LIBERAL STUDIES 7005 Technology, Invention, & Power

Dr. Ogden

www.ogden7005.blogspot.com

LIBERAL STUDIES: Literature & Language

Liberal Studies, in our course, is the study of Literature specifically, and Art generally, as a means of two things: Understanding the world and its aspects Effectively communicating this understanding through powerful

writing and speaking Liberal Studies has its unique human mental faculty as its

primary domain: IMAGINATION Cognition, Emotiveness, Memory, Deliberation are some of the other

human mental faculties.

LIBERAL STUDIES:Workplace

Liberal Studies are not an alternative way of understanding any aspect of the world: they are a complementary perspective on that aspect.

Liberal Studies provides a hard skillset in the professional workplace

Civilisations: (one conception of) A civilisation is a shared

set of values, culture, art, architecture, history and ways of life; and most of all, fundamental and (usually) unconscious assumptions about the way that the world works and is.

Latin American Orthodox

Baltics, Greece, Eastern Europe, Russia

Eastern Muslim Japan Sub-Saharan African Western

Anglosphere + western Europe

Cultural Exclusivity Thesis

Give every civilisation the benefit of its own assumptions

Civilisation chauvinism to assume one’s own civilisation has the universal understanding

Approach other civilisations and cultures from the assumption that their fundamental values and understanding of the world is different from your own.

Universality (multiculturalism) may be a Euro-centric ideology?

Western Civilisation Values

1. All civilisations and cultures are fully explainable from Western premises and methods.

2. Western science is the universally-valid method of study.

3. All civilisations and cultures perceive the world—configure phenomena—identically and in away that Western science can explain

Japanese cultural assumptions: examples.

Western concept of symbolism: one thing signifies another type of thing. Platonic Forms; Judæo-Christian type-archetype; Freudian conscious-subconscious

Japan: this thing is associated with that experience or aspect. Non symbolic. A lonely old tree is associated with—invokes—thoughts of age and loneliness.

The meaning is in the person, not the object: an æsthetic approach to the world.

Japanese cultural assumptions: examples con’t.

Western Art—the fuller the mind of the perceiver the better the Art is appreciated Literary Modernism: James Joyce Finnigans

Wake Renaissance Art: Giorgione The Tempest

Japan: the less the mind is active, the better.

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rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy5isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor6had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse7to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper8all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to9tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a10kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in11vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a12peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory13end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.14    The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-

Renaissance Art: Giorgione

Japan: mushin—’no-mind’ Mushin is an intellectual, æsthetic & martial concept:

remove the conscious mind from getting in the way of understanding, appreciation and response.

Zen 禅那 : from zenna = a practice of meditation Zen koan emphasise meditation on nothing (‘mu’) Japanese martial arts work toward mushin as highest warrior

state

Mushin: 無心

Shuichi Kato on Japan & Literature No story to history; no plan; no plot of events. SV&R: 183

“undeniable tendency of Japanese culture is to avoid logic, the abstract, & systemization, in favour of emotion, the concrete, the unprogrammatic.”

Events are accumulative by addition Japan assimilates by a simple addition of an external concept or item and

then recontextualising it— Shusaku Endo: ”…the swamp of Japan” In the West, there is an accommodation required: a reconfiguration of

the addition or of the entire system around it. No transcendental values: which means that when adding new not

necessary to discard the old. No cultural crisis. ‘Born Shinto, Married Christian; Buried Buddhist”

Wabi-Sabi: æsthetic objects