Notes on Truth, Beauty, and Goodness -- Phil A231

William Jamison - Instructor

The Nature of Philosophy

Salome versus Edie Brickel and the New Bohemians: What I am.

Salome link (Richard Strauss) powerful women -- studies of.

Edie link: does this song reflect an anti intellectual climate in our school system? "Choke me in the shallow water before I get too deep."

Answer is yes.

Allan Bloom "The Closing of the American Mind" chapter on Music: you can take the spiritual temperature of a people by marking their music.

Plato: music is alogon -- anti logical.

Brief history of music:

aboriginal then raga (Ravi Shankar and his sittar) then Arabic chants, then Hebraic chants -- then Greek chants -- hymns to Apollo which are almost identical to early Church chants.

Bishop Ambrose and Pope Gregory.

Four voices break up into harmonics and music becomes more complex.

Bach introduces octave structure and music becomes more purposefully mathematical.

Mozart and Salieri (note Amadeus) Mozart fixes Saleri's piece! So the music is like a mathematical puzzle and it can be more beautiful.

Addendum: play Mozart for your fetus? This should be a pretty interesting discussion.

It seems reasonable to presume that since a fetus at 3 months has ear buds and can hear noises around the mother (and in the mother) that it would be able to learn grammar, sounds of voices, early language learning, and appreciate music!

So the suggestion that Mozart is a better kind of music to play for a fetus than, say, Heavy Metal because Mozart is more mathematically correct -- more soothing -- more beautiful -- more of all the good things music is meant to do -- than the brain of the fetus will develop more math skills as a result. Intriguing hypothesis and it certainly can't hurt.

There is a also the suggestion that you read to your fetus.

After Mozart music continues to evolve -- note the same issues surround this topic as do the evolution of art in tune with the philosophy of the times. So there was the classical period after the Baroque, then the Romantic, than Modern, Atonal music, and impressionistic.

Sad: do Gollum's song?

Star Wars or Harry? Music as language -- leitmotivs have meaning: the sword. Star Wars. See John Williams.

Who is your hero?

Back to Bloom:

Music today: Madonna.

Hildegaard von Bingen -- is her music more logical than ...?

Music as logical math puzzle: Madonna "Justify My Love" link above.

Poetry: Jabberwocky -- grammar is important too -- note to philosophy in Wittgenstein -- grammar?

Cremation of Sam McGee.

Mark Twain presentation on Noah.

Leitmotiv from Wagner -- example John Williams.

http://www.tothesource.org/2_21_2006/2_21_2006.htm for the article on the separation of church and state

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html for the Golden Record

Bibliography

This page is maintained by William S. Jamison. It was last updated August 14, 2012. All links on these pages are either to open source or public domain materials or they are marked with the appropriate copyright information. I frequently check the links I have made to other web sites but each source is responsible for their own content.