The Beauty of Life

When we think in something that for us is beautiful we take for granted that it actually is beautiful for everyone. This isn’t true, the last chapter that I have read Of the book “The Questions of life” called The Shiver of Beauty tells us that maybe all of us have very a different concept of beauty. What I am trying to say is that maybe something that you find extremely beautiful like a painting or a sculpture someone else can find not beautiful at all.

In this chapter there are many definitions that try to define beauty, the best of all I think is the following “beauty is that something that produce pleasure on you (not just physically). This, I think, is very accurate because people may find pleasure in many different things, like art, spectacular views, sports, music, good company, etc. This definition accepts that beauty is something personal not universal, something that not everyone would agree on.

My conclusion and personal opinion is that beauty is that something that creates pleasure on your senses, it might be to the view, or in sound, in smell, the taste or even in the feeling. Beauty is something that makes our lives much more happy and that make us live with more joy.

Is it beautiful?

Once you start thinking about it, it’s really hard to define the word “beautiful”. People may take a different meaning for the same word which isn’t a physical object which we could easily define, but can be granted as some sort of feeling, something subjective depending on what you like or dislike and then decide whether you think something is beautiful or not.

Chapter 9 talks about Cheops’ Great Pyramid dilemma, whether we can call it beautiful or not. Arguing that the pyramid is beautiful, we could tell that the fact that it produces visual pleasure to us or that the pyramid is unique, which makes it beautiful. Arguing against it, the pyramid was built by thousands of slaves who carried large stones and were treated very badly. In the moral perspective, the creation of the pyramids are wrong, which makes them not beautiful at all.

I personally think that the result should be the only think accounted as beautiful. The ways or actions that make possible the pyramid to exist doesn’t really matter. The fact that the pyramid is unique and gigantic or that the pyramid is a real masterpiece is what really makes it beautiful in spite of the morally wrong ways in which it was constructed. What you personally admire as beautiful is always the result, not the process of elaboration.

The Beauty of Artists

Chapter 9: The Shiver of Beauty. This chapater talks about beauty, it’s definition and different aspects of it. In one part, Savater talks us about beauty in the artists and in their creations.
Savater says that artists are referred as creators which he then defines as somebody who has made something that would not have existed without him or her, somebody who brings something to the world. He then give us an example that artists paintings would have never existed if they didn’t existed, while in the other hand discoveries of things or medicines from scientists or people, could had been discovered or invented even though they hadn’t existed.
What he wants to say us is that artists paintings or sculptures are very important and are beautiful depending on the perspective in each of us. I agree with him stating this because he says that their works cannot be explained without them, without their vocation or personality. He also said that if they had not existed their works would have not existed either.
I therefore agree 100% with Savater because, that piece of art would have not existed if the artist didn’t existed. While the findings or creations of scientists can be found even though the scientists themselves hadn’t existed, someone else could have found them.
Savater also talked about how Plato disagreed with some artists and I somehow agree with how Plato taught. Why? Because I agree that some artists have very crazy ways of thinking and how they show they art, in this way they could change the way people think or the way people see things which can be sometimes dangerous or bad. For example in music, some artists could sing bad things in songs and make people act bad toward somethings. Today there are many songs that are considered bad and talk about death and killing of people, that’s were I want to get, stating that artists creations aren’t always good.

The level of Freedom

People say that some animals are free, like birds, or fish, depending on the situation you are enrolled in. In the book THE QUESTIONS OF LIFE from Fernando Savater, the author Fernando exposes three different terms to distinguish freedom:
1.- "Freedom as the capacity to act according to one's own desires or projects." This term is heavily influenced to physical ways of expressing freedom, non-abstract situations. If we think or desire something anxiously we act to transform it from a thought to a tangible thing, trying to introduce that thought of ours to the reality we all live in whatever the purpose is.
2.- "The freedom to want what we want and not just to do, or attempt to do, what we want." Attention to this term, it is only possible inside the mind of every person and it is not a plural freedom, like the number one slightly attempts to be. This freedom is more psychological and it is undeniable, every one has thoughts about what happens, what hasn't happened and what will happen.
3.- "The freedom to want that which we do not want, and of not wanting what in fact we want."
This freedom refers to when someone wants to be someone but he "wishes" to be different. For example a man who wants to have kill all the people in the world, but at the same time he wishes not do be that man, because it goes against what he values, then he is wanting not to be what he wants to be. This term is confusing and appears to have no ending.

Every single term has freedom used in a different way, but it is only the middle term the one I trust more, because is more simple and invulnerable, not even a God can forbid me to think what I want to, and in this sense I think we are the most free of all.

Our "freedom".

Freedom is in theory a very easy concept to understand. Freedom is to do whatever you want and to think whatever you want, but something I have learned this last week at my philosophy class is that freedom is not that simple, for example sometimes when you think you’ve made a choice or action freely you don’t notice that many external factors are controlling you and affect your decision in a big part. And also even today at the twenty first century there are many places where slavery exists.

Another example of violation of liberty, I think, is when someone introduces a subliminal message of any kind on other people, this is a violation to freedom because you should be able to make choices freely, when someone induces you, unconsciously, an idea he or she is violating your freedom to choose.

I am also aware that many people misuse the concept of liberty and transforms it into libertinism, I think that the main reason that sometimes there are lots of limits or boundaries in “liberty” is because many people transforms liberty into libertinism by doing whatever they want and even brake some laws arguing that they are “free” to do what they want, or says “I live in a free country”. So in order to get our true freedom we should start to respect others freedom.

Freedom isn't free

Almost every person thinks that the concept of being free is doing what you want, when you want it and how you want it. But actually there is much more than that to be free. I mean of course you need to be free to do what you want but you also have to be aware of certain factors. For example, you are free to choose if you want vanilla or chocolate ice cream, but you are responsible of knowing what is going to happen after, for example if you are lactose intolerant. In other scenario, if you are in a life-death situation like the one of the captain and his crew travelling with a cargo and they are hit by a storm, and the only way of surviving was by throwing away the cargo. In this case the captain has the freedom to choose if he wants to throw the cargo and survive, but loose the thing the trip was about, or keep the cargo and die. This is a little extreme situation, but it is an easier way to make a decision.

So everyone has the freedom to do what they want in one way or another, but we have to take all the factors that surround it.

Freedom and responsibility

Many people have different concepts about freedom. Some people say it is about thinking what we want to think. Others say it is wanting what we want and others argue it is about wanting that which we don’t want not wanting what we want. You may think the same as I, this looks like a big word puzzle.

In simpler words, for me personally, freedom involves much more than only thinking and wanting what we want, but we need to be responsible for our own free actions. If you are totally free, you may do whatever you want to do, for example getting drunk everyday of the week. I mean you could do that if you want to, but you need to be responsible for that action. You may not want to assume the responsibility of the effects or the action in order to get drunk.

Freedom is doing what we want to do, without anyone telling us what to do. But in order to be completely free, first of all, you need to be able to do it. If there is no possible way of achieving our goal, then we can argue that we are not totally free. Secondly, you need to take the responsibility of you action. Freedom is a very complicated word to define and people define it in very different ways. For me, freedom and responsibility are linked; you can’t be free if you are not responsible.