RC with a diiference

[fultoo_bakar]

Contemporary art
The physical and rational certainties of the clockwork universe depicted by the 18th-century Enlightenment were shattered not only by new discoveries of relativity by Einstein[1] and of unseen psychology by Freud, but also by unprecedented technological development accelerated by the implosion of civilisation in two world wars. The history of twentieth century art is a narrative of endless possibilities and the search for new standards, each being torn down in succession by the next. Thus the parameters of Impressionism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, etc cannot be maintained very much beyond the time of their invention.
(ism's I felt are important for an RC, they appear in almost all the passages concerning Litreture, Philosophy, Psycology and sociology, i am in process of reading about each ism in detail. will come to these topics gradually)

Increasing global interaction during this time saw an equivalent influence of other cultures into Western art, such as Pablo Picasso being influenced by African sculpture. Japanese woodblock prints (which had themselves been influenced by Western Renaissance draftsmanship) had an immense influence on Impressionism and subsequent development. Then African fetish sculptures were taken up by Picasso and to some extent by Matisse.
Modernism, the idealistic search for truth, gave way in the latter half of the 20th century to a realisation of its unattainability. Relativity was accepted as an unavoidable truth, which led to the Postmodern period, where cultures of the world and of history are seen as changing forms, which can be appreciated and drawn from only with irony. Furthermore the separation of cultures is increasingly blurred and it is now more appropriate to think in terms of a global culture, rather than regional cultures.

(This may be overdose for today, i think only one more will suffice the topic 'ART', then i think we should attempt a passage on 'ART' to check if our comprehension has improved considerably. what say guys..................)

[MG_1806]

The various learnings that we have till now 1)Modernism, 2)POMO, 3)Renaissance, 4)Try to deal with what art actually means, 5)History of art and its implications on our society in broad context-Here we have seen that is a gradual shift of art just being a craftsmanship or mastership earlier to a form of depicting economic,social,philosophical thinkings of the society in the canvas. 6)Contemporary Art-This shows a global interaction among various cultures which gets depicted in various art form.

Originally Posted by fultoo_bakar

then i think we should attempt a passage on 'ART' to check if our comprehension has improved considerably. what say guys..................)

That will test our learnings from the passage.I'm with you.Bring it on. Your take on the two Controversial paintings is still overdue.My take on Guernica tells me it tries to showcase the various facets(mostly darker shades) of a human being.

[maverickjesse]

hi guys! hope it was a nice weekend for all of u and u enjoyed it a lot... now lets get back to our work... i got some stuff regarding "Philosophy". As ones ability to crack the RC on subject like philosophy depends on some basic understanding of the subject... so lets just go thru wat philosophy is all about...

" Mankind in its awakened thought has persistently returned to some of the basic question of the life and its meaning. Questions like 'what is man's life?', 'what is its meaning and purpose?', 'how is main to plan his life to attain his purpose?'. These themes in ethics , knowledge and the self, and similar other inquiries are to be found even in earliest traditions of the quest all over the world. In India we find them in its earliest records of the Vedic Age.
Philosophy, along with religion and spirituality, has been one of the proudest achievement in India.The rigour with which philosophy was studied in ancient India was not only remarkable but exceptional.

Political Philosophy: Political philosophy begins with the question: what ought to be a person's relationship with society? the subject seeks the application of ethical concepts to the social sphere and thus deals with the variety of forms of the government and social existence that people could live in- and in doing so it also provide a standard by which to analyze and judge existing institutions and relationships.
Although the two are intimately linked by range of philosophical issues and methods, political philosophy can be distinguished from the political science.
political science deals with existing states of affairs, and it seeks a positive analysis of the social affairs- eg constitutional issues etc. Political philosophy generates visions of the good social life. The subject matter is broad and connects with various branches of law and economics .

