Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

I'm writing about this because I'm not sure I understand it. Corrections of my stupidity are more than usually welcome. Five points: 1. "Taste," for Kant, is the act of deciding whether something is or isn't beautiful. (Not "sublime," another matter I'll stay away from here.) 2. For something to be beautiful, it must offer "disinterested satisfaction." Presumably, a heterosexual man who finds a woman "beautiful" has an "interest" in mind, consciously or not. Because it is not DIS interested, then sexual appeal is NOT "beauty" in the Kantian sense.  On the other hand an image of abstract art, or perhaps a musical motif, may be considered beautiful, and those are both a better candidates for satisfying the test of disinterest than our beautiful woman in the "male gaze." 3. The fact that one takes pleasure (that is, the grounds of one's taste) is not completely subjective. If I find a mus...

I have from time to tie opined here about the philosophy of humor. What does it mean for something (say, a brief story with an unexpected reversal at the end) to be funny? Today I'll simply offer a test case for your consideration. Can we agree that this is funny, then worry about why? The Simpsons a few years back did a Halloween episode set in the 1930s. The town of Springfield was ripped apart by panicked mobs after a radio program put together by a young Orson Welles that presented fake news reports of a Martian invasion. The next morning, Orson Welles is on his way out of town. He is met by the police chief who has just been surveying the damage done by the riots. This dialog ensures: Chief Wiggum: Why shouldn't I punch you in the nose, bud?! Orson Wells: (muttering to himself), Nose bud? Hmmmm. Is that funny?

One critical fact about the philosophy of William James is that it is a good deal more subtle than many newcomers to philosophy expect it to be. The crude use of the word "pragmatism" to mean "unprincipled" or "opportunistic" has contributed to the false impression that there isn't a lot of intellectual/philosophical substance to it. Also, the  fact that much of what James wrote on the subject was written with a wider audience in mind than his fellow academics, has had the unfortunate  side effect of giving it a reputation in some quarters as the philosophy for those without the patience, or perhaps the intellectual heft, to read real philosophy. Barzun, in A Stroll with William James, devoted his own considerable gifts to clearing up such misconceptions. I won't retread that ground here but will move to a related problem: we associate pragmatism as much with Dewey as with James, and through Dewey it has come to have a close connection wit...

I've recently completed a read of Albert Schweitzer's book on J.S. Bach , and will here offer a brief observation. The Germany of Bach's prime, especially the 1730s and 1740s, had its own music critics. Among these was a fellow named Johann Adolph Scheibe, the son of an organ builder and the kapellneister of the King of Denmark, who edited a magazine called Kritische Musikus. Scheibe saw himself as the literary champion of a distinctively German style of music, one that would break away from the Italian models. The Italian influence was toward artifice and complexity. The German impulse was toward naturalness and simplicity, to Scheibe's way of thinking. This theory made it "impossible for him to do justice to Bach," Schweitzer wrote. Bach was much too complicated, and thus too Italian, for his taste. Although of course acknowledging Bach's talents (because Scheibe was not altogether an idiot) he did conclude that Bach, tragically, had fallen ...