Emotion in the artsEmotion in the Arts was an honors class that I took in the Spring of 2014. In this class, we analyzed the way we as thinking people interact with art emotionally.
There were two very important issues that we addressed in this class. One issue is why we can find entertainment in stereotypically "bad" emotions, such as tragedy and horror. This issue is not normally thought about by someone watching a horror movie. Why should you feel fear when you know the monster is not real? Is the fear you feel even genuine fear? The other issue that we explored is called the Paradox of Fiction. The paradox comes from three fundamental suppositions. These are: 1. We do not believe fictitious characters are real. 2. We feel emotions only for real things. 3. We feel emotions for fictitious characters. There is great debate in the philosophy community as to which of these three components is the component to be discarded. In my final paper, I argued that supposition 2 was the component that was incorrect. This view stood in contrast to my professor's view. All of my papers can be found and read here. One of the most important things I learned in this class was how to process arguments. I found myself frequently disagreeing with Professor Robinson and other students in the class. Debating these issues is fun and interesting. At the end of the class, Professor Robinson told me she respected my ability to think and argue, which I took as an enormous compliment. My experience with this class was extremely positive, and I look forward to applying what I learned here in more philosophy classes. I have also noticed that the thought processes I learned in this class are very applicable to the LSAT. |
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