Over the past year or so, I have, on multiple occasions, sat down with my toddler daughter to enjoy BBC’s epic nature documentary series Planet Earth. Narrated by the incomparable David Attenborough, it offers up hour-long packages of visual delight in stunning high-definition: giant waterfalls, towering mountains and icebergs, gigantic flocks of birds, roaring volcanoesContinue reading “Drones And The Beautiful World They Reveal”
Tag Archives: aesthetics
An Unforgettable Image, Appropriately Contextualized
In the summer of 1992, I traveled to India to visit my family: my mother, my brother, his wife (my sister-in-law), and my little, then barely six months old nephew. The monsoon lay around the corner, promising mixed relief from the brutal heat of the North Indian plains; the humidity would still oppress, but evenings andContinue reading “An Unforgettable Image, Appropriately Contextualized”
Zoë Heller on the ‘Shocking’ Role of ‘Aesthetic Grounds’ in Moral Judgments:
I quite enjoyed reading Zoë Heller‘s review of Janet Malcolm‘s Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers but I’m not inclined to join her in all the hosannas she sends Malcolm’s way. Consider for instance, the assessment she makes of a judgement offered by Malcolm: In the absence of moral certainty, Malcolm suggests, our sympathies areContinue reading “Zoë Heller on the ‘Shocking’ Role of ‘Aesthetic Grounds’ in Moral Judgments:”
Bronowski on the Actively Constructed Good (in the Beautiful)
At the conclusion of The Visionary Eye: Essays in the Arts, Literature and Science, Jacob Bronowski writes: You will have noticed that the aesthetics that I have been developing through these six lectures are in the end rather heavily based on ethics. And you might think that I belong to the school of philosophers whoContinue reading “Bronowski on the Actively Constructed Good (in the Beautiful)”
Seamus Perry on Samuel Palmer and the Laying Bare of the Artist
A quick pre-disclaimer: Pardon me for referencing the London Review of Books two days in a row, but that’s what weekend-catching-up-with-a-stack-of-unread reviews can do to you. In reviewing Rachel Campbell-Johnson‘s Mysterious Wisdom: The Life and Work of Samuel Palmer (‘The Shoreham Gang‘, LRB, 5th April 20120), and in particular, on Palmer‘s ‘The Valley Thick with Corn,’Continue reading “Seamus Perry on Samuel Palmer and the Laying Bare of the Artist”
Freud, Goethe and Burke on Happiness, Pleasure, and Satiation
Defining ‘happiness’ is hard; how are we to know what to do to be happy, if we don’t have a good handle on what happiness is? And thus, the persistent efforts through the ages, of philosophical minds–and more recently, grimly determined social scientists and psychologists alike–to provide some delineation of the concept. (Even David BrooksContinue reading “Freud, Goethe and Burke on Happiness, Pleasure, and Satiation”
Samir Chopra 