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Author
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Category
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Subject
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Content
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1
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James T. Summerhays
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Lds
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Aesthetics
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The word variety is not found in the standard works; the word is reserved for our most sacred houses of worship. We learn there that the Creator glories in variety. This little detail speaks volumes. It practically opens up a whole new subclass of theology. It takes God from the realm where nothing is authorized except strict adherence to narrow and unyielding law, to a realm where anything good and beautiful is possible and permissible.
I like to think, for example, that the Creator had an infinite variety of possible choices in how to fashion, say, the lilies of the field. Innumerable choices were sufficiently good and righteous. He simply chose how to form the lily according to what gave him joy. Having a perfect command of all eternal laws and possessing an infinite creativity, his palette was endless. Goodness and beauty was the only requirement. And looking at slugs and grubs and houseflies it’s obvious God’s idea of beauty is infinitely more expansive than mine. This idea of creative process makes perfect sense when we observe the universe around us - every planet, star, and galaxy have some eternal law in common, yet all are different in form and all possess their own distinctive beauty.
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2
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Interview magazine
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Philosophy
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Aesthetics
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...his [Joshua Bell] playing does nothing less than tell human beings why they bother to live.
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3
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Gene Weingarten
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Philosophy
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Aesthetics
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It's an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest. Plato weighed in on it, and philosophers for two millennia afterward: What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)?...Context matters.
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4
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W.H. Davies
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Philosophy
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Aesthetics
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What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.
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5
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John Lane
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Philosophy
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Aesthetics
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What about their ability to appreciate life?...British author John Lane writes about the loss of the appreciation for beauty in the modern world...not because people didn't have the capacity to understand beauty, but because it was irrelevant to them. This is about having the wrong priorities...
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6
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Gene Weingarten
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Philosophy
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Aesthetics
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If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that - then what else are we missing?
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