Philosophy 1300E Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Mental Disorder
1 Oct 2018
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Merleau-Ponty Cezanne's Doubt
Thursday, April 5, 2018
7:17 PM
• Philosophy AND Art
• "The philosopher is nothing but a gaze, very careful and very simple" M.-P
o Were are able to see things through each philosophers perspectives
o Philosophers will have the patience and care to look at things more deeply
• Dichotomy/division between philosophy and art
• Dichotomy between thinking and seeing
Two Philosophers who opposed Merleau-Ponty
1. Plato
a. Educated to turn from sensible things to intelligible things
b. The Republic was a construct of the ideal state
c. How the philosophers should be educated and how they can become kings or queens of that
ideal state
d. Painters, artists, poets, etc. have no place in this ideal state, they must be ex-communicated
i. Look at how many falsehoods are narrated by the poets, for example, about the gods
ii. The problem with this is that when you try to imitate something, then you become
like it, and when you have a whole society promoting such standards due to the poets,
then the results are that the young generation will imitate bad models and become
bad, instead of becoming good
iii. The images that the artists create are far from the truth, even farther than the
sensible things
iv. When we see representation of actions of emotions only, then there is a chance that
we will succumb to our emotions instead of dealing with reason
▪ The arts have an influence on us, and Plato doesn’t want to risk that, so artists
should go away, and if not, then they should ask what philosophers and
politicians what they should write
e. Thinking comes first because we have to think about the forms
2. Descartes
a. His project was to tear everything down, and rebuild only what he was certain of
b. He want through this method to found, to ground all sciences into metaphysics, into the
mediations
c. His project was that he wanted to show that all sciences are well rooted in metaphysics
d. The focus of Descartes is science
e. Its philosophy and science not philosophy and art
f. His philosophy was dualism
i. He distinguished bodies and minds
ii. They are irreducible to one another, they are substances, they can be defined and
understood independently of one another
iii. The minds are thinking substance
iv. The bodies are extended, they are in three dimensions
g. Thinking comes first (I think, therefore I am); Seeing is a way of thinking, seeing is
subordinate to thinking
Cezanne's Art
