Is Songwriting Valid? Is Art Valid?

Question

Socrates approached the poets and artists of Athens and found that they knew nothing.

Is being an artist worth pursuing, or is the life of a philosopher/writer/moviemaker the only worthwhile way to live?

Answer 1

Is an unexamined life worth living? Most people apparently think so, from what I see around me...although I tend to disagree.

Songwriting and art are valid, but their merit depends on the worldview they reflect. For example, do we need more nihilism in the world? Is deconstructionism a worthy goal? I think art should be beautiful and thought provoking. Too much is really negative. It is so easy to find evil in the world and to rail against it with ugliness and meaningless dadaism. It is difficult to inspire to something greater.

Hope that helps....good luck with your path.

Answer 2

Poets and artists of all kinds, know more simply because they are able to see things in a different light, so to speak. Whether it be with words, paint, films or photos.

Being an artist myself, who majored in Fine Arts and Graphic Design, who has a Bachelors degree and graduated with honors, I say I know a good bit. Not only just of life, society, culture, people, and what I went to school for amongst other things... I believe being an artist is worth pursuing whether you want to sing, paint or write your heart out. It's what that person does best and is happiest doing.

Only a seriously uneducated person would know "nothing", and even then, there are things they do know about, it's called a learned knowledge... like feeding themselves or washing themselves.

If Socrates were around, I'd slap him for that one alone. Then have him tell me how uncivil I am.

Answer 3

They new nothing and Socrates claimed to know nothing. Was it a criticism or an observation of similarity. Human activity is valid when the critic says so and we are all critics. The medium for the spirit is language. Poets and artists are as much intruments as they are art and their action is art. Is it good or bad. Who is it and why are you.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hl/hlobject.htm#HL3_729

§ 1583

As each of the objects is posited as self-contradictory and self-sublating in its own self, it is only by an external compulsion [Gewalt] that they are held apart from one another and from their reciprocal integration. Now the middle term whereby these extremes are concluded into a unity is first the implicit nature of both, the whole Notion that holds both within itself. Secondly, however, since in their concrete existence they stand confronting each other, their absolute unity is also a still formal element having an existence distinct from them — the element of communication in which they enter into external community with each other. Since the real difference belongs to the extremes, this middle term is only the abstract neutrality, the real possibility of those extremes; it is, as it were, the theoretical element of the concrete existence of chemical objects, of their process and its result. In the material world water fulfils the function of this medium; in the spiritual world, so far as the analogue of such a relation has a place there, the sign in general, and more precisely language, is to be regarded as fulfilling that function.

Answer 4

I think what Socrates was trying to say was that they knew a great deal of art, but in knowing art well, also claimed to know a great deal about subjects they were not knowledgeable in. He was using this as the basis of his idea that he was wise in that he recognized his own ignorance.

This does not imply that art is not worth pursuing for self fullfillment or even for it's own value.

After all, Socrates says in the republic, "The lover of wisdom, we shall say, has a passion for wisdom, not for this kind of wisdom and not that, but for every kind of wisdom."

He also makes comment about the importance of the arts when he says, "Are these not the reasons, Glaucon, I said, why nurture in the arts is most important, because their rythym and harmony permeate the inner part of the soul, bring graciousness to it, and make the strongest impression, making a man gracious if he has the right kind of upbringing; if he has not, the opposite is true."

Answer 5

No, due to the fact I do not believe that each one types of leisure are always artwork types too. Fair ample, it is all subjective, however for something, I do not see how whatever so packaged and contolled by means of different folks can rather be artwork - or if you happen to do desire to name it artwork, then the artists could be the advertising and marketing folks, now not the "faces" like Soulja Boy. It does not make folks believe, does not increase their lives and it is not made by means of folks who've any situation for ingenious integrity. How can whatever that is all approximately the cash and the vigor of the manufacturer be artwork? That could make The Gap or Starbucks types of artwork too. It's leisure. That does not robotically make it artwork. And what makes me unique from any individual who bashes all rap? I love hip hop and I'm passionate approximately it. I do not blame hip hop for the ills of the sector and as a fan, I desire to look the artists I love get a reasonable shot within the sport, and desire to aid folks who've the integrity to not promote out. Just due to the fact I love hip hop, doesn't suggest I ought to love each unmarried monitor with rapping on it in the market. I did not experience Gigli - does that make me a few type of film basher? edit - I see what you are pronouncing Mr Biscuits, however to me, for whatever to be referred to as artwork, it is as so much approximately the goal in the back of it as it's approximately the completed product. If the goal in the back of it's SOLEY to earn money, then I do not rely that as artwork. I do not believe advertising and marketing is an artwork style in any respect - now not even near. So it is not artwork to me, due to the fact artwork has not anything to do with the intentions in the back of the making of it. Everyone's received yet another opinion of what constitutes artwork regardless that, that is simply mine.