My Own Ideas

For me, art is life. I myself could not exist without art, music, literature, all of it. It is beautiful; it is quintessential. Plato makes the argument that only the didactic works of art would serve society best but does he consider how basic the need for human beings to create is? In my Great Monuments of Art class, we constantly discuss how fundamental creativity is to every human being. We want to create. As mentioned briefly in class, Plato's "Republic" is a recipe for a distopia and a chaotic future society. His ideas are not too far fetched from Hitler's and Stalin's ideas on art. These ruthless leaders would only keep the art that would further the nation and Plato wants to keep art the furthers humanity's progress. Art, in this sense, is only being used as propaganda.

Art has done its best to save people's lives. For example, Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf who both committed suicide kept their suicidality at bay with their writing. Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish filmmaker, who died at an old age, put all his sorrow and pain into his films and was able to live a full life, a painful one, but a full one.

How is sorrow dealt with according to Socrates by Plato? How is this relevant to human nature today? Is feeling sorrow truly weak as noted around line 602? Are there ideas in the discourse of The Republic that relate to Sigmund Freud's ideas as well as Walt Whitman's?

Sorrow is dealt with by concealing it and pretending to be happy and content as to not embarrass oneself before one's peers. Throughout history, it was thought inappropriate to show passions or extreme emotion. Sometimes people were thought mad because of such occurrences. Today, some people still think it is improper to show a public display of emotion as if emotion is something that should be kept inside. But for some people, especially myself, I find it difficult to keep emotions bottled up inside. Often times I will not trouble others with problems but will release my frustrations into art (which displays another practical use of art, as if there needed to be any). I feel I am still afflicted with that very old policy of keeping my emotions to myself. I do not believe feeling sad is truly weak or "womanish" as Plato states around line 602 and I find it offensive to me and to women when people say such things even today.

Socrates mentions, "But, I remember, that on this subject we need not come to an agreement now; for we settled all this satisfactorily in the past conversations, in which we admitted that our soul is filled with a myriad of these simultaneous contradictions." Walt Whitman had a quote in which he stated that he does contradict himself but that he has a myriad of personalities within himself. So, to contradict oneself is potentially a human quality since it spans between more than just Whitman and Plato. Sigmund Freud is evident in Plato's writing with the line: "But when he is alone, he will venture to say much, which he would be ashamed to say in the hearing of another person, and he will do much, which he would not like anyone to see him doing." This gives almost a written definitive example of Freud's idea that human beings have a conscious part of ourselves which we keep hidden from the scornful society. Plato does not address happiness but I think it is important to mention that Freud had the notion that human beings should live life with the most pleasure possible.

My Philosophical Questions

(From The Symposium, page 37, line 207). How are reproduction, sex, and love immortal? Is it immortal as a writer's or artist's work, presuming we believe that such things are immortal? How are humans immortal when we do, in fact, die? Is sex or the first time having it a path to become God? Are reproduction, sex, love equivalents to death? Sex is the loss of innocence, but is it also death in that sense, the death of one stage of life and the beginning of a new one? If one fears these three human qualities, does one therefore fear death? If one never experiences them, does one escape death?

Reproduction does make the woman more immortal than the man because it is her product, her artwork. (And here can be answer the question "what is art?" Art is everything because everything is created in some way). But the man, on the other hand, only contributes his features to the child. Of course, the child's upbringing could also change the potential for immortality. Sex could be viewed as the act of immortalizing but the idea that virginity is forever lost through the act of sex also makes it immortal. Love, depending on who it comes from, can be immortal. If it is a fairytale true love, it could be forever, eternal, immortal.

Human beings are immortal through their thoughts, if recorded, and their offspring and their actions. There is a legend that when an actor speaks something on stage, that something floats off and becomes essence in the universe forever. That, too, is immortal.

Definitely, some people would view sex as divine and holy while others think it is sinful and impious. But it is a state at which human beings are completely unleashing all their emotions and senses. The only other action that humans do that I think could compare with that is creating art or being creative in general. So, it is the highest state of mind humans can get to; does that mean we are gods in a way when we have sex or when we create something magnificent?

Yes. Reproduction, sex, and love are death. Reproduction is the death of beauty, to some people, the death of youth. Sex the death of virginity and innocence and love, the death of loneliness or hurt. These three experiences begin new stages in human beings' lives and shape our entire lives until we reach physical death, and what of that? What do we become after that?

