Part 31 (2/2)
[”Kant Versus Sullivan.” PWNI, 108; pb 90.]
Although, chronologically, man's consciousness develops in three stages: the stage of sensations, the perceptual, the conceptual-epistemologically, the base of all of man's knowledge is the perceptual stage.
Sensations, as such, are not retained in man's memory, nor is man able to experience a pure isolated sensation. As far as can be ascertained, an infant's sensory experience is an undifferentiated chaos. Discriminated awareness begins on the level of percepts.
A percept is a group of sensations aummatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism. It is in the form of percepts that man grasps the evidence of his senses and apprehends reality. When we speak of ”direct perception” or ”direct awareness,” we mean the perceptual level. Percepts, not sensations, are the given, the self-evident. The knowledge of sensations as components of percepts is not direct, it is acquired by man much later: it is a scientific, conceptual discovery.
[ITOE, 5.].
[Man's] senses do not provide him with automatic knowledge in separate s.n.a.t.c.hes independent of context, but only with the material of knowledge, which his mind must learn to integrate.... His senses cannot deceive him, ... physical objects cannot act without causes, ... his organs of perception are physical and have no volition, no power to invent or to distort ... the evidence they give him is an absolute, but his mind must learn to understand it, his mind must discover the nature, the causes, the full context of his sensory material, his mind must identify the things that he perceives.
[GS, FNI, 194; pb 156.]
Let the witch doctor who does not choose to accept the validity of sensory perception, try to prove it without using the data he obtained by sensory perception.
[Ibid., 193; pb 155.]
The arguments of those who attack the senses are merely variants of the fallacy of the ”stolen concept.”
[ITOE, 4.].
As far as can be ascertained, the perceptual level of a child's awareness is similar to the awareness of the higher animals: the higher animals are able to perceive ent.i.ties, motions, attributes, and certain numbers of ent.i.ties. But what an animal cannot perform is the process of abstraction -of mentally separating attributes, motions or numbers from ent.i.ties. It has been said that an animal can perceive two oranges or two potatoes, but cannot grasp the concept ”two.”
[Ibid., 19.]
The range of man's perceptual awareness-the number of percepts he can deal with at any one time-is limited. He may be able to visualize four or five units-as, for instance, five trees. He cannot visualize a hundred trees or a distance of ten light-years. It is only his conceptual faculty that makes it possible for him to deal with knowledge of that kind.
[”The Psycho-Epistemology of Art,” RM, 20; pb 17.]
See also AXIOMS; CONCEPTS; CONSCIOUSNESS; ENt.i.tY; EPISTEMOLOGY; FREE WILL; HIERARCHY of KNOWLEDGE; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); OSTENSIVE DEFINITION; PRIMACY of EXISTENCE vs. PRIMACY of CONSCIOUSNESS; REASON; SELF-EVIDENT; SENSATIONS; ”STOLEN CONCEPT,” FALLACY of; UNIT-ECONOMY.
Performing Arts. Let us turn now to the performing arts (acting, playing a musical instrument, singing, dancing).
In these arts, the medium employed is the person of the artist. His task is not to re-create reality, but to implement the re-creation made by one of the primary arts.
This does not mean that the performing arts are secondary in esthetic value or importance, but only that they are an extension of and dependent on the primary arts. Nor does it mean that performers are mere ”interpreters”: on the higher levels of his art, a performer contributes a creative element which the primary work could not convey by itself; he becomes a partner, almost a co-creator-if and when he is guided by the principle that he is the means to the end set by the work.
The basic principles which apply to all the other arts, apply to the performing artist as well, particularly stylization, i.e., selectivity: the choice and emphasis of essentials, the structuring of the progressive steps of a performance which lead to an ultimately meaningful sum. The performing artist's own metaphysical value-judgments are called upon to create and apply the kind of technique his performance requires. For instance, an actor's view of human grandeur or baseness or courage or timidity will determine how he projects these qualities on the stage. A work intended to be performed leaves a wide lat.i.tude of creative choice to the artist who will perform it. In an almost literal sense, he has to embody the soul created by the author of the work: a special kind of creativeness is required to bring that soul into full physical reality.
When the performance and the work (literary or musical) are perfectly integrated in meaning, style and intention, the result is a magnificent esthetic achievement and an unforgettable experience for the audience.
