In her book “Wickedness” Mary Midgley wrote that ‘It is one main function of cultures to accumulate insights on this matter (morality; our motivation, ambivalence, wasted efforts, damage) , to express them in clear ways as far as possible, and so to maintain a rich treasury of past thought and experience which will save us the trouble of continually starting again from scratch. — Brett
That sounds a bit grumpy, and highly inaccurate. Writing really good comedy is a high art form, and at its best is timeless. My children love Monty Python as much now as I did forty years ago. It doesn't shed much light on the human condition, but it's certainly not cheap, and has been enormously influential - in a good way, I would say.... From the earliest myths to the most recent novels, all writing that is not fundamentally cheap and frivolous is meant to throw light on the difficulties of the human situation ... ‘ — Mary Midgely
My children love Monty Python as much now as I did forty years ago. — andrewk
That was a legendary episode. So much so that the BBC made a TV drama about it a few years back. Quite engaging and interesting as I recall. Worth watching if one can find out how.I was watching an old BBC interview program in which John Cleese and another Python were defending recently released The Life of Brian against Malcom Muggeridge and some aged Anglican bishop. — Bitter Crank
JM Coetzee immediately springs to mind. He's still alive and writing.Do we have writers like Homer, Shakespeare or Doestoevsky? — Brett
This doesn't sit well with the notion that morality is objective, because Dostoevsky's morality - which is essentially deontological and divine-command-based - is a thousand miles from that of Homer, which is that of an honour society where bravery meant everything and compassion nothing. And neither of them would agree with the secular, compassion-based morality that we see in Steinbeck, and that imbues most of Western culture, when it can be bothered to be moral.that art, primarily writing, explains [morality]: Homer, Shakespeare, Doestoevsky. — Brett
can you go into that a bit more? — Brett
Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don't like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that. — Bill Shankly
I guess I’m trying to focus on two things:
a: that morality exists as an objective set of guides on our behaviour (I await the howls).
b: that art, primarily writing, explains it: Homer, Shakespeare, Doestoevsky. — Brett
Do we have writers like Homer, Shakespeare or Doestoevsky? — Brett
So back to your quote above, what morality gives us is the inspiration to act well. Therefore a) is a misrepresentation of morality, as it describes more of a statement of ethics (rules for behaviour), whereas morality involves the inspiration to act properly. And your question seems to be whether or not art can give us that inspiration to act. Referring back to the distinction between "beauty" and "good", art seems to give us beauty, but it may not give us the inspiration to act, which is the good. — Metaphysician Undercover
Using the word art is a bit unhelpful, because we generally turn to current or more recent forms of art, — Brett
So back to your quote above, what morality gives us is the inspiration to act well. Therefore a) is a misrepresentation of morality, as it describes more of a statement of ethics (rules for behaviour), whereas morality involves the inspiration to act properly. And your question seems to be whether or not art can give us that inspiration to act. Referring back to the distinction between "beauty" and "good", art seems to give us beauty, but it may not give us the inspiration to act, which is the good. — Metaphysician Undercover
Just on beauty in art, which I’m not talking about at all; Greek philosophy and as a consequence art was when beauty became a subject, I imagine Plato would not have considered anything other than Greek art actually art, nor would he have known very little about other far flung cultures and their ‘art’. So the distinction between ‘beauty’ and ‘good’ is really a Greek dilemma. For those far flung cultures art is not about beauty, but purpose and inspiration. — Brett
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