Deck 10: Beauty

Question 1

Ortega y Gasset argued that because we can't spontaneously connect with modern or abstract art, we are forced to improvise new behaviors-behaviors lacking "sentiments and passions"-in order to relate to this new art.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Both Plato and Aristotle understood beauty as an objective and not subjective reality.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

The fact that we are so often moved emotionally by characters and events in works of fiction indicates that we really believe these characters and events are true.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

The closure of a work of art, its completeness in itself, its clearly defined limits, and its having "a beginning, a middle, and an end" are a universal, cross-cultural criterion of success in art.

Question 5

Confucius believed that music appreciation is conducive to virtue because from the harmonious interplay among voices we learn how to construct harmony more generally in our lives.

Question 6

According to David Hume, we should allow the collective judgment of the best critics through the ages to influence our own taste in the arts.

Question 7

One implication of Plato's view of beauty is that artists should be socially responsible when they produce works of art.

Question 8

According to Friedrich Schiller, including art and aesthetics as a part of children's education allows them to become less selfish and competitive, becoming better citizens as adults.

Question 9

The crucifixion scenes in medieval art were intended to be accurate representations of Jesus on the cross.

Question 10

Nietzsche argues that great art exclusively manifests a Dionysian openness to chaos.

Question 11

Kant would argue that a person who observes a Cezanne painting of a bowl of fruit, and then decides that buying it would be an excellent investment, is making an aesthetic judgment.

Question 12

Before it became associated with art and beauty, the word aesthetics had to do with feeling in general.

Question 13

Kant and Schopenhauer believed that humor depended on activating a priori structures of funniness within the mind.

Question 14

Schopenhauer believed that music is a direct representation of the Will and that experiencing it allows us to get in touch with the most basic truth about ourselves, leaving our desires and ambitions behind for a time.

Question 15

Even today, the highest praise for any work of art is still the statement "It's beautiful."

Question 16

Modern advertising is loaded with aesthetic values and assumptions.

Question 17

According to Aristotle, the function of tragedy is to allow us to get rid of or purify some of our most disturbing emotions.

Question 18

Plato and Aristotle disagree about whether poetry and theater promote or purify us of painful and disturbing emotions, such as fear and pity.

Question 19

Aristotle's goal, in analyzing the art of the theater, was to find out what made some plays "work" and others not work.

Question 20

Plato is the source of some of the most powerful arguments against censorship of the arts.

Question 21

If you looked at The Matrix as a work of art, you'd be interested in

A)how the film provokes our emotions and makes us think through its plot, visuals, etc.
B)how the film entertains us.
C)how well the movie did in the box office.
D)whether it was made in an ethical way.

Question 22

According to Nietzsche, because our own natures are both individual and transpersonal, we need

A)to go beyond art in attaining direct contact with reality.
B)both Apollonian and Dionysian art.
C)Dionysian art alone.
D)both Apollonian and Dionysian art.

Question 23

Suppose a group of educated judges agree that a given work of art is excellent. In that case, according to Hume,

A)that work of art has objective worth, independent of experience.
B)there is still no standard for determining good taste.
C)we would have good taste even if we disagreed with these judges.
D)we would have good taste if we agreed with these judges.

Question 24

Plato argued that much of Homer's poetry should be censored because

A)of its violence.
B)of its undignified portrayals of the gods.
C)of its accurate depiction of the gods, which might shock people.
D)it was not philosophical enough.

Question 25

According to Plato, when we fall in love, we are really ​

A)appreciating the universal form of beauty.
B)discovering how uniquely beautiful the loved one is.
C)discovering the beauty of God.
D)not perceiving beauty at all.

Question 26

According to Aristotle, what made Oedipus Rex and Medea great works of art was that

A)they were outstanding examples of the Dionysian type of art.
B)they made us aware of the gap between the transcendent reality of the forms of beauty and goodness and the real world.
C)their characters and plots effectively evoked and cleansed their audiences of basic emotions such as fear and pity.
D)they taught people that the material world was passing away and so was of little value.

