Does Art Serve Any Purpose?

[PeterL]

And what might this "truth" thing be?

[Mr.lucifer]

Truths about life?

[cyberbob]

If art were about "truths of life" then babies wouldn't enjoy music or drawings because they'd mean nothing to them.

I'm sure some people enjoy some art that state "truths" they can relate to, but that's just one factor of artistic taste.

For example, if you like hot dogs because they remind you of the 4th of July that doesn't mean the 4th of July is why all people like hot dogs.

The root root cause of liking hot dogs (and all food) is the same as the root cause of liking art: It increased our species' chances of survival at least in the past if not still now.

You don't need to look back at your life to know why you like food or art. You like it because its impossible not to. Things can affect your tastes, but everyone innately has SOME tastes.

Even if art has no purpose now that doesn't mean we can ignore it anymore than we can ignore an inflamed appendix.

[Arrowni]

Art isn't about truth anymore than fruit is about truth. Fruits are real, and they send to a reality of interactions which set off our understanding of the universe. There is a big gap from recognizing those interactions to saying fruits are all about truth.

[PeterL]

While survival is the reason for liking most things that people like, I think that there are secondary reasons for people liking art. Those reasons vary from art to art.

[Drkshadow03]

I disagree. As far as time goes, education is a zero sum game. You only have so many teachable hours, and so every time you ad something you have to exclude something else. You can't tell me that nothing is lost dropping Homer from the curriculum for contemporary, lesbian, minority writer #4. If the professor wants to teach lesbian fiction then he should teach Sappho. If they want to teach Spanish heritage then have students read Cervantes. And if they want contemporary texts, have them read Marquez. The Joy Luck Club and M Butterfly are not as central to the Asian experience as Confucius or Du Fu. I know that as an American it's my patriotic responsibility to salute the colors, but why should I be reading William Dean Howells when I could be reading Dante, or at least Melville?

I agree that education is a zero sum game in so far as there is a limited amount of time and courses for teachers to offer and a limited amount of time to read all the books we would like before we die. According to your reasoning, we should, therefore, choose to spend that time with Homer over contemporary, lesbian minority writer # 4 since each class offered on contemporary lesbian minority writer # 4 takes time away from a class dealing with a more important writer like Homer.

However, while this argument seems sound in theory, I think there are a number of problems with it when one starts considering it in a little more depth.

For starters, this presumes contemporary, lesbian minority writer # 4 has no value or little value whatsoever rather than simply less value in comparison to Homer. Just because writer A has more value doesn't necessarily mean writer B has no value. If you played that ranking game with everyone equally I'm sure we could find numerous Canonical figures who we could all agree are good, but inferior to Homer. Does that mean studying those figures are a waste of time too? Who gives a crap if Dante is superior to Melville (as you hint in your post above)? Does that mean we should never bother to read Melvillle since it takes time away from Dante? Should we never offer courses on James Fenimore Cooper or D.H. Lawrence because that's one less class on Homer?

Even though education is a zero sum game with limited time for what is to be taught and limited time for us to learn before we die, we still make decisions all the time where lesser works are granted some of that time simply because lesser doesn't automatically imply worthless.

Even the situation your raising is inapplicable to the reality of studying literature at university since really all literature programs in the country are different. Some have strong medieval programs, some have strong Renaissance programs, and some have strong contemporary American literature programs. The courses offered are going to reflect the professors' interests and subject expertise, and they're going to hire based off what kind of program they want to offer. So even then it's not really a matter of Homer versus Contemporary lesbian minority writer # 4.

[mortalterror]

I didn't say that they have no worth. I'm saying that they should go last, after the student has a solid foundation. I have friends who graduated with English degrees who have never read the Bible, never read Homer, never read The Divine Comedy, or really anything before the nineteenth century. These are smart men, and I shouldn't have to explain Genesis to them on the street or who Tennessee Williams is in the middle of a crowded video store. After four years, they should know something and if they don't then their teachers have failed them. They've been defrauded. Their money and their time have been wasted, frittered away on a professor's pet thesis. They've been shortchanged by an entire university, handed from one negligent teacher to the next, and that I find unacceptable.

Without standards we risk filling our children's heads with nonsense. Teaching from bad examples can be even more harmful than not teaching at all.

