The heart is a muscle. But that is my materialist response. My better response is...
The context here invites one to have empathy for Helen Keller and to admire her life of activity in the face of daunting physical impairment. In that context we can appreciate the remark but in broader contexts it remains rather opaque. However, we can imagine an organic extension of the remark, an appeal to subjective affect, the feeling, and we can regard that in Kantian terms of the aesthetic being an intuitive, spontaneous sensation. It remains questionable whether or not an empathic appreciation of another's subjective feeling -- spontaneous and irrational -- constitutes grounds for serious philosophic inquiry. That empathy may be fundamental but is that simply the assumed but invisible plane on which our tangible analytic structures must be built? I regard that empathy, let's call it aesthetic empathy, as a type of belief and I do regard belief --acceptance without validation -- as fundamental to all thinking and action. I don't need to prove belief because it's just that which can't be proven despite being a precondition for proof -- and somehow inherent to it. WC ----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected]; [email protected] Sent: Mon, September 27, 2010 6:46:09 PM Subject: Re: "I sense that in the long run there is a greater value for humanity in empowering folks to make and create than there is in teaching them the canon, the great works and the masterpieces." In a message dated 9/27/10 1:31:49 PM, [email protected] writes: > -The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor > touched > ... but are felt in the heart. > > Helen Keller > This is not a sufficient rely to the question, Kate Sullivan
