issue144 超越自我小组作业

hermituforestUID: 2354296

TOPIC: ISSUE144 - "It is the artist, not the critic,* who gives society something of lasting value."

*a person who evaluates works of art, such as novels, films, music, paintings, etc.
WORDS: 480          TIME: 01:26:17          DATE: 2008-8-24 17:00:19

Just as Hegel said "What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational." Critics are actual, so they are rational. Critics help people to understand which arts are valuable and where are the beauties of those arts. However, the issue here is not whether critics have their value or not, but whether they could give the society of lasting value. I think their values different from the artists' values are not lasting value for itself but maybe some lasting values indirectly.

Although sometimes are undiscovered, there is no doubt that the artists provide lasting values. We can now even appreciate the arts created by cave people. Not to mention the arts by ancient Greeks, by Renaissance artists and by modern people. There arts have also no nation limitation. Chinese arts, European arts or African arts are all could be appreciated equally. The arts have no past, now or future, no Beijing, Paris or Egypt, and it would be valued and passed by generations with its core--beauty. Although sometimes these beauties were not detected by their contemporaries, they would be appreciated in the end. Everyone knows Van Gogh and his Sunflower, which is a suitable example.

Different from the artists' work which gives society something if lasting values, critics' works gives only temporary values. We may also quote the saying by Hegel "What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational." We cannot remember a critic among the long history and their statement unless they gave a wrong criticism to the talent works such as Van Gogh's drawing. We never choose arts to read now based on the criticism by ancient critics because it maybe have some bias limited for their times. This bias would be existed forever in the history because of human's progressing. So, even the critics did a perfect work in their own time, they have this natural defect.

However, is that defect that critics never give society something of lasting value means critics are powerless and useless? No. Most people in society give non-lasting values even they are great ones. Isaac Newton's three laws are so great to his contemporary people that lead them to Industry Revolution, but his laws are proved wrong in the universe by now. It made no decrease of his great success because his success leads others to continue the physics study and overturn his own theory, which have a lasting value. Similarly with the works of Newton, critics made this kind of lasting values--introduction and motivation. It is possible that a boy saw an article by a critic about Shakespeare and motivates his interests in literature. Maybe finally he would become a great writer for that motivation.

Above all, we may see that artists' can give the society lasting values but critics' works cannot. What lasting values the critics provide are not by their works but by their affection.