'Art' and 'Truth': How Important Are the Creative Arts for Philosophical Understanding?

[Veritas Aequitas]

There is not much room for such creativity in modern philosophy.

This no-man's land is the fertile bed for creativity within philosophy.

Make your mind up.

You missed what I wrote.

In my post I presented two variations of creativity, i.e.
1. Creativity via arts and creative arts which is limited in philosophy per se.
2. General creativity within philosophy - the no-man's land.

[Will Bouwman]

You missed what I wrote.

In my post I presented two variations of creativity, i.e.
1. Creativity via arts and creative arts which is limited in philosophy per se.
2. General creativity within philosophy - the no-man's land.

Fair enough, but I think you are overlooking the entire field of aesthetics.

[Veritas Aequitas]

You missed what I wrote.

In my post I presented two variations of creativity, i.e.
1. Creativity via arts and creative arts which is limited in philosophy per se.
2. General creativity within philosophy - the no-man's land.

Fair enough, but I think you are overlooking the entire field of aesthetics.

I am quite familiar with the field of Aesthetics within philosophy;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics
and I note there no serious significant contribution to philosophy from Aesthetics.

Kant had something to say about "Aesthetics" but I have not fully grasp his 3rd Critique yet.

For Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgment, 1790), "enjoyment" is the result when pleasure arises from sensation, but judging something to be "beautiful" has a third requirement: sensation must give rise to pleasure by engaging reflective contemplation.
Ibid

[Fairy]

I am writing this thread because it does seem to me that art and the creative arts play are often considered as having low importance for philosophy. My basic interest is based on the assumption that the arts are of central importance in thinking about the philosophical nature of 'truth'.

Art is natural. Art comes straight out of the ethers, just like the emptiness of sky is likened to a blank canvas upon which natural formations of sun rays, colour and cloud are all mixing together forming the most exquisite natural beauty of a non-physical artistry. No physical artist ever formed natural artistry.

The Nature of the Natural on the other hand is artificial because natural is sourced purely in the non-physical, whereas, nature appears as the physical.

Art when looked at does indeed point to a much deeper truth. Art is an expression of the natural looking at itself.

And that truth is not in the picture, it is in the artist, which is the natural. And it's not even a supernatural natural, it's just plain and simple, ordinary natural.

[Will Bouwman]

...I note there no serious significant contribution to philosophy from Aesthetics.

Well, that depends on what you take seriously. Whatever you make of any specific contributions, philosophy is essentially an aesthetic pursuit.

Kant had something to say about "Aesthetics" but I have not fully grasp his 3rd Critique yet.

For Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgment, 1790), "enjoyment" is the result when pleasure arises from sensation, but judging something to be "beautiful" has a third requirement: sensation must give rise to pleasure by engaging reflective contemplation.
Ibid

Here's the thing with Kant: in his first critique, your mastery of which I gather you take some pride in, you will note that Kant divided propositions into:
analytic a priori
synthetic a priori
analytic a posteriori
synthetic a posteriori
The silly Kant ruled out analytic a posteriori because, in his view it is self contradictory. As I have mentioned frequently it is only analytic a posteriori propositions that we can be absolutely certain about; examples being Parmenides "Being is" and a modification of Descartes' cogito to the effect that 'thinking is'. Other than those, the propositions we base our philosophy on are chosen for fundamentally aesthetic reasons.

[Jack Daydream]

I am writing this thread because it does seem to me that art and the creative arts play are often considered as having low importance for philosophy.

Art and Creative arts are not that prominent in philosophy per se. Example is the Iliad of Homer, Plato's republic, Schopenhauer's praised of Wagner in music and some others. There is not much room for such creativity in modern philosophy.

Creativity is associated with novelty, surprise, paradigm shifting, and the likes that has lots or some positive values to the progress of humanity.
As such all the new found knowledge and paradigm shifts in philosophy would have involved some sort of creativity.

