The word philosophy means “love of wisdom”. In other words, it expresses itself as a desire to understand how the world works. People tend to forget that the purpose of this study is so that we can apply our conclusions towards leading happy and fulfilled lives.
The first two branches of philosophy establish the groundwork. Metaphysics describes the nature of reality and Epistemology demonstrates how we know this to be true. These two branches are interconnected to form a cluster.
The second two branches apply those conclusions. Ethics tells us the best way to live happy and productive lives and Politics tells us the best way to manage the group towards that same purpose. Since the group is a collection of individuals, then both Ethics and Politics are also connected to each other to form a second cluster that is completely dependent on the first.
Therefore the first four branches of philosophy must be consistent with each other with no contradiction. It is like a clockwork machine with all the individual cogs and springs working together to make the whole work.
So the first four branches all fit together into a neat, interconnected package and can be tested against reality by being put into practice. But what about the fifth and final branch of philosophy? This is Aesthetics, the realm of human creation and feeling.
On the surface, the question of Aesthetics is “What is Beauty?” but on a deeper level it concerns itself with all human creation. Here’s a small list to name just a few: art, architecture, drama, dance, painting, sculpture, design, ornamentation, writing, music, film, fashion, home décor, cosmetology, and computer graphics.
I once sat in a room with two PhD students doing papers in philosophy. I asked them a question that had been bugging me for years. “Why do people like what they like?” I thought the question was fairly straightforward. But they did not understand it, no matter how much I elaborated or rephrased. It was years later that I discovered that there was an entire branch of philosophy concerned with this question – Aesthetics.
The ignorance of these philosophy students regarding Aesthetics illustrates what I call The Great Disconnect, the separation of Aesthetics from the other branches of philosophy and therefore from Reality itself. What you believe philosophically is seen to have no connection to your tastes and your preferences in the art you choose to consume. This also demonstrates a disconnect from the mind and the heart, as the first four branches are primary rational while Aesthetics is primarily emotional.
Once the philosophy is taken from the art, the art loses its meaning. If the primary cluster of Metaphysics and Epistemology defines reality, and the secondary cluster of Ethics and Politics defines Action in that Reality, then the role of Aesthetics is to give meaning, heart, soul, or whatever words you choose, to the philosophy. When people claim a life without meaning, it is because of The Great Disconnect.
I was recently re-watching the film Equilibrium which takes place in a post-war Orwellian society in which feeling emotion is illegal and by extension so are all forms of art because they evoke feeling. What this film is saying is that art is about feeling. Now we may feel passionate about wisdom and be lovers of it, but philosophy is not inherently emotional. Rather, emotion can serve to cloud rational judgement with preferences and prejudices.
Where Aesthetic fits into with the other four branches of philosophy is that it communicates a sort of summary of the conclusions but with an added emotional element. A belief is a thought imbued with emotion, so in this sense Aesthetics is the injection of emotion into the thoughts presented by the other branches.
This may not be readily apparent when looking at the Mona Lisa or listening to Wagner. This is because artists do not usually create with a conscious message in mind, unless he or she is preaching. The artist usually begins with an idea ultimately derived from their personal worldview, or philosophy, which is then manifested in their art.
Once upon a time there were a group of people known as critics and what they did was examine a piece of art to unfold its hidden meanings and messages and thus add an extra dimension to it. Since the artist may not have been unaware of any deeper unconscious influences, he might be pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised by what the critic discovered.
Unfortunately, the role of critic has devolved into two groups. There is the academic prone to all sorts of fanciful nonsense derived from what he wants to find in the art and uses the art to justify his own philosophy. Then there is the pop-critic with his thumbs up or down. Even the word “critic” now has a negative connotation as one who demeans rather than as one who enlightens.
The demise of the traditional critic essentially severed the first four branches from the fifth thus taking any meaning from the art. Today art interpretation is seen as highly subjective and any attempt to impose meaning is viewed as rude.
Art is now whatever you want it to mean. This is an entirely false premise since if something can mean anything then it means nothing. Meaning enriches definition, so there can be no meaning without definition.
All art has two key aspects; the style which has to do with execution (call this the emotional aspect) and theme, this is the philosophy or message being conveyed by the art. The critic would be able to discuss both the message and the execution of the art and reveal it to the public who may or may not perceive it readily.
An excellent example of this is the film Avatar. It is a spectacular film. The imagery, effects, and execution are stunning. Thus it excels in terms of style. But few critics stood-up against the theme of the film. What Cameron created was an allegorical denunciation of capitalism through a misrepresentation of it and the history the film presumes to parallel. One might go so far as to call the theme hateful.
