Kelly Barry-The Beginning

On January 11, we began the course by discussing the difference between ontology (being), epistemology (knowing) and axiology (value). These were among the different schools of philosophy, but we were dealing with a different realm: aesthetics (beauty). We concluded that if we only look to science to find what is real, we lessen our viewfind for other possibilities. Likewise, there are things that are real which science has no concern with. An example of this is the human drive for creativity.
Following this point, we discussed the phenomenological approach, which is a return to "things" as opposed to "ideas". This is not a rejection of ideas, but a realization of how easy it is to get lost in the abstract realm. We defined the concrete world of things as tangible and able to be perceived by the senses. Adversely, the abstract world contained ideas like "two" (We will never have an experience of two). We moved from here to a discussion specifically about art. The Greek word "techne" was usually used to describe art, also meaning craft, fashioning or creating. Art produces a world in which a difference between the original world of flux and the new world of static is established. I had previously taken a Communications class where we talked about "techne"s. I learned that the Greeks referred to things that could the taught as technes. Rhetoric, for example, was a common example for a techne. It was the combination of eloquent speech and persuasive persons used by Greek Sophists to elicit a response. Plato, through Socrates, condemns the rhetoric used y Sophists and teaches that rhetoric should only be used to persuade a jury that you are guilty (if applicable) and deserve appropriate punishment.