Geertz

Geertz is only partially right to claim that the sensibility expressed in an art object is in every case essentially social: even close-knit tribal cultures produce idiosyncratic artists who pursue unexpectedly personal visions within a socially determined aesthetic language.

Philosophy and Literature 2009

Humans may not be the only ones who teach, but we alone create and build in a cumulative way, and we alone suspend ourselves in “webs of significance we ourselves have spun,” as Konner, borrowing from Clifford Geertz, elegantly puts it.

Play’s the Thing 2010

Clifford Geertz remarks that “to study an art-form is to explore a sensibility,” and that “such a sensibility is essentially a collective formation” whose foundations “are as wide as social existence and as deep” (Geertz 1983).

Philosophy and Literature 2009

(Some of these scientists simply stop at asserting that art is the byproduct of certain biological operations that appeal to our preferences for "symmetry" or that allow us to feel satisfaction at task-fulfillment, etc., leaving it to the evolutionary psychologists or the anthropologists like Geertz to speculate about how art evolved as a social adaptation.)

Philosophy and Literature 2009

Perhaps ur-artists in their "ancestral environments" performed the function assigned to them by Dutton and Geertz, but could someone name for me any great artists in the modern world who did not "pursue unexpectedly personal visions," who instead regarded their art as a wonderful opportunity to embody various cultural beliefs?

Philosophy and Literature 2009

Humans may not be the only ones who teach, but we alone create and build in a cumulative way, and we alone suspend ourselves in “webs of significance we ourselves have spun,” as Konner, borrowing from Clifford Geertz, elegantly puts it.

Play’s the Thing 2010

Humans may not be the only ones who teach, but we alone create and build in a cumulative way, and we alone suspend ourselves in “webs of significance we ourselves have spun,” as Konner, borrowing from Clifford Geertz, elegantly puts it.

Play’s the Thing 2010

Clifford Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures (probably my favorite)

Matthew Yglesias » Influential Books 2010

I think I would still point at what I said to virty - read Geertz.

Cheeseburger Gothic » Yes I get ffkn grmpy whn I’m on fkn deadline. 2009

See Clifford Geertz book on Islam in both regions. piglet Says:

Matthew Yglesias » The American Way 2009