And yet the real life equivalents to the villains portrayed in the film (or at least their inheritors) stood in the aisles applauding it. After all, it’s just a film. Art means nothing apart from how it makes you feel. This is another symptom of the disconnection of Aesthetics from the other branches.
The problem here is that Aesthetics is part of philosophy and ignoring that connection does not alter the axiom. It does not change reality.
Consider the costume designer working on a film. Their job is to convey through the art of fashion the character of the character that they are dressing. The set designer plays a similar role by dressing a character’s space to tell the audience something about the character. Both the costume designer and the film goer send and receive these communications. They can read the art and get the meaning conveyed.
However, if I were to judge someone in real life according to the messages transmitted by their personal aesthetics, I would be seen as being presumptive. How dare I assume that the person wearing the cross is a Christian or that the boy in the Che Guevara shirt is a Communist? If I expected someone to behave according to the philosophy inherent in their aesthetic choices, or image, I might be seen as being dictatorial. Who am I to confer my assumed meaning to their personal choices?
And yet, advertisers look to attach philosophical meanings to their products. I remember as a boy seeing an ad for Levi’s 501 jeans that promoted individuality. Even then it struck me foolish to brand the ubiquitous denim as a sign of individuality. Or running shoes can be associated with freedom. The list can go on and on. Advertisers are not merely selling a product; they are selling a concept that they associate with their products through the art forms utilized in their advertisements. Strange that people accept that connection between Aesthetics and the other branches when spoon fed to them by advertisers or in the context of art, but not when they are held accountable for their aesthetic choices in their daily lives.
In Aesthetics, there is the concept of the idiom, a particular style of expression. These idioms can be derived from a particular culture, for example the Japanese style, or a particular time period, like Victoriana or 1960’s style, or genre fiction, like Goth or Steampunk. Some styles have become so entrenched in the popular imagination as to become idioms, like the English Chap or the 80’s businessman in the Patrick Bateman/Gordon Gecko mode.
Idioms communicate a universally agreed upon meaning. The Sixties was seen as a turbulent period of social change, and yet the Sixties idiom convey fun and freedom. The English Chap conveys propriety, the Eighties businessman represents greed (for right or wrong), and Goth is associated with melancholy, for a few more examples.
Sometimes people choose to live a particularly idiomatic lifestyle, such as Goths for example. The ideal is a thoroughly saturated existence. Goth clothes, Goth decor, Goth music, Goth books, and Goth partners. Feel free to replace the word Goth with any number of other idioms.
One the one hand such an idiomatic lifestyle is to be applauded for its purity, but on the other hand it may be condemned for its purity. In art we look for saturation, but in life saturation demonstrates a single faceted existence. It is this saturation that leads to accusations of pretentiousness because it is so unnatural.
Modern existence presents us with a vast array of cultural expressions and to discount all of them save one seems abnormal. That said; my particular Romantic idiom would look bizarre dancing to House Music. It’s disjointed and out of place. So people tend to pick and choose depending on the situation. They may dress mainstream or fashionable in some contexts and idiomatic in others. This is deemed normal. And yet to me this self-diversification always felt lacking integrity – integration. The true force of integration is the philosophy of the person employing the signs that constitute the expression.
When artists, costumers, decorators, advertisers, and even window dressers employ Aesthetics they are very aware of what they wish to communicate. The study of this is called Semiotics – the study of signs. A sign has a distinctive history and cultural meaning. An idiom is essentially a set of signs.
The Nineteenth century American essayist Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, “Fashion is only the attempt to realise art in living forms and social intercourse.” He identified fashion as the link between art and life.
By this statement, Oliver Wendell Holmes sees fashion is the bridge linking art and life. This suggests a logical connection between philosophy (in the form of the artist’s worldview), to Art (as an expression of this worldview), and then to fashion (as the means of expressing this worldview). Collectively these expressions signify an individual’s particular style of living – that is his life-style. Just as the artist’s style is born of his worldview, so too is the individual’s lifestyle born of his worldview, which brings the model full circle back to the philosophy.
However, to what extent can we say that people employ Aesthetics in their daily life? I’m writing not simply of Aesthetics as it pertains within itself, but also Aesthetics as an expression of the other four branches of philosophy. I would say by and large it would be little to not at all – at least not on a conscious level. This is where the connection between idioms and reality falls on its face. When aesthetics ceases to be a conscious act and becomes a mass consumption habit.
