"Like all the arts, music is founded upon the exalted symbols of the moral sense. To submit to these inscrutable laws, and by means of these laws to tame and guided our own mind so that the manifestations of art may pour out: this is the isolating principle of art. To be dissolved in its manifestations: this is our dedication to the divine,which calmly exercises its power over the raging of untamed elements, and so lends to the human imagination its highest effectiveness, so always art should represent the divine, and the relation of the human person toward art is religion. What we obtain from art comes from God, its divine inspiration which appoints an aim for human faculties, which we cannot attain on our own."
Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson. He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal. My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this. I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true. Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist. In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...
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