I think if someone does fear these experiences, then one does fear a type of death and change. For, with this logic, change is a kind of death. Death is such a negative word and maybe we can define it better. Death is the ending of one thing with the possible chance of something else beginning. To never experience these three concepts is not immortalizing in any way, but by dying, we immortalize ourselves. To find a way to cheat death is to discover oblivion.

Answer to Nicole's Post

Many people will argue that human ideas are no longer original and that every idea was conceived out of something which was conceived of something else, all beginning with, in this case, creationism, God, and the realm of forms. However, there is a blatant contradiction in that ideas are not exactly the same as technological items. Technological advances have been made since we lived in caves and saw that it made foraging for meat easier if we put an arrowhead on a spear. (Side point: Since this is Art and Philosophy, I'd like to add that also since we lived in caves, we have been expressing ourselves artistically with cave paintings and creations. Humans are unable to not create things, often beautiful products of our minds). But an idea or concept is not the same as a spear, or say a firearm. How they are similar I will say: they have both advanced from their initial (if spear and idea, whatever it was, was the first of its kind) origin.
   I personally believe the opposite of this and I do not believe that all creativity and new thought has ended. However, "new" is careful word because I say something is new just for general understanding, but nothing is truly "new." Every creative idea or thought came from something previous to it. For example, none of William Shakespeare's plays are actually original plot lines, they originate from Greek stories and myths, but the eloquent language and depiction of human emotion, which is a timeless element because it grows stronger in time for each human who experiences it, is what one could consider "new."
   As for the inventor, the inventor or innovator must take ideas from nature which existed here first. You mentioned that you had not seen any plant-couches lately, but what about logs? Are they not basically tree-couches?

So, as I was reading through the Philosophy toolkit, I noticed several things. Philosophy seems very logical. That might be a kind of dull, thoughtless remark. But I always thought of philosophy as having radical and revolutionizing ideas and not being so mathematical. I have no problem with this; everyone needs logic in their lives, but I am quite sure there were many 19th century Russian ideologies that were most radical and punishable at the time. I would love to explore the calmer side of philosophy where ideas are presented almost as equations but with multiple answers and completely radical ideas that may follow a kind of equation but sound absurd or different to some.
   I saw the Intellectual Virtues section and after reading them, I thought that these ideas are kind of contrary to human nature. Not everyone can be a highly reasonable person, in fact, I find it quite absurd to be so. I myself am not a perfect, reasonable person and I doubt I ever will be; I would never wish to be either. I would feel caged living by habits set down and not being able to make my own mind about situations. I am not an anarchist. I don't want complete annihilation of laws, but I do advocate freedom of thought and emotion.
   And I wondered reading these that most philosophers must be rich and live in the upper classes because these do not sound like the qualities of someone who is barely making end's meet. I do not suggest that people who have less financial income are any less human or any less cultured or honorable, but I do understand that these set of habits are for the "perfect person" as I mentioned before. Someone working hard to make money, maybe support their family and friends, cannot contemplate all these things at once. Perhaps they have another method for coping with stress, like art or music. Sometimes the absence of thought is the most blissful, beautiful thing that can be achieved by a human being.
   The Logical Terms and Informal Fallacies sections made me chuckle a couple of times because I just saw how simple the ideas and equations were. But I think that this logic must be brought to a higher level in order for it to be interesting and thought-provoking. Additionally, I would love to debate idealism and realism because I have my own imaginative mind and I am creative about the world I live in.
   I don't agree with knowledge being a "justified true belief," in philosophy or any other domain or discipline. Knowledge is thought. I think that God exists but some people do not know that for certain. What if I saw ghosts but no one else did, like Macbeth sees Banquo's ghost? Would my seeing those ghosts be a true belief? For me, yes, or maybe no. Maybe I would be skeptical of myself and others would surely not believe me.
   Thought is a very careful thing....

Hello, everyone! I go by Chris or if you have any creative nickname for me. I am a very creative person. I love to write, read, play music, sometimes draw, and act. I'm majoring in English and FPA (music) here at MCLA and I'm currently a Freshman. I'm looking very forward to my classes this semester. I'm in this philosophy course because it satisfies my Humanities requirement but also because I find philosophy very interesting. And I absolutely love to think about things; anything, in fact. People tell me I think too much. But I very much hope that I can share my opinions with this class and let everyone know my ideas and feelings about all kinds of topics.