The contribution of the Romantic as a movement or school of art was the introduction of individual emotion and this was most apparent in the concept of the sublime. The goal of the artist became to evoke powerful emotions, sometimes conflicting extreme emotions, in the viewer or reader.
On the surface this seems to contradict the idea of having a philosophical core. It seems to suggest that how you feel is more important that what you think. However, emotions are a response to values and values are born of philosophy.
For example, Gothic literature sought to elicit the emotion of fear as an extreme emotion. Fear is the imagined loss of a value. In the stories, the greatest threats to the protagonists were the loss of life followed by the loss of sanity, the capacity to reason. Therefore we might argue that Goth promotes the value of reason, for it is through reason that the supernatural evil is defeated or the mystery solved. Thus the emotional aesthetics and the philosophy are connected.
Fear is one of the four cardinal emotions and is sister to Sorrow – the actual loss of a value. Fear is an imagined loss and sorrow is an actual loss. For most of its history, the Gothic idiom was dominated by the Byronic type in that is emphasised what Nietzsche might call “the will to power”. Although Gothic imagery evoked fear, there was an elemental desire to ascend to that power we feared.
Over the past thirty years the focus of the Gothic idiom has shifted from the Byronic will to power to a form typified by Edgar Allan Poe depicted as fear and sorrow. Poe suffered traumatic losses in his life and this actual loss of a value was expressed in his works. Modern Goth cannot begin to understand that level of loss, but it can imagine it, hence the emphasis on fear, an imagined loss. There is not the Byronic will to overcome and be one with that which we fear, but to succumb and revel in it. Goth is the oldest idiomatic subculture in the world, and yet it is the least influential and most misunderstood, despite the fact that the philosophical message inherent in the idiom is the will the power.
The stereotypical Goth girl is quiet, shy, and introverted. This is not to say that all Goths are. Over the past fifteen years we have seen the Goth scene mutate due to cross-pollination with heavy metal, punk, and fetish and a healthy dose of mainstream media attention. The result is a gothic variation of those other idioms, but lacking the philosophical foundation of either the Byronic or the Poeic variety inherent in Goth.
All art is communication and all communication starts with something to communicate. This is an idea, a philosophy, a worldview. The art is a natural manifestation of the philosophy. It is philosophy brought to life.
I remember reading that people asked David Hodges to explain his song My Immortal (performed by Evanescence). They wanted to know the actual story behind the song. He answered that there was none. He just made it up. It is the stock and trade of artists to write love songs and poems for nonexistent people or even for people that they do not even know because they are paid to create.
This story illustrates how Aesthetics operates today. Just as you can have a great love song without love, so too can people partake of wonderful art and modes of expression without it being rooted in the inherent philosophy, without it being that natural manifestation. Non-Christians can wear crosses because they like it and people can wear Ché Guevara t-shirts just because they are popular. You can have art without meaning just as you can have non-dairy ice cream.
A popular insult when I was growing-up in Los Angeles was to call someone a poseur, non-dairy ice cream pretending to be ice cream. It is the assumption of an image, style, or idiom but lacking the philosophical foundations. We also had what we called “Betties in Black”. These were the weekend Goths who gothed-up to go clubbing but they were mainstream during the week. At the club, all these poseurs would gather together in their clique and be Goths without the slightest inkling that there was more to it. They were all happy in their ignorance and there was no Idiom Standards Division there to hand out citations.
Imagine if the most important thing a new Christian did was buy their cross. Silly notion isn’t it. No, to be a Christians you must study the Bible, pray, and be in communion with other Christians. You have to learn the philosophy first and the Aesthetics comes later.
I first became aware of Congressman Ron Paul about five years ago. His name kept popping-up on forums and I decided to investigate. I found a lengthy speech he gave in Congress against Neo-Conservatives. The focus of the speech was refuting the philosophical foundations of the ideology. I later saw something similar in his speech against the Iraq War. His approach was a breath of fresh air.
Why is philosophy important? Because it is the foundation of all human existence. Just as Ron Paul recognised the need to look at the philosophical foundations of the Neo-Cons, so too do we as a society need to stop looking at the surface. Be that the surface of our own characters, the surface of others, the surface of our societies, our civilizations, and our art.
What is the meaning of Life? It is the meaning you give it. Life can be as vain or as profound as you choose to make it. You can choose to be a poseur if you like and suck all the meaning from the world leaving it devoid of colour. Or you can deny the Great Disconnect and reunite the broken shards of philosophy. The result may not be a happy life, but it will be fuller, richer, and well...meaningful.