What is critical with creativity is it must be grounded on imagination, i.e. something that is imaginable thus empirically possible. Something that emerged out of speculation without possible empirical grounds could be non-sensical, e.g. the empty illusory God or other illusional ideas, imo, would not be considered creative.

Note Einstein's
Imagination is more important than knowledge in facilitating creativity in science, i.e. the enabling of new justifiable scientific truths.

What is most critical in philosophy is rationality [logic] and wisdom, but it should not be straightjacketed by logic, thus it need to be open-ended as grounded on the empirical that will facilitate creativity.

As Bertrand Russel had stated:

“Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation.

All definite knowledge – so I should contend – belongs to science; all dogmas as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man’s Land, exposed to attack from both sides, and this No Man’s Land is philosophy. Almost all the questions of most interest to speculative minds are such as science cannot answer, and the confident answers of theologians no longer seem so convincing as they did in former centuries.”

This no-man's land is the fertile bed for creativity within philosophy.

Russell's ideas of 'No man's land' is interesting. I haven't read that much of his writing apart from his, 'History of Western Philosophy'. One writer who I have an interest in is Iris Murdoch, who writes about literature and philosophy. She draws upon Plato but to develop a form of natural, as opposed to metaphysical, form of mysticism.

Apart from the postmodernists, Russell, Wittgenstein and others who deconstructed metaphysics, there is the approach of reductive materialists, especially Daniel Dennett and Steven Pinker. I am not dismissing the value of such thinkers but it may have led to a form of scientist, which dismisses the creative imagination.

[Jack Daydream]

I am writing this thread because it does seem to me that art and the creative arts play are often considered as having low importance for philosophy. My basic interest is based on the assumption that the arts are of central importance in thinking about the philosophical nature of 'truth'.

Art is natural. Art comes straight out of the ethers, just like the emptiness of sky is likened to a blank canvas upon which natural formations of sun rays, colour and cloud are all mixing together forming the most exquisite natural beauty of a non-physical artistry. No physical artist ever formed natural artistry.

The Nature of the Natural on the other hand is artificial because natural is sourced purely in the non-physical, whereas, nature appears as the physical.

Art when looked at does indeed point to a much deeper truth. Art is an expression of the natural looking at itself.

And that truth is not in the picture, it is in the artist, which is the natural. And it's not even a supernatural natural, it's just plain and simple, ordinary natural.

The issue of where art and creative imagination comes from is interesting. There is nature for inspiration, especially for copying. There is life experience and the internal sources beyond oneself. There was the notion of the muses, but this may be aspects of the personal or collective unconscious. In philosophy there is so much emphasis on understanding consciousness because deeper layers of the subconscious and unconscious may have significance. It is not necessarily supernatural, but consciousness may exist within the so-called unconscious.

[Jack Daydream]

I am writing this thread because it does seem to me that art and the creative arts play are often considered as having low importance for philosophy.

Art and Creative arts are not that prominent in philosophy per se. Example is the Iliad of Homer, Plato's republic, Schopenhauer's praised of Wagner in music and some others. There is not much room for such creativity in modern philosophy.

Creativity is associated with novelty, surprise, paradigm shifting, and the likes that has lots or some positive values to the progress of humanity.
As such all the new found knowledge and paradigm shifts in philosophy would have involved some sort of creativity.

What is critical with creativity is it must be grounded on imagination, i.e. something that is imaginable thus empirically possible. Something that emerged out of speculation without possible empirical grounds could be non-sensical, e.g. the empty illusory God or other illusional ideas, imo, would not be considered creative.

Note Einstein's
Imagination is more important than knowledge in facilitating creativity in science, i.e. the enabling of new justifiable scientific truths.

What is most critical in philosophy is rationality [logic] and wisdom, but it should not be straightjacketed by logic, thus it need to be open-ended as grounded on the empirical that will facilitate creativity.

As Bertrand Russel had stated:

“Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation.

