| | That is a very open ended question, isn't it? I mean "further" development in the sense of theoretical research from philosophers or looking out at the world and seeing a need for better solutions?
I think that politics is doing very well, most objectivist forums are bursting with discussions about ethical/political issues. There are also lots of philosophers/scholars doing serious work in that area, like Sciabarra and Kelly, and in practice we have seen the fall of the Berlin Wall and that "capitalism" is not the dirty word it used to be.
Issues about reasoning/epistemology seem to be also prevalent on the forums, but I don't know much about the state of debate in philosophical circles. In practice, I did have first hand experience of going through a trial, and the Judge was brilliant in the way he reasoned. Though in contrast to that I don't see good reasoning behind the ARI apologias that have popped up in the last year.
Though I have written about metaphysical value judgements in art I don't know much about the branch of metaphysics in philosophy.
Recently I read the book, The Art of Happiness, by the Dalai Lama. It was co-written by a psychiatrist, and though I really enjoyed ALL the quotes of the Dalai Lama, I found that psychiatrist to be…pathetic, one example was that he was surprised that happiness should be a standard of mental health. (?) If he is a typical practitioner of psychiatry, than it has a long way to go.
I do think that the arts and aesthetics are in a very immature state or even in a sub-human state of being. If one thinks of "high" art forms like symphonic music, opera, architecture, sculpture, painting (in the contemporary museums), literature (epic), and we compare the 20th Century to the 19th Century it is with sad results. When is the last time you have attended a world premier of an opera, a symphony?--those forms are dead in the sense of contemporary compositions. Representation painting and sculpture are dead forms to the eyes and aesthetic viability of contemporary institutions. Discounting Rand, recent epic literature? Though I think there are many interesting things happening in architecture--but I think that modern cities look like they are junk-filled, compared to the boulevards, plazas, parks that were a worldwide phenomenon in the 19th Century. Contemporary aesthetic analysis has disintegrated into the subjective analysis, pick up any serious art magazine or art journal for examples of everything but an evaluation of the artwork.
Though I didn't vote in this poll, I would enjoy seeing a rigorous and ruthlessly reasoned development in aesthetics by philosophers and scholars.
Newberry
|
|