The psycho-epistemological role of the performing arts-their relations.h.i.+p to man's cognitive faculty-lies in the full concretization of the metaphysical abstractions projected by a work of the primary arts. The distinction of the performing arts lies in their immediacy-in the fact that they translate a work of art into existential action, into a concrete event open to direct awareness.
[”Art and Cognition,” RM, pb 64.]
Music and/or literature are the base of the performing arts and of the large-scale combinations of all the arts, such as opera or motion pictures. The base, in this context, means that primary art which provides the metaphysical element and enables the performance to become a concretization of an abstract view of man.
Without this base, a performance may be entertaining, in such fields as vaudeville or the circus, but it has nothing to do with art. The performance of an aerialist, for instance, demands an enormous physical skill -greater, perhaps, and harder to acquire than the skill demanded of a ballet dancer-but what it offers is merely an exhibition of that skill, with no further meaning, i.e., a concrete, not a concretization of anything.
[Ibid., 70.]
See also ART; BALLET; DANCE; ESTHETICS; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); METAPHYSICAL VALUE JUDGMENTS; MUSIC; OPERA and OPERETTA; PSYCHO-EPISTEMOLOGY.
Permission (vs. Rights). A right is the sanction of independent action. A right is that which can be exercised without anyone's permission.
If you exist only because society permits you to exist-you have no right to your own life. A permission can be revoked at any time.
If, before undertaking some action, you must obtain the permission of society-you are not free, whether such permission is granted to you or not. Only a slave acts on permission. A permission is not a right.
Do not make the mistake, at this point, of thinking that a worker is a slave and that he holds his job by his employer's permission. He does not hold it by permission-but by contract, that is, by a voluntary mutual agreement. A worker can quit his job. A slave cannot.
[”Textbook of Americanism,” pamphlet, 5.]
See also CONTRACTS; INALIENABILITY; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS.
Philosophy. Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relations.h.i.+p to existence. As against the special sciences, which deal only with particular aspects, philosophy deals with those aspects of the universe which pertain to everything that exists. In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy-is the soil which makes the forest possible.
[”Philosophy: Who Needs It,” PWNI, 2; pb 2.]
Philosophy is the science that studies the fundamental aspects of the nature of existence. The task of philosophy is to provide man with a comprehensive view of life. This view serves as a base, a frame of reference, for all his actions, mental or physical, psychological or existential. This view tells him the nature of the universe with which he has to deal (metaphysics); the means by which he is to deal with it, i.e., the means of acquiring knowledge (epistemology); the standards by which he is to choose his goals and values, in regard to his own life and character (ethics)-and in regard to society (politics); the means of concretizing this view is given to him by esthetics.
[”The Chickens' Homecoming,” NL, 107.]
In order to live, man must act; in order to act, he must make choices; in order to make choices, he must define a code of values; in order to define a code of values, he must know what he is and where he is-i.e., he must know his own nature (including his means of knowledge) and the nature of the universe in which he acts-i.e., he needs metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, which means: philosophy. He cannot escape from this need; his only alternative is whether the philosophy guiding him is to be chosen by his mind or by chance.
[”Philosophy and Sense of Life,” RM, 37; pb 30.]
As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation-or let your subconscious acc.u.mulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown.
[”Philosophy: Who Needs It,” PWNI, 6; pb 5.]
The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently: they are most helplessly in its power.
The men who are not interested in philosophy absorb its principles from the cultural atmosphere around them-from schools, colleges, books, magazines, newspapers, movies, television, etc. Who sets the tone of a culture? A small handful of men: the philosophers. Others follow their lead, either by conviction or by default.
[Ibid., 8; pb 6.]
Philosophy is a necessity for a rational being: philosophy is the foundation of science, the organizer of man's mind, the integrator of his knowledge, the programmer of his subconscious, the selector of his values.
[”From the Horse's Mouth,” PWNI, 99; pb 82.]
just as a man's actions are preceded and determined by some form of idea in his mind, so a society's existential conditions are preceded and determined by the ascendancy of a certain philosophy among those whose job is to deal with ideas. The events of any given period of history are the result of the thinking of the preceding period.
[”For the New Intellectual,” FNI, 27; pb 28.]
The power that determines the establishment, the changes, the evolution, and the destruction of social systems is philosophy. The role of chance, accident, or tradition, in this context, is the same as their role in the life of an individual: their power stands in inverse ratio to the power of a culture's (or an individual's) philosophical equipment, and grows as philosophy collapses. It is, therefore, by reference to philosophy that the character of a social system has to be defined and evaluated.
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