Comparative philosophy: sometimes called cross cultural philosophy, is a subfield of philosophy in which philosophers work on problem by intentionally setting into dialogue sources from across cultural, linguistic and philosophical streams.The ambitions and challenge of the comparative philosophy is to include all the philosophies of the global humanity in its vision of what is constituted by philosophy.
Ethics or Moral philosophy: the field of ethics also called moral philosophy involves systematizing,defending and recommending the concepts of right and wrong behavior. Philosophers divide ethical theories into three main areas: metaethics, normative ethics, applied ethics..Metaethics investigates where our ethical principles come from, and what they mean.Are they merely social inventions? Do they involve more than expressions of our individual emotions? Metaethics focuses on the issues of universal truths, the will of god, the role of reason in ethical judgments, and meanings of ethical terms them selves. Normative ethics takes on a more practical task, which is to arrive at moral standards that regulate right and wrong conduct. This may involve articulating the good habits that we should acquire, the duties that we should follow, or consequence of our behavior on others. Finally, applied ethics involves examining specific controversial issues,such as abortion, infanticide, animal rights,environmental concerns, homosexuality ,capital punishment,or nuclear war. By using the conceptual tools of metaethics and normative ethics,discussions in applied ethics try to resolve these controversial issues. The lines of distinction between three are often blurry. For eg. the issue of abortion is an applied ethical topic since it involves a specific type of controversial behavior. But it also depends on more general normative principles such as right of self rule and right to life,which are litmus tests for determining the morality of the procedure. The issue also rests on metaethical issues such as ' where do rights come from?' and "what kind of beings have rights?".

hope this insight about philosophy will be useful to all of u.... For better understanding of RC on philosophy start reading stuff like ' the fountain head' ' atlas shrugged' ' the virtue of selfishness ' all by Ayn Rand.......

now let me have cup of coffee.....( i typed all this stuff... ) ...

looking forward for reply to continue discussion on philosophy.....

[marisha_singh]

Hi,
I am new to this thread and i really appretite you all for starting this thread.

These are my personal views regarding the RC.
1) Many a times i find RC passages to be very deceptive and it requires reading between the lines.

2)Speed does matter in RC but so does the basic understanding of the topic

3)The most important part is when we make mistakes while answering the questions the doubts should be properly explained as to why a particular answer is correct. Many a times sitting alone and doing it is not going to help...so this will prove a plaform to discuss.

I hope i have understood the gist of the thread properly.

Looking forward to make contributions to thread for mutual benefit

Regards,
Marisha

[fultoo_bakar]

Originally Posted by maverickjesse

hope this insight about philosophy will be useful to all of u.... For better understanding of RC on philosophy start reading stuff like ' the fountain head' ' atlas shrugged' ' the virtue of selfishness ' all by Ayn Rand.......

now let me have cup of coffee.....( i typed all this stuff... ) ...

looking forward for reply to continue discussion on philosophy.....

No doubt these books are a great 'read' but they are more of a fictional philosophy, though i have read only fountain head........i was advised to read sophie's world by Jostein Garder.

Its a superb book for fundamentals of philosophy, Its a book involving a young girl who intermittently gets letters from an anonymous writer and each letter explains one era of philosophy.

Its a must read for CAT. And since you have started the topic i will be contributing in a day or two........

[fultoo_bakar]

Since the introduction to philosophy has already been posted i am proceeding towards the next step. I will be posting the works of great philosopher's as no two philosopher's think alike and most of the times works are known by their authors.

The works of Socrates(Plato) and Aristotle are most popular, so at present we restrict ourselves to these two though we can take as many as we can and study their thinking patterns................

I start with Socrates(Plato), though they are two philosophers but we know about socrates only through the works of Plato. The most popular work being Apology(Trial of socrates).

Trial of Socrates:
Socrates was tried and convicted by the courts of democratic Athens on a charge of corrupting the youth and disbelieving in the ancestral gods. The remnants of this trial has been known only through the disciples of Socrates, most popular of them being Plato.

This Trial has been descriptively written by Plato in his work 'Apology'.

Socrates begins by saying he does not know if the men of Athens (his jury) have been persuaded by his accusers(Means the jury is biased). This first sentence is crucial to the theme of the entire speech. Plato often begins his Socratic dialogues with words which indicate the overall idea of the dialogue; in this case, "I do not know".

