Philosophy of the Arts

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An academic War

In academia a war is going on between autist people with savant capacities and people with empathetic capacities. Reductionist science versus life-world analysis. Those in the first faction will, of their autist nature, never recognise the war. This gives them the upper hand.

The human species is intriguing.

Kant’s Critique of Judgement is about this war. Kant recognised the object of value that is at stake in it, as the “Middle Member”, the power of judgement. (In the former camp, this power is interpreted as logical reasoning.) Kant’s core insight (embedded in an elaborate and highly valuable argument) is in a section which seems to fall out of the argumentative thread, section 17, on the Ideal of beauty, where beauty is understood as expression.
Wittgenstein’s later philosophy provides the empathetic faction with the best arguments yet, by addressing expression and the understanding of meaning (this, more than behaviourism or linguistic philosophy, forms the core of his endeavour, arguably, also, of his earlier thought).

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