All definite knowledge – so I should contend – belongs to science; all dogmas as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man’s Land, exposed to attack from both sides, and this No Man’s Land is philosophy. Almost all the questions of most interest to speculative minds are such as science cannot answer, and the confident answers of theologians no longer seem so convincing as they did in former centuries.”

This no-man's land is the fertile bed for creativity within philosophy.

Rationality is extremely important for philosophy and to rely on imagination and fantasy alone could lead to absence of any critical thinking.

Iain McGilchrist's idea of the balance between the right and left hemispheres of the brain may be important here. He does not present a simplistic division between the rationality and imagination between the hemispheres. However, he thinks that the balance of the two is important. He also looks at this in relation to the development of philosophical thinking in the 'Master and the Emissary', with reason being the dominant one in the gradual development of Western philosophy. However, he sees integration of imagination as being essential for wholeness in human understanding.

[Fairy]

I am writing this thread because it does seem to me that art and the creative arts play are often considered as having low importance for philosophy. My basic interest is based on the assumption that the arts are of central importance in thinking about the philosophical nature of 'truth'.

Art is natural. Art comes straight out of the ethers, just like the emptiness of sky is likened to a blank canvas upon which natural formations of sun rays, colour and cloud are all mixing together forming the most exquisite natural beauty of a non-physical artistry. No physical artist ever formed natural artistry.

The Nature of the Natural on the other hand is artificial because natural is sourced purely in the non-physical, whereas, nature appears as the physical.

Art when looked at does indeed point to a much deeper truth. Art is an expression of the natural looking at itself.

And that truth is not in the picture, it is in the artist, which is the natural. And it's not even a supernatural natural, it's just plain and simple, ordinary natural.

The issue of where art and creative imagination comes from is interesting. There is nature for inspiration, especially for copying. There is life experience and the internal sources beyond oneself. There was the notion of the muses, but this may be aspects of the personal or collective unconscious. In philosophy there is so much emphasis on understanding consciousness because deeper layers of the subconscious and unconscious may have significance. It is not necessarily supernatural, but consciousness may exist within the so-called unconscious.

Art doesn't come from. Art is already this - all this.

Now doesn't come from or go to. Now never moves.

[Gary Childress]

Philosophy and most forms of art seem pretty different from each other. Philosophy involves dialogue and reasoning. Art is also less precise and generally doesn't hold itself as rigorously true. I don't think of people like Kant as an artist.

Well, there are different materials and different tools, but whether those are scales and musical theory, paint and rules of perspective or ideas and laws of logic, the creative process is basically the same - get your ingredients, follow the recipe et voila! Personally, I think anyone who believes that their philosophy is "rigorously true" is a blithering halfwit. The best that philosophers can achieve is rigorously coherent, insofar as what they claim is consistent with the rules of logic they impose upon themselves.

Philosophy utilizes art at times and vice versa, however, they're two different professions that hold different criteria for what they produce. Art is not so concerned with truth. Few people would say Picasso was incorrect in his paintings because they were so abstract. Philosophers OTOH are constrained by truth. If a philosopher proposes something that's not true, then they have made a mistake. Not so with artists. There's no such thing as "fiction" in philosophy, at least not if the philosopher is doing his or her profession the right way.

[Will Bouwman]

Philosophy utilizes art at times and vice versa, however, they're two different professions that hold different criteria for what they produce.

Pottery and painting are different professions, as are literature, photography, music and film directing.

Art is not so concerned with truth. Few people would say Picasso was incorrect in his paintings because they were so abstract. Philosophers OTOH are constrained by truth. If a philosopher proposes something that's not true, then they have made a mistake.

That isn't true. You could argue that philosophers who propose something that is demonstrably untrue have made a mistake, but any philosopher you have heard of will almost certainly have as their initial premises propositions that are unfalsifiable. So for instance, Descartes (Cogito notwithstanding) starts with the proposition that there are two things, body and mind. Berkeley says there are only ideas in the mind of God. Hume says there is only body. If you accept the Aristotelian logic that has informed philosophy for the last two and a half millennia, you are bound to concede that at least two of them must be proposing something that is not true. That all three are nonetheless great philosophers is down to the skill with which they develop their premises into logically valid stories. The long and short of it is that philosophers are not constrained by truth, they are constrained by coherence.