Indeed, in the Apology Socrates will suggest that philosophy consists entirely of a sincere admission of ignorance, and that whatever wisdom he has comes from his knowledge that he knows nothing.

Socrates asks the jury to judge him not on his oratorical skills, but on the truth. Socrates says he will not use ornate words and phrases that are carefully arranged, but will speak the chance thoughts that come into his head. He says he will use the simple words.

Charges against Socrates by the accusers:
Socrates says that he has to refute two sets of accusations: the old, longstanding charges that he is a criminal, a busybody, and a curious person who makes inquiries into the earth and sky, and the recent legal charges that he is guilty of corrupting the young, and of believing in supernatural things of his own invention instead of the gods recognized by the State.

Apology(work of plato describing the Trial):
The Apology can be divided into three parts. The first part is Socrates's own defense of himself and includes the most famous parts of the text, namely his recounting of the Oracle at Delphi and his cross-examination of Meletus.

contd in next post........................

[fultoo_bakar]

Part 1(Socrates own defence):
Socrates begins by telling the jurors that their minds were poisoned by his enemies when they were young and impressionable. He says his reputation for sophistry comes from his enemies, all of whom are envious of him, and malicious. He says they must remain nameless, except for Aristophanes, the comic poet.

He tells how Chaerephon(a disciple of Socrates) went to the Oracle at Delphi, to ask if anyone was wiser than Socrates. When Chaerephon reported to Socrates that the god told him there is none wiser, Socrates took this as a riddle. He says that he knew that he had no wisdom "great or small" but that he also knew that it is against the nature of the gods to lie.

Socrates then went on a "divine mission" to solve the paradox (that an ignorant man could also be the wisest person in town) and to clarify the meaning of the Oracles' words. He systematically quizzed the politicians, poets and craftsmen. Socrates determined that the politicians were impostors, and said that the poets did not understand their own writings, like prophets and seers who do not understand what they say. Craftsmen prove to be pretentious too, and Socrates says that he made himself a spokesman for the oracle.

He asked himself whether he would rather be an impostor like the people he spoke to, or be himself. Speaking for the oracle, Socrates tells the jury that he would rather be himself than anyone else.

Socrates says that this questioning earned him the reputation of being an annoying busybody. Socrates interpreted his life's mission as proof that true wisdom belongs to the gods and that human wisdom and achievements have little or no value. Having addressed the cause of the prejudice against him, Socrates then tackles the formal charges, corruption of the young and atheism.

Socrates' first move is to accuse his accuser, Meletus (whose name means literally, "the person who cares," or "caring") of not caring about the things he professes to care about. He argues during his interrogation of Meletus that no one would intentionally corrupt another person (because they stand to be harmed by him at a later date).

The issue of corruption is important for two reasons: first, it appears to be the heart of the charge against him, that he corrupted the young by teaching some version of atheism, and second, Socrates says that if he is convicted, it will be because Aristophanes corrupted the minds of his audience when they were young (with his slapstick mockery of Socrates in his play, "The Clouds", produced some twenty-four years earlier).
Socrates then proceeds to deal with the second charge, that he is an atheist. He cross-examines Meletus, and extracts a contradiction. He gets Meletus to say that Socrates is an atheist who believes in spiritual agencies and demigods. Socrates announces that he has caught Meletus in a contradiction, and asks the court whether Meletus has designed an intelligence test for him to see if he can identify logical contradictions.

Socrates states clearly that a lawful superior, whether human or divine, should be obeyed. If there is a clash between the two, however, divine authority should take precedence.

Since Socrates has interpreted the Delphic Oracle as singling him out to spur his fellow Athenians to a greater awareness of moral goodness and truth, he will not stop questioning and arguing should the people forbid him to do so, even if they were to withdraw the charges. Nor will he stop questioning his fellow citizens.

