The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy

Volume 1, 1998

Aesthetics and Philosophy of the Arts

Robert Kramchynski
Pages 85-91

Quality as Presentation
The Art of Speaking and the Science of Imitation

The underlying thesis examined here maintains that meaning is simply subjective value which has been presented (i.e., enlarged or made explicit) in words or in some other plastic or static medium. This presentation of meaning consists in the extending of what is felt by the creator-subject to the other subjects. Although this extension of the primary agent may be the very thing which ultimately creates the space from where reflection might occur, the act of expression itself is not explicitly reflective. In other words, one might say that integral meaning is not reflective but rather is purely informing, while reflective meaning has to some degree lost its integrity. Working from these basic claims, I will examine how quality (or qualification) and quantity (or quantification) are related as functions of the languages of art and of science.