COURSE INTRODUCTION: HUMANITIES – RENAISSANCE TO PRESENT (@ 1400 – 2010) – A “Sweeping Survey” (focus on Western history)
HUM2230 – Lec1_Intro - power point notes
(3) [Introduction]
Find out some things about student ‘audience.’
How many took World Humanities – first course from ancient times through Middle Ages? – or Western Civilization courses?
Have any taken philosophy courses – Intro, or Greek, or others? Any philosophy majors?
Are there any Art or Music majors?
Any Literature majors?
Any History majors?
(click through the bullet points – what we will be discussing first and second class sessions)
(4) [Syllabus]
Any one of these five subjects for any one of the major historical eras could be an entire semester course.
Obviously, we will be taking a sweeping survey.
By having an integrated approach, to understand the broad history and philosophical currents of various eras we can better understand individual important works of art.
Works of art that we will focus upon are selected to embody central values and beliefs of particular cultures within a specific time period.
We can then discover relationships and connections among various cultures and eras.
We can better understand our current culture and our place within it. [theme of common humanity]
My background (in humanities) is focused on Philosophy.
It will seem from this first night’s lectures that I am focused too much on philosophy –
I assure you that will not be the case in future nights’ lectures.
I am doing this to provide a fundamental background to what we will be studying throughout the course.
Also, since you have not yet read (or been assigned to read) any of your text, this should lay the groundwork for a better understanding of what you will be reading.
(Review the syllabus)
(5) [How should you “look” at
Art?]
There are various layers to great art, much more than just what meets the eye (or ear)
– more than just what is pleasing or displeasing to the eye or ear.
[discussion] – What makes an artwork a masterpiece of its type?
What qualities of work of art enable it to be appreciated over time?
Is there something fundamental and universal in all of us [or most of us] that would make us all appreciate a “masterpiece”?
Above all, you must give a work
of art time. Savor it. Study it. Try to see it with fresh eyes. You will
learn more than you imagine.
You should want to give this
course more of your own time through repeated viewings.
And you will find yourself
looking at all art with new appreciation.
[source] http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=7100 ---Professor Kloss
How should you look at art? -- focus on five elements:
(following slides will provide examples of these ways to ‘look’ at art)
(click) Subject: Every work of art has a subject.
Very often this is the story that the work tells
(click) Interpretation: The way a subject is expressed in art is the artist's interpretation.
(click) Style: The artistic means of interpretation is the artist's style.
(click) Context: The context can be related to a personal moment, to contemporary political events, to a historical period, or to a long-term cultural influence.
(click)Emotion: Emotion is a major factor both in the artist's creation of a work and in the viewer's response to it. These are not necessarily the same emotion, but sometimes they coincide in a magical way . .
Above all, you must give a work of art time. Savor it. Study it. Try to see it with fresh eyes. You will learn more than you imagine. Professor Kloss's gift for pulling you into an artistic work to show you what makes it function at different levels will make you want to give this course more of your own time through repeated viewings. And you will find yourself looking at all art with new appreciation.
(6) Subject: Every work of art has a subject.
Very often this is the story that the work tells, as in the great painting of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Ceiling, which is probably the greatest painting ever, - plunges the viewer into remarkable stories drawn from ancient mythology and the Bible.
One can simply revel in the physical beauty of such a work, but a much richer experience is available if one takes the trouble to understand what it is about.
(7) Interpretation: The way a subject is expressed in art is the artist's interpretation. For example, consider the different interpretations of the subject Last Judgment between Michelangelo’s and Hans Memling’s paintings (my example)
(8) Compare Interpretation of Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” with that of Hans Memling’s interpretation of the same subject.
(9) Style: The artistic means of interpretation is the artist's style. This distinction is evident in a comparison between Rahael’s Deposition from the 16th century) and Rubens's treatment of the same subject in the 17th century.
Both paintings depict the lowering of the dead Christ from the cross, (or transporting the body to the tomb) but in markedly different styles with respect to setting, arrangement of figures, treatment of space, color, and so forth.
In Raphael’s picture: notice the finely orchestrated forms and figures depicting the somber entombment.
His style was less dramatic than that of Michelangelo or Leonardo but more earthly and humanistic.
This piece of work is strong and moving in its pathos.
It transforms a sacred written chronicle into a believable illusion that engages the viewer with the narrative and not just the artist's hand. http://artid.com/members/art_aesthetics/blog/post/2553-the-deposition-of-christ
(10)Pieter Pawel Rubens (right) Depostion – 1612-14 – oil on panel.