Not so with artists. There's no such thing as "fiction" in philosophy, at least not if the philosopher is doing his or her profession the right way.

Fiction is precisely what philosophy is. Anyone who claims to know the truth is a nutcase.

[Gary Childress]

Philosophy utilizes art at times and vice versa, however, they're two different professions that hold different criteria for what they produce.

Pottery and painting are different professions, as are literature, photography, music and film directing.

Art is not so concerned with truth. Few people would say Picasso was incorrect in his paintings because they were so abstract. Philosophers OTOH are constrained by truth. If a philosopher proposes something that's not true, then they have made a mistake.

That isn't true. You could argue that philosophers who propose something that is demonstrably untrue have made a mistake, but any philosopher you have heard of will almost certainly have as their initial premises propositions that are unfalsifiable. So for instance, Descartes (Cogito notwithstanding) starts with the proposition that there are two things, body and mind. Berkeley says there are only ideas in the mind of God. Hume says there is only body. If you accept the Aristotelian logic that has informed philosophy for the last two and a half millennia, you are bound to concede that at least two of them must be proposing something that is not true. That all three are nonetheless great philosophers is down to the skill with which they develop their premises into logically valid stories. The long and short of it is that philosophers are not constrained by truth, they are constrained by coherence.

Not so with artists. There's no such thing as "fiction" in philosophy, at least not if the philosopher is doing his or her profession the right way.

Fiction is precisely what philosophy is. Anyone who claims to know the truth is a nutcase.

As with scientists, philosophers have been wrong about many things, but I don't think that's the intent of philosophers. Philosophy may have aspects that are similar to the creative arts, but I don't see where philosophy is any more a "creative art" than it is a science or "medicine for the soul". I don't think philosophy is traditionally lumped with photography, painting, literature, and the arts any more than it is with the sciences, or medicine. It's something significantly different that deserves its own category as well as straddles many categories.

[Will Bouwman]

As with scientists, philosophers have been wrong about many things...

Can you give me an example?

[Gary Childress]

As with scientists, philosophers have been wrong about many things...

Can you give me an example?

Marx seems to have been wrong in his predictions concerning the evolution of industrial societies. Few seem to believe in Plato's forms anymore. Leibniz thought this was the best of all possible world's. That seems kind of suspect to me. I can think of better world's. Aristotle thought slavery was justified. Hegel believed in the supremacy of European culture. Fichte was an anti-Semite. Ptolemy had the wrong hypothesis concerning the orbits of the planets.

I'm sure there are other things I've missed that philosophers once thought we're true at one time but have since been discredited. Can you add to the list?

[Alexiev]

Our moral principles are forged analogically and the steel is hardened with logic.

That is: we (at least I) emulate admirable characters in stories and try to avoid behaviors we find deplorable. "What would Jesus do?" ask the Christians.

In his famous essay In Defense of Poetry, Shelley compares Homer to Plato. The essay is available on line, and here's a snippet:

Homer embodied the ideal perfection of his age in human character; nor can we doubt that those who read his verses were awakened to an ambition of becoming like to Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses the truth and beauty of friendship, patriotism, and persevering devotion to an object, were unveiled to the depths in these immortal creations: the sentiments of the auditors must have been refined and enlarged by a sympathy with such great and lovely impersonations, until from admiring they imitated, and from imitation they identified themselves with the objects of their admiration.

We learn friendship from Don Quixote and Sancho, the dangers of a quest for perfection from Lancelot, and the power of love from Jean Valjean. Of course from Achilles we also learn the dangers of vanity, stubbornness and cruelty. Philosophy merely expounds on, justifies and clarifies these virtues and these faults.

I've started reading Harold Bloom"s Where Shall Wisdom be Found, and he will doubtless have more to say on this subject.