Question 27

Kant believed that if you and a friend genuinely shared an aesthetic experience of a work of art, this would be because

A)you both agreed with expert taste.
B)you both had the same emotional response to it.
C)you both took a disinterested aesthetic perspective on the work.
D)you both wanted it as an investment.

Question 28

Hegel described the art of the early nineteenth century as becoming steadily

A)more Dionysian and less Apollonian.
B)more reflective and less imitative.
C)more harmonious and less functional.
D)more political and less moral.

Question 29

Wild and crazy dance music, according to Nietzsche, would be an example of

A)Apollonian art.
B)Dionysian art.
C)bad taste.
D)"master" morality.

Question 30

Because of our philosophical doubts about the order and the meaning of the universe, many contemporary aestheticians argue that ​

A)aesthetics needs to refocus its energies and resuscitate the experience of beauty.
B)great art is needed to revive our spirits.
C)religious art is no longer valid.
D)beauty in art is often sentimental or fraudulent.

Question 31

Schiller claimed that beauty can help us to develop morally because

A)in the experience of beauty, we discover that our interests and those of others can coincide.
B)in the harmony of beauty, we can understand the rationality of moral behavior.
C)we learn again to observe quietly, like small children.
D)we come to appreciate the transcendent form of goodness.

Question 32

The aesthetic, one of the best and most rewarding dimensions of human life, involves the ​

A)study of what is right and wrong.
B)appreciation of art and beauty.
C)study of truth.
D)perception and understanding of God.

Question 33

Aristotle believed that the cathartic nature of drama

A)was a reason why it should be banned.
B)was based in its allowing us to escape from thinking of painful, everyday life. ​
C)was ultimately destructive.
D)allowed us to purify ourselves of certain disturbing emotions. ​

Question 34

David Hume argues that an artwork is valuable if it

A)inspires a particular aesthetic emotion.
B)exhibits closure. ​
C)inspires catharsis.
D)is inspired by the transcendent form of beauty.

Question 35

According to Immanuel Kant, truly appreciating a work of art is primarily

A)an emotional response to that work of art.
B)an intellectual response to that work of art.
C)a spiritual response to that work of art.
D)an arbitrary and subjective response to that work of art.

Question 36

Socrates, in Plato's Symposium, argues that the seeker of beauty will come to recognize

A)that the beauty of the mind is more honorable than the beauty of the outward form.
B)that there are many different forms of beauty, each unique unto itself.
C)the ultimate value of the beauty in things we can sense.
D)that God is beauty.

Question 37

Plato warned against the dangers of humor because he wanted to protect the guardians of the republic from the distortions and distractions of laughter.

Question 38

Arthur Danto has argued that what makes something "art" is the shared understanding among members of "the artworld" that it is within the range of things they understand to be art.

Question 39

The question "Is it true that Doctor Watson was Holmes's best friend?" is paradoxical because

A)Watson frequently got in the way when Holmes was trying to solve a case.
B)there is no literal reality outside of our thoughts about it.
C)while it's true that Watson was Holmes's best friend in that fictional world, it's also true that Holmes had no best friend because he never existed.
D)Watson and Holmes never really knew each other.

Question 40

The philosopher who claimed that the appreciation of beauty "frees us from the penal servitude of willing" was

A)Confucius.
B)Schiller.
C)Schopenhauer.
D)Kant.

