richard.heeks
Powderham Folly from Turf Path
I must have walked this path 100 times or more, and every time I've thought that folly is worth a photograph. But every time I've also assumed that I'd have to get closer to the folly to make a photo work well. But now I have a 300mm lens, I tried this shot from the path, and I like it. To me, the folly loses its appeal when you get close to it. For me, maybe because I associate it with this walk along the path, it only really makes sense as a view from the path. It is not, as Kant would have it, really a thing-in-itself. It is not just about its 'thingness', its solitary identity as a thing. No! It's bound-up heavily with its associations (i.e. experienced from the path), at least for me. Pity Kant isn't here to discuss it with me.
Interestingly (or not), I would agree with Kant in the purest sense of agreeing that the folly does exist as a 'thing'. I don't deny it a solitary identity. But I do think it's experienced - at least by me; at least here - as a part of an environment. Also interestingly (a word I overuse), it's words that push me into talking of 'things' as if they were separate, as if they were nouns. Photos don't push us that way, at least not so much. We don't have to name things. We just say 'look at the picture - experience the picture'. In fact, we say nothing (unless we write, write, write....). Words push us into naming 'things'. And by naming, we bring those 'things' into life, into existence. Kind of. They kind of exist anyway, unless you're Richard Rorty, playing devil's advocate, and being non-essentialist.
My argument there probably flags up differences between aesthetic theory and theories of existence. I agree that the folly exists as a thing on its own with essential qualities of its own, but I experience it as part of this landscape. Well, I say I agree that it exists as a thing on its own, but the fact that I don't experience it that way maybe means I also don't fully agree that it exists on its own. I might accept it exists on its own in some theoretical sense, but hey, I've never seen it own its own or experienced it on its own.
(I apologise to Kant if I've misunderstood him here, but he does talk a lot about thing-in-itself. Although I get the impression he might have used that as a means to an end. Which he should have made more explicit if he was! Anyway, if not Kant, I can hang it on Plato. Everyone else has, if everyone else is Richard Rorty. Which they are! And Rorty's dead too now, which is a pity.
And if nothing else, I can't imagine too many landscape photos are tagged with 'kant', 'rorty', and 'plato'. Here's hoping some philosophy undergraduate plugs those into Google and finds their way here. If that's you... HELLO! HAVE A LOOK AROUND :-)
And after.... As I read back over this, I wonder how much I squirm and how chippy I'm being, or not. Some of this is my little rant against 'science' in writing theory - how scientists are big on naming things. Once 'they' name things, they assume that those things exist. They might accept that such names are 'constructs' (i.e. a way of approaching - tentatively and critically naming), but then they go ahead as if they exist anyway. I suppose I do that too - I've named this photo "Powderham Folly...". But then at least I had the self-reflexive dignity to undermine myself.
Rorty was being chippy about science too, seeing that maybe science had taken precedence over philosophy, and that people weren't so much interested in the 'big questions' anymore. As someone from an artsy background, gradually becoming middle aged, I'm realizing that a lot of people don't take artsy theories seriously. I'm becoming more and more irrelevant. To me, Rorty's theory is pressing. Kant is pressing too, and Baudrillard, and Nietzsche.
But to be fair to science, they're not all stuck fast to naming and essentialising things. I watched some Brian Cox last week talking about 'the big bang'. The gist of it, I think, was that everything was crammed into something a billionth the size of a grain of sand. Then that thing became unstable and kind of exploded. Except it didn't explode, as such, because whatever it did, that doing created time and space. So what was 'it', and 'what' did 'it' 'do'? None of it really has a name as far as I could tell from Brian. Most of what he had to go by here was some understanding of physics and some observations that the universe 'thing' was constantly expanding. Brian seemed happier with his photos than with the talking bits. He was good at the talking too though! Yay Brian!!
Powderham Folly from Turf Path
I must have walked this path 100 times or more, and every time I've thought that folly is worth a photograph. But every time I've also assumed that I'd have to get closer to the folly to make a photo work well. But now I have a 300mm lens, I tried this shot from the path, and I like it. To me, the folly loses its appeal when you get close to it. For me, maybe because I associate it with this walk along the path, it only really makes sense as a view from the path. It is not, as Kant would have it, really a thing-in-itself. It is not just about its 'thingness', its solitary identity as a thing. No! It's bound-up heavily with its associations (i.e. experienced from the path), at least for me. Pity Kant isn't here to discuss it with me.
Interestingly (or not), I would agree with Kant in the purest sense of agreeing that the folly does exist as a 'thing'. I don't deny it a solitary identity. But I do think it's experienced - at least by me; at least here - as a part of an environment. Also interestingly (a word I overuse), it's words that push me into talking of 'things' as if they were separate, as if they were nouns. Photos don't push us that way, at least not so much. We don't have to name things. We just say 'look at the picture - experience the picture'. In fact, we say nothing (unless we write, write, write....). Words push us into naming 'things'. And by naming, we bring those 'things' into life, into existence. Kind of. They kind of exist anyway, unless you're Richard Rorty, playing devil's advocate, and being non-essentialist.
My argument there probably flags up differences between aesthetic theory and theories of existence. I agree that the folly exists as a thing on its own with essential qualities of its own, but I experience it as part of this landscape. Well, I say I agree that it exists as a thing on its own, but the fact that I don't experience it that way maybe means I also don't fully agree that it exists on its own. I might accept it exists on its own in some theoretical sense, but hey, I've never seen it own its own or experienced it on its own.
(I apologise to Kant if I've misunderstood him here, but he does talk a lot about thing-in-itself. Although I get the impression he might have used that as a means to an end. Which he should have made more explicit if he was! Anyway, if not Kant, I can hang it on Plato. Everyone else has, if everyone else is Richard Rorty. Which they are! And Rorty's dead too now, which is a pity.
And if nothing else, I can't imagine too many landscape photos are tagged with 'kant', 'rorty', and 'plato'. Here's hoping some philosophy undergraduate plugs those into Google and finds their way here. If that's you... HELLO! HAVE A LOOK AROUND :-)
And after.... As I read back over this, I wonder how much I squirm and how chippy I'm being, or not. Some of this is my little rant against 'science' in writing theory - how scientists are big on naming things. Once 'they' name things, they assume that those things exist. They might accept that such names are 'constructs' (i.e. a way of approaching - tentatively and critically naming), but then they go ahead as if they exist anyway. I suppose I do that too - I've named this photo "Powderham Folly...". But then at least I had the self-reflexive dignity to undermine myself.
Rorty was being chippy about science too, seeing that maybe science had taken precedence over philosophy, and that people weren't so much interested in the 'big questions' anymore. As someone from an artsy background, gradually becoming middle aged, I'm realizing that a lot of people don't take artsy theories seriously. I'm becoming more and more irrelevant. To me, Rorty's theory is pressing. Kant is pressing too, and Baudrillard, and Nietzsche.
But to be fair to science, they're not all stuck fast to naming and essentialising things. I watched some Brian Cox last week talking about 'the big bang'. The gist of it, I think, was that everything was crammed into something a billionth the size of a grain of sand. Then that thing became unstable and kind of exploded. Except it didn't explode, as such, because whatever it did, that doing created time and space. So what was 'it', and 'what' did 'it' 'do'? None of it really has a name as far as I could tell from Brian. Most of what he had to go by here was some understanding of physics and some observations that the universe 'thing' was constantly expanding. Brian seemed happier with his photos than with the talking bits. He was good at the talking too though! Yay Brian!!