Polarisation and That what is Inbetween

I was planning to write a post about ‘the medium between law and necessity’, another phrase in the aesthetic letters. But looking at the subject, I realised it was something I have been writing about again and again on this blog. Not using the same words, but the essence of those posts was mainly the… Continue reading Polarisation and That what is Inbetween

The Instinct of Play

The previous post was about two different instincts, the sensuous and the formal instinct. Two instincts that are opposed and that make us struggle to integrate in our human nature. This is again a post about The Letters on Aesthetic Education of Man from Friedrich Schiller, like a few of my previous posts. I am… Continue reading The Instinct of Play

Sensuous and Formal Instinct

At the end of part two of the Letters on Aesthetics, Schiller talks about two opposite roads that depart us from our destination. He calls it false roads and says that only the beautiful can bring us back from this twofold departure. In the beginning of part three (letter 12) he talks about those two… Continue reading Sensuous and Formal Instinct

The Developing Definition of Art

Art is a difficult word to define. Wikipedia defines it as ‘a product or process of deliberately arranging symbolic elements in a way that influences and affects the senses, emotions and intellect’. It also says that the word art was traditionally used for skill or mastery, but later as an intention to stimulate thoughts and… Continue reading The Developing Definition of Art

The Art of Language

I love it when suddenly things start to make sense, when thoughts come together. I was again reading the book On Creativity, because I was searching for the definition of some concepts. Those of creativity, aesthetics and art. All my previous posts about aesthetics point to the importance of those concepts as an essential step… Continue reading The Art of Language

Free Will Between Inclination and Duty

So I started reading Schillers letters on aesthetic education. But it is not what I would call an easy read. If I was not determined to understand what he has to say, I would have already quit. But before I started reading from the beginning, I had a quick overview. And in that overview I got… Continue reading Free Will Between Inclination and Duty

Between Instinctive and Moral Behavior

Lately I am fascinated by the concept of aesthetics. What exactly does it mean? Is it subjective or objective? How important is it? I already wrote about the view of Kant, Adorno and Bohm in the posts Beauty is Not Just in the Eye of the Beholder and The Worldview of Aesthetics. And that of… Continue reading Between Instinctive and Moral Behavior

From Aesthetics to An-Aesthetics

Last week I saw another video of Ken Robinson. He had a TED-talk some years ago about how schools kill creativity, which I watched several times because I thought it was great. Well, he had another talk (Changing Paradigms) of which RSA made an animation. Which I also love, I really like to see a… Continue reading From Aesthetics to An-Aesthetics

The Concept of Water

Seeing the theme for this years Blogactionday made me think of a story in the book I was reading. The book, On Creativity, is about the importance of creativity. How we all have this inner desire to discover and create something new that is whole, harmonious and beautiful. It is not something rare, it does… Continue reading The Concept of Water

The Worldview of Aesthetics

With my previous post I compared different views on aesthetics. It were the views, as I understood them, from Kant, Adorno and Bohm. But I did not compare their totality. Now that is too difficult for me to do, as I only have a very general understanding of each of their views. But even if… Continue reading The Worldview of Aesthetics

Beauty is Not Just in the Eye of the Beholder

Creativity has to do with recognizing differences and similarities. Recognize patterns that have a certain appeal to us, patterns in which we see beauty. Now it is often said that beauty is subjective. That beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But according to David Bohm in On Creativity, beauty is not purely subjective.… Continue reading Beauty is Not Just in the Eye of the Beholder