beauty

I like this chapter, “The shiver of beauty”, because it talk about something that i thou that is very interesting, what it beautiful? Well I think that beauty depends on the view of each person and how the way you appreciate things, beauty I something that brings you pleasure.
Plato, this great philosopher didn’t like the artist because they have the power to seduce with their art and they don’t question things and facts as the philosophers do “the real teachers”, they just take thing as the see beautiful without questioning, in my very own point of view I don’t like the way Plato took this because I think that seeing something beautiful depends on how you feel about it, if it transmits pleasure or pain to you, beauty depends on every person and I don’t think that you have to question where it came from, who was it made, it is beautiful just because it seem beautiful to you, I don’t think that we need a “real teacher” to teach us how to view things beautiful.
That’s my point of view but everyone can think differently, but I agree with Schiller, about the aesthetic education letting people decide what they see as beautiful gives them freedom, the freedom they need for becoming the person they wish, that’s the point I think that beauty should be freely appreciated for each person, because no one thinks the same and perceive the same.

The shiver of beauty

In this chapter we learned about what beauty signifies and how beauty most of the times gives us pleasure. Also in this chapter we learned about the opinion of many philosophers, the one which I agree the most with is Kant; he gives us many interesting points about beauty.

One of which I like the most is when he says that "the pleasure produced by beauty is the only truly disinterested and unconstrained pleasure we can experience". I like this statement by Kant a lot because I very much agree on what he says, I do believe that the attributes beauty gives us are not only disinterested but pure, this meaning that the pleasure we obtain from beauty is unique and spontaneous. Unlike the other pleasures, we do not obtain the pleasure from a necessity we have because as Kant says the thirst for beauty does not appear to correspond to any concrete need, either of our senses or of our reason. Finally, I think Savater gives us these quotes from Kant in order for us to value the importance of beauty, not meaning physical beauty, but the beauty one observes in nature and in all those things we can't exactly describe why we found them beautiful.

To wrap this comment, I think that beauty is one of the greatest things we can obtain from nature since I believe that in a way beauty "humanizes us", by obtaining a disinterested pleasure by a sunset for example, we seem hypnotized by such wonder that as the chapter is called, lets us experience the shiver of beauty.

The Shiver of Beauty

In this chapter Savater talks about beauty and pleasure, and discusses some of Plato’s ideas about this subject, the one that caught my attention the most was the one about Plato’s distrust towards artists, towards their influence on the masses, to their capacity to produce pleasure .
He finds this so unacceptable because for him the one who controls the pleasure mechanisms in the society controls in a certain level the education of his citizens; and artists great fault is teaching the wrong lessons, is making up fantasies who then everyone takes as truth, is fighting morals and truth. Plato can’t conceive this influence could be use in a good way, because it is impossible to deny its existence, he never sees it as something that could unify people, that could make a united front against ignorance and gain sympathy to philosophy, which as he says, is not as amusing as art
I also want to point out that even though art does influence us, the effect they produce in us changes according to each person, art is subjective as well as our own interpretation of it. And whereas to follow or not the “teachings” an artist is giving us is our decision, we have free will for a reason. Artists are not demons.

Freedom in Action

We humans have the awesome power of freedom but sometimes we get a little bit confused by the word and its several meanings and we feel that we're capable of doing anything under any circumstance, and yeah we are! But first we need to take responsibility of our freedom and learn how to use it, that’s why Savater says that freedom can be an award or a burden, so then our whole life won’t turn into a complete chaos.
I think, we need to learn the concept of “voluntary” and apply it, so we can be sure that is US the once who choose what we want, and not our friends, family, etc. And learn that out freedom is ours and therefore we can’t let anyone else mess with it. Specially us that we’re growing, we’ve learned what our parents or teachers had told us, but I think that is time to learn and decide for ourselves, and think deeper of what freedom can be and can do for us if we know how to use it.
Also, respect and freedom are linked for us as a society; since everyone in this world is different, not all of us have the same ideas and it’s very easy to agree or disagree and sometimes even turn a little bit aggressive and the consequences can turn into a big monster, so in order to prevent all this consequences that even innocent people could suffer, we should live respecting each other, make use of our freedom by making our point but not by making a whole scene.

Finally, Freedom is a very important characteristic that we humans have and the only way to enjoy it is to make sure we really know how to use it as a good to ourselves.

freedom in action

When I was going to begin reading the 6th chapter I saw the title and it was “freedom in action” and I thought that it was simply that we are free to do or not to do an action, but after reading the chapter I noticed that it was much more complicated.
We saw that what you do can only by an action when you want to do it, when you do it “voluntary”, Voluntary is a word that we are use to hear and we just take its meaning as “do it because you want”; ok, it is right but voluntary has a more complex meaning for example the history that Savater tell us in the book about the Capitan of a ship that wanted to get safe to home, but to be able to do that he had to drew the cargo overboard, but he didn’t want to throw it because it was very expensive, but he finally throw it to save his and the crews life, so doesn’t it contradict what I just say about wanting to do something is an action? I think that actions cannot be just determinate because you want to do it, because even if you don’t want to do something and you have to do it and you do it, it is an action too.