The first two branches of philosophy establish the groundwork. Metaphysics describes the nature of reality and Epistemology demonstrates how we know this to be true. These two branches are interconnected to form a cluster.
The second two branches apply those conclusions. Ethics tells us the best way to live happy and productive lives and Politics tells us the best way to manage the group towards that same purpose. Since the group is a collection of individuals, then both Ethics and Politics are also connected to each other to form a second cluster that is completely dependent on the first.
Therefore the first four branches of philosophy must be consistent with each other with no contradiction. It is like a clockwork machine with all the individual cogs and springs working together to make the whole work.
So the first four branches all fit together into a neat, interconnected package and can be tested against reality by being put into practice. But what about the fifth and final branch of philosophy? This is Aesthetics, the realm of human creation and feeling.
On the surface, the question of Aesthetics is “What is Beauty?” but on a deeper level it concerns itself with all human creation. Here’s a small list to name just a few: art, architecture, drama, dance, painting, sculpture, design, ornamentation, writing, music, film, fashion, home décor, cosmetology, and computer graphics.
I once sat in a room with two PhD students doing papers in philosophy. I asked them a question that had been bugging me for years. “Why do people like what they like?” I thought the question was fairly straightforward. But they did not understand it, no matter how much I elaborated or rephrased. It was years later that I discovered that there was an entire branch of philosophy concerned with this question – Aesthetics.
The ignorance of these philosophy students regarding Aesthetics illustrates what I call The Great Disconnect, the separation of Aesthetics from the other branches of philosophy and therefore from Reality itself. What you believe philosophically is seen to have no connection to your tastes and your preferences in the art you choose to consume. This also demonstrates a disconnect from the mind and the heart, as the first four branches are primary rational while Aesthetics is primarily emotional.
Once the philosophy is taken from the art, the art loses its meaning. If the primary cluster of Metaphysics and Epistemology defines reality, and the secondary cluster of Ethics and Politics defines Action in that Reality, then the role of Aesthetics is to give meaning, heart, soul, or whatever words you choose, to the philosophy. When people claim a life without meaning, it is because of The Great Disconnect.
I was recently re-watching the film Equilibrium which takes place in a post-war Orwellian society in which feeling emotion is illegal and by extension so are all forms of art because they evoke feeling. What this film is saying is that art is about feeling. Now we may feel passionate about wisdom and be lovers of it, but philosophy is not inherently emotional. Rather, emotion can serve to cloud rational judgement with preferences and prejudices.
Where Aesthetic fits into with the other four branches of philosophy is that it communicates a sort of summary of the conclusions but with an added emotional element. A belief is a thought imbued with emotion, so in this sense Aesthetics is the injection of emotion into the thoughts presented by the other branches.
This may not be readily apparent when looking at the Mona Lisa or listening to Wagner. This is because artists do not usually create with a conscious message in mind, unless he or she is preaching. The artist usually begins with an idea ultimately derived from their personal worldview, or philosophy, which is then manifested in their art.
Once upon a time there were a group of people known as critics and what they did was examine a piece of art to unfold its hidden meanings and messages and thus add an extra dimension to it. Since the artist may not have been unaware of any deeper unconscious influences, he might be pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised by what the critic discovered.
Unfortunately, the role of critic has devolved into two groups. There is the academic prone to all sorts of fanciful nonsense derived from what he wants to find in the art and uses the art to justify his own philosophy. Then there is the pop-critic with his thumbs up or down. Even the word “critic” now has a negative connotation as one who demeans rather than as one who enlightens.
The demise of the traditional critic essentially severed the first four branches from the fifth thus taking any meaning from the art. Today art interpretation is seen as highly subjective and any attempt to impose meaning is viewed as rude.
Art is now whatever you want it to mean. This is an entirely false premise since if something can mean anything then it means nothing. Meaning enriches definition, so there can be no meaning without definition.
All art has two key aspects; the style which has to do with execution (call this the emotional aspect) and theme, this is the philosophy or message being conveyed by the art. The critic would be able to discuss both the message and the execution of the art and reveal it to the public who may or may not perceive it readily.
An excellent example of this is the film Avatar. It is a spectacular film. The imagery, effects, and execution are stunning. Thus it excels in terms of style. But few critics stood-up against the theme of the film. What Cameron created was an allegorical denunciation of capitalism through a misrepresentation of it and the history the film presumes to parallel. One might go so far as to call the theme hateful.
