Philosophy and Art

I have read Kant and Hegel more intensively than you, because I have read them in their original language German. Yes, it is sometimes difficult to read them, especially Hegel, but that just does not make them “terrible philosophers”. That is just what a philosopher does not need to be: an artist. And an artist does not need to be a philosopher. That is just what I am saying.

If you want to read art, then read art.

You do not know their original language.

You are writing nonsense.

Have you not read what I replied?

If you prefer art, then be honest and just say it.

By the way:
Have you ever read mathematics books?
Have you ever read logic books?

Isn’t it basically the same discussion about a pseudo dualistic problem here on ILP: “Logic versus Ethics”, “Rationality versus Irrationality”, “Kant or Hegel versus Schopenhauer or Nietzsche” … and so on and so forth? To me, these dualisms are pseudo dualisms, not like real dualisms, for instance: “Ideality versus Reality”, “Subjectivity versus Objectivity”.

And a further example: “Spirit versus Nature”.

Couldn’t we subsume the both dualisms “Spirit versus Nature” and “Ideality versus Reality” under one dualism?

I would not.

And if I did, I would subsume both under the dualism “Subjectivity versus Objectivity”.

Arminius wrote:

Are you speaking exclusively of painted canvases and sculptures when you use the term artists?

Would you also include writers and poets within Art? Theirs is also Art.

Philosophers might make bad artists insofar as an artist’s canvas or sculpture goes since it does take a lot of talent to do what a good or great artist does …some might not even be able to color within the lines…

BUT I might suggest that the artist himself; namely, the one who is also the writer or poet, along with the painter of canvases, might also be a good philosopher.

Would you agree that an artist is one who does or tries to show the reality of life in both the concrete and the abstract?
The one who reaches below the surface of things to reveal what nature is and does and defines truth and meaning.
The one who shows us, gives us another interpretation or perception insofar as how we can look at something?

Isn’t this ALSO what the philosopher does, Arminius?
But perhaps some are just not capable of seeing how both can flow through and harmonize with each other.

As I have already said, writers and poets are artists too.

Artists do not always and/or not entirely show the reality (think of certain surrealists for exxample), but they actually should.

Philosophers and artists have similarities, as I have already said too, but they are not the same.

Salvador Dali himself said once that his art only shows how expensive it is. :wink:

What Salvador Dali also said is this: “Surrealim is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.”

But the posterior destructivism destroys more than the previous surrealism did.

Architecture for example:

Not at all. Philosophy means “love of wisdom” so things has to make sense, and serve a potential/purpose. Art doesn’t have to be useful or sever any purpose, that is an unwise conclusion.

:question:

That is what I am saying. :sunglasses:

Philosophy must be very spiritual, since it has almost only to do with thinking, which means: logic.
Art is different from that.
So both are not the same, but have similarities.

Mathematical thinking and I would say Science, which include Math Th. will mean logic.

I would suggest that Philosophy does not necessarily have to include logic but I may be wrong here but that is my intuition.

Yes, Philosophy is about thinking, a search for truth wisdom and meaning of things of reality. That path does not always include logic though it would be a good, necessary thing if logical, analytical cognitive thinking was a part of that.

You do not see the spiritual as also being part of feelings and emotions? Do those things play no role in philosophy to you?
What is a human being? A computer, a robot?
Doesn’t spirit/spiritual also have to do with the way in which we use our Energy, how we perceive and observe things?
Where does the spiritual come from?
We are more than just a rational side.

Food for thought or for illustration.

Do you think that a picture can be thought?
Do you think that a thought can be illustrated?

[tab][/tab][tab][/tab]

Alf wrote,

I think that you have probably heard the expression: A picture is worth a thousand words.

It is quite obvious that a picture can come from thought or as you worded it - can be thought. An artist views something and at some point his imagination and thinking brings it to fruition as some art form.

But here is definitely a picture, though it is actually a sculpture, which portrays thought or is thought. One does not need to know what he is thinking but there is thought there.

Thought.jpg

I happen to love Scott Mutter’s work. Yes, it is surrealism or surrational.

My favorite for some reason.

A lyric I wrote isn’t meant to define this image but to speak to it and at the same time to introduce a truism of human nature:

I’m a pilgrim on the edge,
on the edge of my perception
We are travelers at the edge,
we are always at the edge of our perceptions.
–Scott Mutter, Surrational Image

…This translocation of imagery emphasizes the extreme degree to which we are operating in a geometric, linear, rectangular pattern of existence in the systems and environment we’ve built around us. What else is there or could there be?"

–Scott Mutter, Surrational Images

photographymuseum.com/mutter/escalator.html

These pictures can be said to BE thought as they were derived from thought.

See above.

Another.

cigarette smoking can cause death.jpg

enlightenment.jpg

ecstatic.jpg

They do it in advertising all of the time.

All you need is to be able to understand a word or phrase by personal experience and it comes into existence.

All your examples don’t and can’t show what I’ve meant. I’ve meant whether a thought can be illustrated in the way that all humans would do it each time in the same way (your example “thought”, for example, does not show this, because it can be interpreted in many, many other ways and from time to time very differently) and whether a picture can be thought by all humans each time in the same way (for example: a planet as a picture and Saturn as the thought always in the same way by all humans, but that is not the case either). What I mean is that we have the subject/object problem here again.

What do you, for example, think when you see my avatar?
[tab][/tab]How would you, for example, illustrate this thought?

If I may answer:

I think of Alf and would illustrate that thought as follows:[list][list][list][list] [list][list][list][list][/list:u][/list:u][/list:u][/list:u][/list:u][/list:u][/list:u][/list:u] :slight_smile:

But that’s not what everyone thinks and would illustrate.

I, for example, think of my birth place when I see my avatar and my illustration of this thought would be the birth house, and that is not illustrated in my avatar.

My avatar shows pretty clearly the church and pretty dimly a few houses of the village where I was born, but not my birth house.