This is the central panel of a triptych. A single element unites the three scenes - Christ is portrayed as being carried. Rubens made this painting for the Guild of Arquebusiers, who wanted their patron Saint Christopher (meaning: carrier of Christ) portrayed.
If Rubens had complied with this wish, he would have had to explain himself to the authorities, because the strict Contra-Reformation’s principles did not allow portraits of saints to be hung in cathedrals.
Instead, Rubens chose to hide all references to Christopher by portraying Christ as being carried in all three panels.
(12) Context: The context can be related to a personal moment, to contemporary political events, to a historical period, or to a long-term cultural influence.
An appreciation of the great palace
at
(13) Emotion: Emotion is a major factor both in the artist's creation of a work and in the viewer's response to it.
These are not necessarily the same emotion, but sometimes they coincide in a magical way, as in Renoir's festive Luncheon of the Boating Party, which evokes a pleasure that comes from Renoir's joy in the scene and his artistic mastery that convinces us that we, too, are included in this long-ago gathering of friends.
(14) What is History?
(click) (click) The Persian Wars – not just a chronicle of events . . genuinely historical work. . . in the first sentence, Herodotus gives his account “so that the deeds of these brave men not be forgotten.”
He wants people to know what we can rise to do, . . .
and wants us to recognize the multiplicity of factors that participate in any genuinely historical event,
the number of vantage points one would have to occupy in order to understand any complex social phenomenon. . .
He wrestled with one of the most burning questions – the causes of war.
War and mayhem, the death and destruction, deep suffering, rift between and among peoples, collapse of trade, creation of suspicions that might take generations to subside, redrawing of boundaries, alterations in the economy—
how to understand the causes of something like this?
. . . why do you want posterity not to forget brave deeds – why, unless such a history teaches and inclines?
(click) How can history teach? – implications – [it is already established that there vast cultural differences and vast variety of factors involved, so how can factors of one event teach us about today’s world?]
. . . the answer must be found at a level Herodotus takes to be more fundamental than ethnicity and culture. . .
Indeed, it is at the level of our common humanity. . .
When properly constructed, the lamp of history illuminates the very commonalities that constitute human nature itself
. . . . these lessons are worth learning, and no matter how different the language, or the culture, or the customs, . . . there is a root humanity that is reached by such events and that will allow us to predict how we are likely to behave under certain conditions . . . (1, 87)
(15) Value of History
(click) History may give us some very small capacity to predict the future.
More certainly, it should help us arrange the causes for given events into meaningful patterns. . . .
History must help us sort out the important from the less important, the relevant from the irrelevant, so that we do not fall prey to those who propose simple-minded solutions to vastly complex human problems. . . .
History is a series of arguments to be debated, not a body of data to be recorded or a set of facts to be memorized.
(click) Thus controversy in historical interpretation—over what an event actually means, over what really happened at an occurrence called “an event,”
over how best to generalize about the event—is at the heart of its value.
(click) Of course history teaches us about ourselves. . . . Of course it is, or ought to be, a pleasure.
But we also discover something fundamental about a people in what they choose to argue over in their past.
When a society suppresses portions
of its past record, as the former
When a society seeks to alter how the record is presented . . . we learn how history can be distorted to political ends.
(16) History: Social Necessity
(click) Who controls history, it is written, controls the past, and who controls the past controls the present. [discussion topic! About controversy over textbooks being changed – American history – important persons being left out, etc.] (7, xii)
History is a social necessity. It gives us our identity. It helps us to find our bearings in an ever more complex present, providing us with a navigator’s chart by which we may to some degree orient ourselves. . . .
History shows us humanity at work and play, in society, changing through time.
History is both a form of truth and a matter of opinion, and the close study of history should help us to distinguish between the two. . . .
Sir Walter Raleigh wrote: “It is not truth, but opinion that can travel the world without a passport.”
Far too often what we read and believe to be truth—in newspapers, in Internet blogs, on television sets, from our friends—is opinion, not fact. (xii) In the end, to know the past is to know ourselves – not entirely, not enough, but a little better. (7, xiv)
English critic John Ruskin: “Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art.” (7, xiii).
(17) What is Philosophy? (click bullet points – what will be discussed in this section)
(18) 5 branches diagram
(19) Metaphysics
These are the types of questions studied within Metaphysics.
No . . . We will not find the answers to these questions during this course . . .
the subject of “real existence.” Ontology – simply, being. What is there? . . . concerned with questions regarding the constituents of reality as such.
Do ghosts and witches really exist? What about minds and thoughts?