And yet the real life equivalents to the villains portrayed in the film (or at least their inheritors) stood in the aisles applauding it. After all, it’s just a film. Art means nothing apart from how it makes you feel. This is another symptom of the disconnection of Aesthetics from the other branches.
The problem here is that Aesthetics is part of philosophy and ignoring that connection does not alter the axiom. It does not change reality.
Consider the costume designer working on a film. Their job is to convey through the art of fashion the character of the character that they are dressing. The set designer plays a similar role by dressing a character’s space to tell the audience something about the character. Both the costume designer and the film goer send and receive these communications. They can read the art and get the meaning conveyed.
However, if I were to judge someone in real life according to the messages transmitted by their personal aesthetics, I would be seen as being presumptive. How dare I assume that the person wearing the cross is a Christian or that the boy in the Che Guevara shirt is a Communist? If I expected someone to behave according to the philosophy inherent in their aesthetic choices, or image, I might be seen as being dictatorial. Who am I to confer my assumed meaning to their personal choices?
And yet, advertisers look to attach philosophical meanings to their products. I remember as a boy seeing an ad for Levi’s 501 jeans that promoted individuality. Even then it struck me foolish to brand the ubiquitous denim as a sign of individuality. Or running shoes can be associated with freedom. The list can go on and on. Advertisers are not merely selling a product; they are selling a concept that they associate with their products through the art forms utilized in their advertisements. Strange that people accept that connection between Aesthetics and the other branches when spoon fed to them by advertisers or in the context of art, but not when they are held accountable for their aesthetic choices in their daily lives.
In Aesthetics, there is the concept of the idiom, a particular style of expression. These idioms can be derived from a particular culture, for example the Japanese style, or a particular time period, like Victoriana or 1960’s style, or genre fiction, like Goth or Steampunk. Some styles have become so entrenched in the popular imagination as to become idioms, like the English Chap or the 80’s businessman in the Patrick Bateman/Gordon Gecko mode.
Idioms communicate a universally agreed upon meaning. The Sixties was seen as a turbulent period of social change, and yet the Sixties idiom convey fun and freedom. The English Chap conveys propriety, the Eighties businessman represents greed (for right or wrong), and Goth is associated with melancholy, for a few more examples.
Sometimes people choose to live a particularly idiomatic lifestyle, such as Goths for example. The ideal is a thoroughly saturated existence. Goth clothes, Goth decor, Goth music, Goth books, and Goth partners. Feel free to replace the word Goth with any number of other idioms.
One the one hand such an idiomatic lifestyle is to be applauded for its purity, but on the other hand it may be condemned for its purity. In art we look for saturation, but in life saturation demonstrates a single faceted existence. It is this saturation that leads to accusations of pretentiousness because it is so unnatural.
Modern existence presents us with a vast array of cultural expressions and to discount all of them save one seems abnormal. That said; my particular Romantic idiom would look bizarre dancing to House Music. It’s disjointed and out of place. So people tend to pick and choose depending on the situation. They may dress mainstream or fashionable in some contexts and idiomatic in others. This is deemed normal. And yet to me this self-diversification always felt lacking integrity – integration. The true force of integration is the philosophy of the person employing the signs that constitute the expression.
When artists, costumers, decorators, advertisers, and even window dressers employ Aesthetics they are very aware of what they wish to communicate. The study of this is called Semiotics – the study of signs. A sign has a distinctive history and cultural meaning. An idiom is essentially a set of signs.
The Nineteenth century American essayist Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, “Fashion is only the attempt to realise art in living forms and social intercourse.” He identified fashion as the link between art and life.
By this statement, Oliver Wendell Holmes sees fashion is the bridge linking art and life. This suggests a logical connection between philosophy (in the form of the artist’s worldview), to Art (as an expression of this worldview), and then to fashion (as the means of expressing this worldview). Collectively these expressions signify an individual’s particular style of living – that is his life-style. Just as the artist’s style is born of his worldview, so too is the individual’s lifestyle born of his worldview, which brings the model full circle back to the philosophy.
However, to what extent can we say that people employ Aesthetics in their daily life? I’m writing not simply of Aesthetics as it pertains within itself, but also Aesthetics as an expression of the other four branches of philosophy. I would say by and large it would be little to not at all – at least not on a conscious level. This is where the connection between idioms and reality falls on its face. When aesthetics ceases to be a conscious act and becomes a mass consumption habit.
