“We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.”
-Pablo Picasso
“Art renders accessible to [those] of the latest generations all the feelings experienced by their predecessors and also those felt by their best and foremost contemporaries...[Art] is a means of union...joining [people] together in the same feeling. Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that others are infected by those feelings and also experience them...A real work of art destroys in the consciousness of the recipient the separation between himself and the artist, and...also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art.”
-Leo Tolstoy
For Friday:
In one of your other classes, find a lie that makes you realize a truth. Identify the feelings with which it infects you, and consider the nature of your knowledge. Is it subjective? Can it be both subjective and universal?
For Tuesday:
Is there a moment of universal truth described in Friday's comments with which you take issue (where you think the knower plays a subjective role)? How and why would the experience be different for you? Which of the ways of knowing come into play, and how?
