even if it means foregoing that SUV? Where is that most commonsensical call to divorce special interests and their money from American politics? Where are remotely sensible policies on guns or drugs or crime? And so on, and so on. None of this is even close to happening, and it is regressivism's great triumph in removing from the realm of the politically imaginable even those things which are so transparently sensible, even those things which exist en masse in every other developed democracy in the world, even those that fairly scream out for adoption at home."
"[The American] condition represents an utter failure of the imagination, and therefore the startling ‘success' of the regressive framing effort. This limitation of what is conceivable and the concomitant diminishing of expectations is the greatest triumph of right-wing marketing, and it's Orwellian to its core. What makes it especially startling is that the alternatives in question are so commonsensical and so proximate in real life form, and yet even some progressives in America have been trained to lower their expectations enough to ignore the existence of these ideas and models. What could be more basic than removing gushing profits and massive bureaucratic waste from a country's healthcare system, especially one that is groaning so clangorously under the burdens of runaway costs? What could be easier to figure out than nationalized healthcare, when every other developed country in the world already does it? And yet such ideas were nowhere remotely near consideration throughout these long months of tortuous negotiations over ‘reform' of what actually amounts to the care of corporate health in America. And yet even the most pathetic feints in the direction of real solutions - a public option or the extension of Medicare benefits - were immediately dispatched with, so that the profiteers' victory could be unequivocally complete.
Military spending is another excellent example. This country drops twice as much on ‘defense' as what is spent by every other country in the world combined, and we do that despite having not a single state enemy (you know, the kind you could actually use such a military against) anywhere on the horizon. And we do that despite having a nuclear deterrent arsenal that means sure suicide for anyone stupid enough to invade America or even seriously provoke the country. But even if none of that were true, and even if we were spending just a little bit more than necessary for national defense, what might one logically expect of the character of political debate in a country that cannot afford to educate its students, cannot provide healthcare for its citizens, and cannot maintain its infrastructure? What about in a country that cannot do those things, and which also happens to be so deeply in the hole financially that the Treasury Department has been relocated to the floor of the Pacific Ocean? What would you expect to see in a country like that? Perhaps a wee discussion of spending those bucks a bit differently? Would that be so bizarre?
And yet, do we see such a conversation about reducing these obscene expenditures anywhere on the political landscape? Can anyone name a mainstream politician who advocates these views? Can anyone find a major political party saying we need to cut defense spending in half - so that we ‘only' spend as much as all the other 195 countries of the world combined - and then use the proceeds to provide healthcare for all?
We could go on and one here. Where is the great movement for saving the planet from the destruction of global warming, even if it means foregoing that SUV? Where is that most commonsensical call to divorce special interests and their money from American politics? Where are remotely sensible policies on guns or drugs or crime? And so on, and so on. None of this is even close to happening, and it is regressivism's great triumph in removing from the realm of the politically imaginable even those things which are so transparently sensible, even those things which exist en masse in every other developed democracy in the world, even those that fairly scream out for adoption at home."
Friday, January 08, 2010
Anticipating Spring, 2010 Seminars
My classes for the upcoming semester are as follows (currently, all seminars are full):
1. Art and Philosophy
2. Art and Philosophy (Honors)
3. The Nature of Human Nature (Honors)
4. Constructing Reality (Honors/Philosophy cross-list)
5. Private jazz piano
Eager students might begin to review the document listed under DKJ's MCLA Handouts. I'll be offering three honors sections next semester: Constructing Reality (a 300-level seminar; some familiarity with and, especially, lots of enthusiasm for philosophical analysis required) an honors section of Art and Philosophy and The Nature of Human Nature (both 100-level, but equally rigorous and challenging). Student blogs, with some new requirements designed to improve inter-student communication and facilitate responsible, substantive blogging, will be one optional component of each seminar. In addition, all prospective honors students -- indeed all good students -- should take a close look at Matt Silliman's brief essay from T-12 Online, Volume 16.1 What Makes Honors Students Honorable, where he offers a set of ideal (since never fully realized) intellectual virtues to which we all ought to aspire.
1. Art and Philosophy
2. Art and Philosophy (Honors)
3. The Nature of Human Nature (Honors)
4. Constructing Reality (Honors/Philosophy cross-list)
5. Private jazz piano
Eager students might begin to review the document listed under DKJ's MCLA Handouts. I'll be offering three honors sections next semester: Constructing Reality (a 300-level seminar; some familiarity with and, especially, lots of enthusiasm for philosophical analysis required) an honors section of Art and Philosophy and The Nature of Human Nature (both 100-level, but equally rigorous and challenging). Student blogs, with some new requirements designed to improve inter-student communication and facilitate responsible, substantive blogging, will be one optional component of each seminar. In addition, all prospective honors students -- indeed all good students -- should take a close look at Matt Silliman's brief essay from T-12 Online, Volume 16.1 What Makes Honors Students Honorable, where he offers a set of ideal (since never fully realized) intellectual virtues to which we all ought to aspire.
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