The contribution of the Romantic as a movement or school of art was the introduction of individual emotion and this was most apparent in the concept of the sublime. The goal of the artist became to evoke powerful emotions, sometimes conflicting extreme emotions, in the viewer or reader.
On the surface this seems to contradict the idea of having a philosophical core. It seems to suggest that how you feel is more important that what you think. However, emotions are a response to values and values are born of philosophy.
For example, Gothic literature sought to elicit the emotion of fear as an extreme emotion. Fear is the imagined loss of a value. In the stories, the greatest threats to the protagonists were the loss of life followed by the loss of sanity, the capacity to reason. Therefore we might argue that Goth promotes the value of reason, for it is through reason that the supernatural evil is defeated or the mystery solved. Thus the emotional aesthetics and the philosophy are connected.
Fear is one of the four cardinal emotions and is sister to Sorrow – the actual loss of a value. Fear is an imagined loss and sorrow is an actual loss. For most of its history, the Gothic idiom was dominated by the Byronic type in that is emphasised what Nietzsche might call “the will to power”. Although Gothic imagery evoked fear, there was an elemental desire to ascend to that power we feared.
Over the past thirty years the focus of the Gothic idiom has shifted from the Byronic will to power to a form typified by Edgar Allan Poe depicted as fear and sorrow. Poe suffered traumatic losses in his life and this actual loss of a value was expressed in his works. Modern Goth cannot begin to understand that level of loss, but it can imagine it, hence the emphasis on fear, an imagined loss. There is not the Byronic will to overcome and be one with that which we fear, but to succumb and revel in it. Goth is the oldest idiomatic subculture in the world, and yet it is the least influential and most misunderstood, despite the fact that the philosophical message inherent in the idiom is the will the power.
The stereotypical Goth girl is quiet, shy, and introverted. This is not to say that all Goths are. Over the past fifteen years we have seen the Goth scene mutate due to cross-pollination with heavy metal, punk, and fetish and a healthy dose of mainstream media attention. The result is a gothic variation of those other idioms, but lacking the philosophical foundation of either the Byronic or the Poeic variety inherent in Goth.
All art is communication and all communication starts with something to communicate. This is an idea, a philosophy, a worldview. The art is a natural manifestation of the philosophy. It is philosophy brought to life.
I remember reading that people asked David Hodges to explain his song My Immortal (performed by Evanescence). They wanted to know the actual story behind the song. He answered that there was none. He just made it up. It is the stock and trade of artists to write love songs and poems for nonexistent people or even for people that they do not even know because they are paid to create.
This story illustrates how Aesthetics operates today. Just as you can have a great love song without love, so too can people partake of wonderful art and modes of expression without it being rooted in the inherent philosophy, without it being that natural manifestation. Non-Christians can wear crosses because they like it and people can wear Ché Guevara t-shirts just because they are popular. You can have art without meaning just as you can have non-dairy ice cream.
A popular insult when I was growing-up in Los Angeles was to call someone a poseur, non-dairy ice cream pretending to be ice cream. It is the assumption of an image, style, or idiom but lacking the philosophical foundations. We also had what we called “Betties in Black”. These were the weekend Goths who gothed-up to go clubbing but they were mainstream during the week. At the club, all these poseurs would gather together in their clique and be Goths without the slightest inkling that there was more to it. They were all happy in their ignorance and there was no Idiom Standards Division there to hand out citations.
Imagine if the most important thing a new Christian did was buy their cross. Silly notion isn’t it. No, to be a Christians you must study the Bible, pray, and be in communion with other Christians. You have to learn the philosophy first and the Aesthetics comes later.
I first became aware of Congressman Ron Paul about five years ago. His name kept popping-up on forums and I decided to investigate. I found a lengthy speech he gave in Congress against Neo-Conservatives. The focus of the speech was refuting the philosophical foundations of the ideology. I later saw something similar in his speech against the Iraq War. His approach was a breath of fresh air.
Why is philosophy important? Because it is the foundation of all human existence. Just as Ron Paul recognised the need to look at the philosophical foundations of the Neo-Cons, so too do we as a society need to stop looking at the surface. Be that the surface of our own characters, the surface of others, the surface of our societies, our civilizations, and our art.
What is the meaning of Life? It is the meaning you give it. Life can be as vain or as profound as you choose to make it. You can choose to be a poseur if you like and suck all the meaning from the world leaving it devoid of colour. Or you can deny the Great Disconnect and reunite the broken shards of philosophy. The result may not be a happy life, but it will be fuller, richer, and well...meaningful.
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