In a highly inflammatory section of the Apology, Socrates claims that no greater good has happened to Athens than his concern for his fellow citizens, that wealth is a consequence of goodness (and not the other way around), that God does not permit a better man to be harmed by a worse, and that, in the strongest statement he gives of his task, he is a stinging gadfly and the state a lazy horse.

As further evidence of his task, Socrates reminds the court of his daimon which he sees as a supernatural experience. He recognises this as partly behind the charge of believing in invented beings. Again Socrates makes no concession to his situation. He would have been well aware that many if not most in the courtroom would have viewed this with utmost suspicion.

Socrates claims to never have been a teacher, in the sense of imparting knowledge to others. He cannot therefore be held responsible if any citizen turns bad. If he has corrupted anyone, why have they not come forward to be witnesses? Or if they do not realise that they have been corrupted, why have their relatives not stepped forward on their behalf? Many relatives of the young men associated with him, Socrates points out, are presently in the courtroom to support him.

Socrates concludes this part of the Apology by reminding the jurors that he will not resort to the usual emotive tricks and arguments. He will not break down in tears, nor will he produce his three sons in the hope of swaying the jurors. He does not fear death; nor will he act in a way contrary to his religious duty. He will rely solely on sound argument and the truth to present his case.

Part 2 and 3 tomorrow.......

[vallisri]

Hey bakar,

where r part 2 and 3.....

[ankit_110185]

hey guys ,

What happened to this thread,hey bakar where are you....????

[tyro2007]

hey Bakar, thanks for the initiative, some notes about Marxism(straight copy paste)

MARXISM

Marxism as proposed by Karl Marx advances the following ideas. All the emphasized phrases are Marxist jargon.

1. The most important features of a society are its economic classes and their relations to each other in the modes of production of each historical epoch.
2. A class is defined by the relations of its members to the means of production.
3. Under capitalism, the capitalists own the means of production, the proletariat own only their capacity to work. Landlords rule the land, and the peasants are less significant than workers and are trapped in the idiocy of rural life. The proletariat definitely includes those who produce objects in factories with their hands, but Marxists dither about whether it includes people who work with their minds but are employees and live by their salaries.
4. History is the history of class struggles among the classes in society. New progressive classes arise that are related to new forms of production and struggle with the old. New forms of society arise appropriate to the new forms of production when the new classes win power. This doctrine is called historical materialism.
5. The state is the means whereby the ruling class forcibly maintains its rule over the other classes.
6. The successive stages of history include primitive communism characterized by equalitarian hunting and gathering, barbarism characterized by rule by chiefs, slave society with a slave class and agriculture, feudalism, capitalism, socialism and communism.
7. Most struggles in history are class struggles, even though the participants profess other goals. For example, protestantism reflects the rising capitalist class.
8. New classes usually win power by revolution. Revolutions are violent, because the dying ruling class doesn't give up power without a desperate struggle.
9. The capitalist class wins power over the feudal class by a bourgeois democratic revolution. A bourgeois democratic revolution is a good thing in its day, because it gets rid of feudal personal relations and replaces them by a cash nexus.
10. Capitalism creates the proletariat who have nothing to sell but their labor by bankrupting the artisan classes and the petty bourgeoisie and driving them into the proletariat.
11. The proletariat wins power by a proletarian revolution. According to Marx and Lenin, this revolution must be violent, because the bourgeoisie won't give up power by electoral means.
12. Neither Russia nor China had undergone a bourgeois-democratic revolution when the communists seized power. The communists undertook to build socialism anyway, and some of their rival socialists used the missing bourgeois-democratic revolution to predict that communist power would end badly.
13. Around the end of the 19th century Edouard Bernstein argued that it was possible to win power peacefully by winning elections. This was revisionism and the orthodox Marxist have used revisionism as an epithet ever since. "Revisionism" came to have more general meanings than Bernstein's actual doctrine, because it could be applied to people who denied Bernstein's doctrine but who could be accused of not being revolutionary enough.
14. Under capitalism the progressive class is the proletariat which is destined to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism, which will eventually evolve into communism.
15. Historical materialism is the Marxist methodology for interpreting history. The idea is to interpret all relations between groups of people as class relations and to interpret all conflicts as reflections of class struggles. A specific sequence of historical stages is part of the doctrine. It is (primitive communism, barbarism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism socialism, communism). Each stage of history has its own ruling class which uses the state to maintain its rule. Under feudalism the ruling class is the nobility, under capitalism it is the capitalists, and under socialism it is the proletariat. Primitive communism and communism are classless. In some countries oriental despotism happens as a stage distinct from feudalism.
16. The main feature of socialism is public ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange.
17. Under capitalism, workers "tend" to be paid the bare amount required for them to support their families and reproduce. This is because of competition for jobs from the reserve army of labor, i.e. the unemployed.
18. The capitalist sells the product of the workers' labor at a price proportional to its value, which is the socially necessary labor required to produce it.
19. The difference between what the product sells for and what the workers are paid is surplus value and is appropriated by the capitalist.
20. Because the workers can't buy the full product of their labor and the capitalists don't consume all the surplus value, there tend to be recessions.
21. The steady increase in labor saving machinery creates unemployment and drives down wages. This emphasizes the tendency for there to be economic recessions.
22. The tendency to pay the workers bare survival wages leads to the increasing immiseration of the proletariat.
23. The other classes, e.g. artisans and petty bourgeoisie, e.g. small shopkeepers, go broke and are driven into the proletariat. Even the smaller capitalists go broke.
24. In his "Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy," written in the 1840s, Engels asserted that "The middle classes must increasingly disappear until the world is divided into millionaires and paupers. . . . [T]his result must and will come, unless it is anticipated by a total transformation of social conditions, a fusion of opposed interests, an abolition of private property."
25. Then a socialist revolution occurs. Originally this was supposed to occur first in the most advanced capitalist countries, e.g. Germany, Britain and the United States. It wasn't supposed to occur first in a backward country like Russia, where a bourgeois-democratic revolution should have happened first.
26. In the first stages of socialism the state is a dictatorship of the proletariat., i.e the proletariat rules the other classes by force.
27. The socialist slogan is "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."
28. The communist slogan is "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
29. Communism, which evolves peacefully from socialism, is a classless society under which the state will wither away.
30. 
    Marx wrote

