Friday, January 28, 2011

Facebook Philosophy

This is a conversation that took place between my little brother, his girlfriend, a lot of random people and myself. The full conversation is on Facebook so I had to copy and paste it here. In the copying and pasting of this philosophical argument I have omitted the comments made by all others except my brother, his girlfriend, and myself; I don't know if the other people would appreciate me posting their ideas in a public place based on principle (For some reason people post things on Facebook thinking that it is a private page. But, how can it be a private page if said page is in a public domain? This is something we should all think about.). This is actually quite ashamed because some of the other individuals contributed great ideas to this argument; the few individuals that had anything intellectual to say. But I digress, the post and my response if found bellow:


beauty.by ______________________on _____, January ___, 2011 at 6:48pm

While having a huge debate with my friend about the importance of art based on a quote from the famous novel "the Picture of Dorian Gray", i came to a realization. The book quotes "The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless." In Baileighs defense, she agreed with this proclamation. Out of instinct as an artist, i was against it. Now that Ive had time to reflect, all art IS useless. Though, the meaning of it is beautiful. I see beautiful things in this world all the time. I feel them in my heart. The important question is: what is beautiful to you? Its painful sometimes. Its unexplainable. I often think "Why is everything so damned beautiful?!" So much, it just hurts. People are art, aren't they? People, like everything else beautiful, are useless. Who or what in society defines importance? Who or what sets the standards for beauty? Yes, art is pointless and irrelevant. Its the concept of everything beautiful, though, that matters to me. As i sit, listening to a piece of ART called "A river flows in You", almost exhausted from emotion, I now know my own feelings towards art. Do you?


Sara Rodriguez:

You have stumbled upon one of the questions many philosophers have debated about for centuries. Beauty: is beauty based on a personal opinion or is everything that is classified as being beautiful on that way in of itself? I think that in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde is analyzing beauty in two ways: one way through the readers perspective, which you could also twist and say it was Hallward’s perspective, and one through Dorian’s. Dorian sees beauty as being a Form (or Universal) meaning that there is one things that all beautiful things share in common; a sunset, an abstract painting, a flower, etc.--all these things have one aspect of their being that makes them beautiful. Dorian believes he is beautiful because of the way that he looks; he has perfect 'symmetry' and both his parts and whole persona are Beauty. Hallward, or the reader, can see that Beauty is only in the eye of the beholder; the reader knows Dorian’s true self, the deeds he has done, the words he has said, and the way he has behaved. Hallward originally saw Dorian as a beautiful being and after he was corrupted by the opinions of Wotton he began to see him as a horrible and ugly individual because even though his outer shell was still intact his inner soul was decayed. Hallward is criticized by Wotton for his inaccurate representation of Dorian only because Wotton believes as Dorian does; that he, Dorian, is still beautiful. This is because Wotton himself is decayed.

As for the rest of your questions. I don't think art is pointless, look at Dadaism, Surrealism, and the art of the Renaissance. It was inspired by real life; art was an outlet of emotions, a way to record history, a way to keep time. As for today’s so called 'art' I cannot make a statement on. I think that today art has been mass produced to fit the non-existent wants of the consumer; it is rare to find true art in modern times. People can be art; depending on how you define art and can be beautiful depending on its definition as well. And that it beautiful to me might not be beautiful to you but that is the 'beauty' of esthetics.


My Brother:

Showoff....


"How", you may ask, "does this have anything to do with what we went over in class?" Well, I'm not sure if it does. To be honest I had this conversation a while back and that day in class we were going over the idea of Forms in three of my classes. So, when this conversation presented itself I was more than happy to jump in and tell her what I thought I knew about the idea of Beauty.

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