. . . How does one go about answering such questions? . . . what is the right mode of inquiry? . . . by making observations? . . . [what about what is beyond our sensory capability]
Is the ontology of the honeybee radically different in content from our ontology? . . . there is far more to reality than meets the eye, or that is accessible to any of our senses
. . . consider the ontological questions implicit in the famous maxim . . . “Know thyself,” we are driven to ask: “What am I? What sort of being am I? What am I made of? What am I made for? (1, 56-57)
(20) Epistemology
Epistemology is the theory of knowledge; the nature and means of human knowledge.
[if there was a certain mode of registering the truth or the facts of the world-- What would that be?
Is it logic? Is it mathematics? Science? Religion? Revelation? Intuition? General agreement? By vote? By custom?
These are epistemological questions . . . which refers to systematic knowledge—not the mere assembly of facts, but the organization of facts and principles in such a way as to provide a systematic understanding of things, a systematic understanding of events.
. . .epistemology to stand for the study, criticism, and refinement of our very modes of knowing, the study of our knowledge as such.
. . our belief in the continuing operation of the laws of nature is different from a mere guess [e.g. that the sun will come up tomorrow].
[There is epistemic justification in such a belief].
. . . it is [should be] obvious that metaphysics and epistemology are inextricably bound together. (1, 58)
Aristotle – distinction between custom, man-made law, and the laws that we regard as the laws of the physical universe
. . . difference between nature, as in phusis, and nomos as in custom—nomos as in legislated custom.
. . . and there is not to be a Pythagorean theorem for political life. . . .
Episteme – the knowledge of – the scientific knowledge of the causal principles that govern things.
phronesis -Practical knowledge by which one deals with day-to-day affairs and makes prudential and correct choices consistent with the right kind of life –.
In daily life – What medical advice is really sound? Is there such a thing as goodness, REALLY, or is it simply a habit that a particular culture uses to describe what it likes?
Sophia is what the wise person possesses. The one in possession of Sophia is the one you consult when you finally are taking yourself seriously enough to ask core questions about the meaning of life, the ultimate point and purpose of things. (1, 47)
In daily life – What medical advice is really sound? Is there such a thing as goodness, REALLY, or is it simply a habit that a particular culture uses to describe what it likes?
[Truth] The philosophical perspective is one of criticism and, yes, skepticism. . . . if God were to declare a truth to the community of philosophers, at least the best of them would say . . . : “But how can we be sure of that?” (1, 25)
Philosophy takes a systematically and critical perspective on all of the assumptions and claims that we in the other compartments of human endeavor accept. . . .
The bottom line in philosophy is not to solve practical problems . . . Rather, it is to test the most fundamental beliefs, the most fundamental values and convictions we have, and to test them for the purpose of getting them right, while at the same time realizing that basic questions as to what it could mean to get it right are finally unanswerable. (1, 26)
(21) The problem with our senses (“moving” pictures example)
(22) Ethics
Objective versus Relative – example – in one culture it is considered a sin to dance, or to play cards.
The Ten Commandments from the Judeo-Christian faiths – example of Objective laws.
. . . Problem comes with interpretation within specific contexts
(23) Politics
(24) “Truth” in advertising (politics)
EXAMPLE: http://www.ask.com/wiki/Resignation_of_Shirley_Sherrod
On July 19, 2010, Shirley Sherrod was forced to resign from her position as Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the United States Department of Agriculture after conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart posted video excerpts of Sherrod's address at a March 2010 NAACP event to his website.
The NAACP condemned her remarks, and U.S. government officials called on her to resign.
However, upon review of the full video, the NAACP, White House officials, and Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of Agriculture, apologized and Sherrod was offered a new position. [ironic – NAACP had tape of her full speech)
Breitbart posted the excerpts shortly after the NAACP passed a resolution which called on Tea Party leaders "to repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches".
He alleged that some NAACP members condoned racism despite publicly opposing it. In the video excerpts, Sherrod, an African American woman, described her actions while employed at a private advocacy firm in 1986 when a white farmer sought her help after his farm was about to be foreclosed.
The event brought to the forefront current debates regarding racism in the United States, cable news reporting, internet ideological websites, and President Barack Obama's administration decisions.
(25) Aesthetics . . . Does anyone recognize this painting?
(26) Diagram of 5 branches again
As we take a quick review of the philosophies of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, you will see how one’s metaphysical views affect how one can obtain knowledge;
Then, base on those beliefs, a philosopher will determine the proper way for people to behave (ethics)
and what constitutes a proper society (politics).
All of that together informs one’s aesthetic values.
(27) HUM2230 Introduction topics (again) We have covered four of these topics !!!!
(28) Socrates, Plato, Aristotle pics
Go to second slide presentation – HUM2230 Lec1 Greek Philosophy