    In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, have vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of the co-operative wealth flow more abundantly - only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe upon its banners: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"

    (K. Marx: Critique of the Gotha Programme)
31. Capitalism normally is replaced by socialism as a consequence of a proletarian revolution.
32. Prior to the overthrow of capitalism the proletariat must develop its own class consciousness. Other classes have their own forms of class consciousness.
33. Class hatred is a good thing and class collaboration is a bad thing.
34. Under capitalism, capitalist ideology penetrates other classes and must be struggled against by the proletariat.
35. Trade unions are good as training grounds for the class struggle, but it is capitalist ideology to suppose that they can make any permanent improvement in the condition of the proletariat. The belief that trade unions can make a permanent difference is a heresy called economism or trade-unionism, although the term may be due to Lenin.
36. The increasing exploitation of the working class leads to economic crises, because the working class cannot afford to buy the products of its labor. These crises get more intense with time. I forget whether the term general crisis of capitalism comes from Marx, but I rather think it comes much later. It refers also to imperialist wars
37. Literature, art and other forms of culture tend to reflect the class ideology of the class to which the artist belongs. However, the ideology of other classes can also affect the artist.
38. The philosophy of Marxism calls itself dialectical materialism.
39. The materialism part is opposed to idealism and holds that the world is to be understood as matter in motion.
40. The dialectical part includes the transformation of quantity into quality, the dialectical process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis and the unity of opposites alias the contradictory tendencies of the thing.
41. As far as I can see tipping point is a new name for transformation of quantity into quality.
42. There is also a philosophy of history called historical materialism. Its main feature is the interpretation of history in terms of class struggle and historical progression in terms of revolutions in which a new ruling class takes over from the old ruling class.