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

[Daryl Shawn <highhorse@mhorse.com>]

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.