Question 41

What did it mean for medieval painters to conceive of their paintings of Christ's crucifixion as true? ​

Question 42

Is there such a thing as "good taste"? Plato and Aristotle would have answered "Yes," in light of their shared belief that beauty (or, more generally, aesthetic value)is objective. Many people today, however, reject their objectivism, claiming instead that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." This means that the reality of beauty is subjective, depending on the responses and tastes of people to artwork. This is a much more democratic viewpoint insofar as it seems to imply the equality of all tastes. However, some philosophers, in particular Hume and Kant, developed a middle ground between Plato and Aristotle's strong objectivism and democratic subjectivism. They try to defend good taste and some version of subjectivism.   Write an essay on this disagreement. Start by laying out Plato and Aristotle's viewpoint and its implications for aesthetic taste. Then describe the democratic, subjectivist response. Follow this with an overview of Hume and Kant's viewpoints on taste. Do you believe that either Hume or Kant succeeded in carving out a workable compromise?

Question 43

Freud argued that laughter expresses

A)a sense of one's superiority.
B)involuntary neurological reactions. ​
C)the release of suppressed thoughts or desires in a slightly revised or displaced form.
D)a perception of the incongruity in situations.

Question 44

What does it mean to seek a procedural definition of art? Give two examples of procedures that make something art.

Question 45

How does Aristotle explain the pleasure we take in watching dramas where bad and painful things happen to people?

Question 46

What common thread links contemporary efforts at censoring movies and television and Plato's notion that some of the arts, including poetry, should be banned?

Question 47

Plato believed that beauty was a transcendent value, surpassing ordinary, worldly reality, but he also appreciated how worldly beauty (and other aesthetic values that provoke emotional responses)can shape human behavior.   Write an essay on Plato's theory of beauty, linking this to his rationale for distinguishing between good art and bad art and to his argument (in The Republic )for promoting and banning or censoring bad art, especially tragedy.   Contrast Plato's theory with Aristotle's understanding of beauty, focusing, again, on tragedy. Which viewpoint seems more defensible, and why?

Question 48

Briefly explain why, according to Schiller, art should be part of a child's education.

Question 49

Contrast Nietzsche's concepts of Apollonian and Dionysian art.

Question 50

Should art ever be banned or censored if its content and/or effects on audiences are deemed seriously offensive or harmful?   Begin by exploring the arguments for banning or censoring art. One place to start would be Plato's argument in The Republic , but you are not limited to this perspective.   You should consider what kinds of effects art would produce on people that could plausibly, or not plausibly, be construed as offensive or harmful.   Why would these serious effects require that "bad" art be censored or banned? After exploring this viewpoint, develop a counterargument against banning and censorship.   This argument should address the issue of whether even obviously offensive and harmful art should be permitted and why. What makes the production, display, and appreciation of "bad" art permissible, despite its being bad?   Throughout, focus on specific forms of art, such as paintings, plays, movies, and music.

Question 51

You are an administrator in a school system charged with designing a new high school curriculum. You are under pressure, for economic reasons, to include only "essential" subjects in the curriculum. You're aware that most of your colleagues believe that "essential" subjects are limited to math, science, reading, writing, and history-but not art. In light of this, you decide to write a letter, in the form of an essay to your colleagues, that defends the inclusion of art classes and art appreciation in the curriculum, because of the essential educational value of art. Your essay should include the views of Confucius, Schiller, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, although you are not limited to these points of view. If you've had a personal experience of the educational power of art, share that as well. Be specific about how educational values are linked to aesthetic values Also be specific about what "arts" and "art appreciation" you would include-formal art, and/or popular art?

Question 52

According to Aristotle, one's aesthetic experience of laughing at someone is provoked by

A)one's own superiority and the other person's inferiority.
B)suppressed thoughts and desires.
C)incongruities in the situation.
D)involuntary reactions.

Question 53

Why does Kant believe that sharing an aesthetic experience with others depends on having a disinterested perspective?

Question 54

Write a fictional argumentative dialogue between two people discussing the meaning and value of art. The dialogue should deal with the following issues: beauty and reality or truth; beauty and taste; censorship; and the ethics and educational value of art (how art does affect us and how it should affect us, morally speaking).    The two people should feel free to share their experiences with art, formal and popular. They should draw on resources in the chapter and include brief quotations, where possible, from the major philosophers who have weighed in on these issues.