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Re: What do you think is necessary in order to have an excellentcomposition?



Got'cha. Yeah, "great" by criteria, which even if not exhaustively 
defined is generally understood...at least by "Western" thinking over 
the last 450 years! not exactly universally applicable.

I know a number of people here in Mexico who have never heard of the 
Beatles. Helps with perspective.

I still think the beauty question is interesting to ask, even if it's 
judged unanswerable it can help to get a fix on one's philosophy.

cheers,

Daryl Shawn
www.swanwelder.com

(ps. Am I really one of the few that gets the emails individually, not 
in digest? If everyone's on digest I will trim the post I'm responding 
to as Rick suggested, when viewing individual ones it helps..)

>
>> But I don't entirely agree that the merit of Art is based on 
>> subjective, isolated emotional reaction. I don't think it fallacious 
>> to state as a point of fact that Bach was a great composer, 
>> Shakespeare a great writer, Van Gogh a great painter, Michelangelo a 
>> great sculptor, all of whom created great works. My own emotional 
>> reaction isn't a solid basis to argue otherwise. There are criteria 
>> other then personal emotion to judge art; innovation, craft, and the 
>> perception of value over a period of time, fr'instance.
>
> It isn't falacious, according to my framework of thinking, unless what 
> you mean
> by "Bach was a great composer" is that "greatness" is some objective and
> evaluative property that "is possessed" by a person or piece of work. 
> If what
> you mean by "great" is a set of empirically validated criteria, then 
> that's fine;
> otherwise, I'd argue the statement is meaningless...again, this is 
> just one
> radical perspective in philosophy. I'm not pushing this on anyone, just
> putting my own stake in the ground, despite how unpopular it may be
> or how many folks on the list may object.
>
>> Would you argue that the question "What is Beauty?" is not a 
>> worthwhile topic for philosophical discussion? On this point, I'm 
>> just curious.
>
> It believe is was very germane two thousand years ago and in the 
> middle ages, e.g,
> Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine, Anselm, etc. Reams and reams of 
> text have
> been written to attempt to answer this particular question. Some 
> philosophers
> today and in the early 20th century consider this a naive and 
> misleading question;
> some even consider it meaningless, like myself, if we are after 
> anything like
> an external truth or objective state of affairs; or if the question is 
> not analyzed
> and translated into a different type of statement.