Lauren Schaaf- Schopenhauer
I had never heard of Schopenhauer before I read his chapter in the Nature of Art book. Because I'm not a philosophy major, I rarely hear about philosophy besides the big 3: Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates. However, while I was reading his chapter, I found a lot of what he was saying to be very interesting.
Because I wrote my research paper focusing on Plato's perception of art being dangerous and a manipulation of the truth, I did not know how other philosopher's beliefs compared. Schopenhauer agreed that art represented appearance. However, he thought it was distinguished from reality. I agree more with Schopenhauer since I think I look at art as a biased perspective of reality. I don't think that makes it any less significant or influential.
In other blogs, I've mentioned I'm a neuroscience major and so reading about how Schopenhauer compared art and science was interesting to me since I'm slightly biased to favoring science since to me it is factual and most things can be proven or at least believed by most of the population. Schopenhauer thought that science was limited to only appearances while art can reveal metaphysical truth. I suppose that's true. Science has a important method that experiments must follow in order to be respected and believed. Philosophy gets the opportunity to explore topics using logic and thought that is not necessarily proven.
The other interesting thing, is that philosophers can disagree significantly about very overarching ideas such as the presence of God and the importance of art. In science, usually once something is suggested to be true repeatedly, it is taken at face value as a theory or law that other's are able to test for themselves or simply believe the findings.
This class has definitely been challenging since the readings and discussion are much more (for lack of a better word) philosophical. However, I have also enjoyed some of the readings as they have challenged me. I really liked the Schopenhauer chapter since it contrasted some of Plato's beliefs but also was similar in some ways and made me question what I thought instead of just going along with what I read.
Because I wrote my research paper focusing on Plato's perception of art being dangerous and a manipulation of the truth, I did not know how other philosopher's beliefs compared. Schopenhauer agreed that art represented appearance. However, he thought it was distinguished from reality. I agree more with Schopenhauer since I think I look at art as a biased perspective of reality. I don't think that makes it any less significant or influential.
In other blogs, I've mentioned I'm a neuroscience major and so reading about how Schopenhauer compared art and science was interesting to me since I'm slightly biased to favoring science since to me it is factual and most things can be proven or at least believed by most of the population. Schopenhauer thought that science was limited to only appearances while art can reveal metaphysical truth. I suppose that's true. Science has a important method that experiments must follow in order to be respected and believed. Philosophy gets the opportunity to explore topics using logic and thought that is not necessarily proven.
The other interesting thing, is that philosophers can disagree significantly about very overarching ideas such as the presence of God and the importance of art. In science, usually once something is suggested to be true repeatedly, it is taken at face value as a theory or law that other's are able to test for themselves or simply believe the findings.
This class has definitely been challenging since the readings and discussion are much more (for lack of a better word) philosophical. However, I have also enjoyed some of the readings as they have challenged me. I really liked the Schopenhauer chapter since it contrasted some of Plato's beliefs but also was similar in some ways and made me question what I thought instead of just going along with what I read.
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