[Drkshadow03]

I didn't say that they have no worth. I'm saying that they should go last, after the student has a solid foundation. I have friends who graduated with English degrees who have never read the Bible, never read Homer, never read The Divine Comedy, or really anything before the nineteenth century. These are smart men, and I shouldn't have to explain Genesis to them on the street or who Tennessee Williams is in the middle of a crowded video store. After four years, they should know something and if they don't then their teachers have failed them. They've been defrauded. Their money and their time have been wasted, frittered away on a professor's pet thesis. They've been shortchanged by an entire university, handed from one negligent teacher to the next, and that I find unacceptable.

Without standards we risk filling our children's heads with nonsense. Teaching from bad examples can be even more harmful than not teaching at all.

My point was I would like to see a balance. I have no problem with programs that offer a good background in classical works and contemporary works (or at least offers the students the option of exploring contemporary literatures of various sorts through electives). Really it's less a matter of more Shakespeare and less lesbian Minority Writers than it is developing better curriculums and requirements for some of the programs that are out there. The problem with the thesis you presented is the program I went to suffered not because we read too many contemporary authors at the expense of Homer and Shakespeare (we read plenty of Canonical figures in my classes and we missed plenty of major ones as well, hence why I feel like I'm always playing catch-up), but rather the required courses were too haphazard and all over the place as far as coverage. You could completely skip over major figures (like Dante and Homer), but still cover Emily Dickinson, Melville, and Whitman, or vice-versa, depending on what classes you took, while still fulfilling generalized requirements.

A quick fix to these problems of a lack of a standardized background would be to require all Freshman to take a Great Books program through their English and Philosophy departments for an entire year (Fall and Spring semester) similar to the program at Columbia, so everyone is reading a standard set of works at the beginning of their education regardless of major. Then have 10 Course requirement for a literature major on top of the freshman Great Books program that might consist of say:

2 Major Author courses, 2 Period Courses, 1 Critical Theory Course, 1 Shakespeare Course, 1 Upper-level Seminar Course on a Specialized Topic, 2 Electives, 1 Thesis.

This setup allows for someone to focus on 20th Century literature if they so choose, while still getting a decent background in the seminal texts of Western Literature through the Great Books Program + Shakespeare Course.

[prickly_pete]

I have friends who graduated with English degrees who have never read the Bible, never read Homer, never read The Divine Comedy, or really anything before the nineteenth century.

I know, its f-ing hilarious how many worthless degrees are handed out by liberal arts programs these days. What do really expect though? Alot of literature is written at a very high level of abstraction and if you don't come to it with the necessary tools already in hand you aren't going to get very far. I'd wager that I've read more books on literary theory than about 95% of the people graduating with degrees in English these days.

You're right. It is a scam.

[G L Wilson]

The last refuge of the scoundrel is an education. But it just so happens that I like scoundrels.

[Venerable Bede]

I have to agree that English degrees do not make you read enough of the essential classics. Everyone should have read Dante and Homer before graduating with a degree in literature.

None of the courses offered through the English department at my university deal with any author who didn't write in the English language. Hence, a student could graduate without reading big literary figures like Tolstoy, Hugo, and Dante merely because they aren't English. You'd have to go out of your way to get a broader education and most people aren't going to do that.

[Venerable Bede]

The last refuge of the scoundrel is an education. But it just so happens that I like scoundrels.

I never understand these one or two line posts that Wilson makes. I feel like they're supposed to be supremely intelligent, but they just don't make any sense.

[WyattGwyon]

I never understand these one or two line posts that Wilson makes. I feel like they're supposed to be supremely intelligent, but they just don't make any sense.

Venerable one:

I submit that this Wilson entity is in fact a bot being trained for upcoming Turing tests. (That is to say, its responses are machine generated and then submitted by its creator.) The strategy of answering complex passages with terse, quasi-paradoxical snippets is a common strategy those who program bots employ to distract humans from an egregious dearth of relevant content. It is quite likely, given Wilson's chronic toadying, that the bot's programmer is in fact the very person who began this thread. The person submitting in the name of Wilson is part of the development team for this bit of software.

[Rores28]

I agree with Wyatt

[prickly_pete]

Really? I think Wilson is probably the most intelligent person on these boards to be perfectly honest.