You can’t “do” the Sistine Chapel instantly — you have to lie on your back and look up at that ceiling and contemplate. And we’ve already lost a whole generation of kids who are blind to anything constructive or beautiful, who are blind to love, love, LOVE — that battered, old, dirty four-letter word that few people understand anymore.
Leonard Bernstein, from Dinner with Lenny: The Last Long Interview with Leonard Bernstein, editor Jonathan Cott
Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another; good sense is not conscience, refinement is not humility, nor is largeness and justness of view faith. Philosophy, however enlightened, however profound, gives no command over the passions, no influential motives, no vivifying principles.
“Discourse 5. Knowledge its Own End,” Cardinal John Henry Newman
These two quotes relate to being human. Today we are bringing the Enlightenment to its logical conclusion; even our art is an exercise in logic, but a logic severed from the nature of man. Of course we are logical, and bringing logic and the empirical process to bear on the natural world has brought with it a lot of benefits, of that there can be no doubt. This objectivity, however, comes at a cost. First, it severs us from our nature. Second, it deludes us into thinking that empirical knowledge is the only form of real knowledge. Both are lethal.
Apparently this particular blog is destined to be comprised largely of quotes, but the quality of the blog goes up that way! I have a hard time improving on Tocqueville in a relevant passage discussing “In What Spirit the Americans Cultivate the Arts”:
I doubt whether Raphael studied the minute intricacies of the mechanism of the human body as thoroughly as the draftsmen of our own time. He did not attach the same importance as they do to rigorous accuracy on this point because he aspired to surpass nature. He sought to make of man something which should be superior to man and to embellish beauty itself. David and his pupils, on the contrary, were as good anatomists as they were painters. They wonderfully depicted the models that they had before their eyes, but they rarely imagined anything beyond them; they followed nature with fidelity, while Raphael sought for something better than nature. They have left us an exact portraiture of man, but he discloses in his works a glimpse of the Divinity.
Blog No. 79: A few good quotes
You can’t “do” the Sistine Chapel instantly — you have to lie on your back and look up at that ceiling and contemplate. And we’ve already lost a whole generation of kids who are blind to anything constructive or beautiful, who are blind to love, love, LOVE — that battered, old, dirty four-letter word that few people understand anymore.
Leonard Bernstein, from Dinner with Lenny: The Last Long Interview with Leonard Bernstein, editor Jonathan Cott
Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another; good sense is not conscience, refinement is not humility, nor is largeness and justness of view faith. Philosophy, however enlightened, however profound, gives no command over the passions, no influential motives, no vivifying principles.
“Discourse 5. Knowledge its Own End,” Cardinal John Henry Newman
These two quotes relate to being human. Today we are bringing the Enlightenment to its logical conclusion; even our art is an exercise in logic, but a logic severed from the nature of man. Of course we are logical, and bringing logic and the empirical process to bear on the natural world has brought with it a lot of benefits, of that there can be no doubt. This objectivity, however, comes at a cost. First, it severs us from our nature. Second, it deludes us into thinking that empirical knowledge is the only form of real knowledge. Both are lethal.
Apparently this particular blog is destined to be comprised largely of quotes, but the quality of the blog goes up that way! I have a hard time improving on Tocqueville in a relevant passage discussing “In What Spirit the Americans Cultivate the Arts”:
I doubt whether Raphael studied the minute intricacies of the mechanism of the human body as thoroughly as the draftsmen of our own time. He did not attach the same importance as they do to rigorous accuracy on this point because he aspired to surpass nature. He sought to make of man something which should be superior to man and to embellish beauty itself. David and his pupils, on the contrary, were as good anatomists as they were painters. They wonderfully depicted the models that they had before their eyes, but they rarely imagined anything beyond them; they followed nature with fidelity, while Raphael sought for something better than nature. They have left us an exact portraiture of man, but he discloses in his works a glimpse of the Divinity.