Introduction to Humanities II

Today I followed up on Kant's theory by discussing the attempts to make sense of his contention that all rational persons see things essentially the same way. I included Freud, Jung, Frankl, Gestalt theory, but focused on the move toward the organic paradigm of the universe as opposed to the modern static universe of Descartes and Newton. Hegel gives us the evolution of Spirit - or today we might say culture. Following this paradigm shift we see it applied to maturation, history, biological evolution, expansion of the universe, the dynamic evolution of languages, and even mathematics. I would argue that although most academics today are Kantian, that most of those are also Hegelian, assuming Hegel is a Kantian. So, especially in the US our culture as pragmatists is essentially Hegelian in that we accept science, evolution, history, progress, all as the paradigm elements in our view of the universe. Further, democracy and the increase in the amount of liberty - more people living more freely than ever before - is the goal of progress. So how does this theory apply to our appreciation and the development of art? We did not spend much time on that so far but the quiz question might be useful for the discussion to move further: what is your favorite Islamic art? Next class I would like to mention Tariq Ramadan and the connection between Islamic culture and Islam.