FT24010: Images in Step

     Heidegger describes artworks much like things we observe in any other situation. Particularly they 'appear' to us and their actuality merge with our thought of it. He also describes how artwork can be different from normal experience in that the context of the artwork can be severed from it's actual context. This poses a puzzle for the observer to parse together what something is outside of the context we would normally observe things in our day to day observations.

    Heidegger address the puzzle of the observer of art but not that of the creator of art in this paradox. Heidegger seems to diminish the actual role of the artist as some sort of channel for art to express itself. However when an still life is set up before painting, the idea of the object is considered. The ability for the viewer to distinguish the foreground from the background is an important step.

    In a forest there is an anarchic array of trunks of trees which over take the field of vision. To experience the entire tree that is above ground we have to move our head and cannot receive the image in one instance. This is why many landscapes are of fields flanked by tree lines. It's easier to perceive out of context when there is a clearing or reduction of things. While we are in the woods we are percieving without confusion. A painting of the deep woods would be disorienting to the observer in a way that it isn't when there is context surrounding it.

    Heidegger's observation that the reduction of context of a perceived object in art may not be as special as he describes it. His description seems to be pure Art peering through observation is at work in this case. This simplification is done by the Artist to be sure and not some outside abstraction. Yet this simplification may open itself to open interpretations.

    Aristotle was keen in logic to reduce words to the conventions we recognize in in algebraic equations. X's and Y's stand for something distinct and lack alternative interpretations. It is known that language and words opens itself to ambiguities that can complicate communication of distinct ideas. The simplification of the still life or the landscape isn't to reduce ambiguity but mainly to have clear recognizable objects. Without this simplification there would be no interpretation rather than many because nothing is clear. However, few would admit art's simplification is to plot objects on an x and y axis. 

    In this way art more readily codifies observation in language. Yet what can be said with visual language is more vague than even a word that can mean more than one thing. Heidegger is preoccupied with truth being what is revealed by an object. Truth of an art work is not the understanding of it as a linguistic entrapment of observation. The understanding of an individual work of art is it's truth and not the entire field of art itself. Heidegger's paradox of art still persists in how we derive meaning from something out of context. Our role as this discussion making is distinct from our role of observers of reality. Yet this idea of 'World' Heidegger uses is used for the revealing of truth which reality and art both do. In both cases we are still building our World and inhabiting it. 

note: Heidegger's views on art captured from his writing "The Origin of the Work of Art"

FT24006: Creation and Thought

     Theistic philosophy sees God as a creator. Creation as a god cannot come from a material source so this creator is often given the property to create by thought. Much how our imagination is limited, God is not, and everything we see is in fact a thought of God. Humans have a limited capacity to share in this. These philosophies often see our roll, not as creators of the universe, but those who observe it. Being is generated by god but our capacity is a diminutive form of it. Instead of creating being we recognize it and name it. 

    Naming can almost seem a form of creation. If we name something few have experienced or few can understand we are credited for this naming. This naming still has the abstract quality of being and all its vagueness. Our names are generalities that can be applied over and over again to different observations. We take this practice when we name our children names that have named countless other people. However, names that are oddly specific or names of well known people strike us as odd. So odd we wonder if their parents are not capable of thinking clearly. Here it is clear that naming is important to allow multiplicity and avoid being overly specific. 

    Mathematical naming is an extreme example as an exception to our naming schema. In logical practices like these it's import that a name cannot denote anything other than the very thing at hand. In mathematical formulas its important that a symbol mean something specific and not allow the vagueness words bring in such as different understandings of what a word means. An equation cannot be calculated if this is not the case.

    Reason involves the matching of our understanding with what is created around us. We attach words to these understandings but if we become too descriptive we lose the pairing of our understanding towards reason. For instance, it's common for someone grappling with a concept to expect a knower of this concept to relate it in a clearly assembled set of words--in much the same way as a succinct formula. This is rarely a possibility and rejecting this simplicity is often the first step in learning. This succinct, precise language can be bound by logic but it does not amount to Reason. 

    To come back to the point of theism, we should recognize that Reason would be us adjusting our understanding to God's thoughts. The question is does Reason have currency in atheistic philosophy. Here being does not have a starting point that is outside our self. Descartes does give god the credit of a creator but he does launch a train of thought that could go in another direction. His famous "I think therefore I am" does amount to giving our thought as a generative power much like God. His rationalism give our source of thinking first before we can then intuit any concept of God.

    Other stand-ins for God include society and further yet the individual. This wraps up philosophy in the terms of politics and our will. Particularly the existentialists took hold of this and promoted the individual as the locus of being and creating being but curiously preoccupied with nihilism.

    As philosophies move away from theistic foundations the source of being becomes less important. The role of language can even mock this non-significance. The vagueness in words can suggest a multiplicity that lacks intelligibility. Word play can be a spectacle about our distinct inability to know Reason in any meaningful way. There is no grand thinker causing the being around us in this case. The words we use to correspond with Reason are empty.