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  • EADD Moderators: Pissed_and_messed | Shinji Ikari

Gibberings CLXV - Reported for being racist against drugged up clowns

Jesus ! You are on form / on fire today. I cant help but agree with what you have said.

Art certainly has the power to evoke emotions, which isnt exactly a useless thing is it. Also if music is considered an art that can certainly change peoples lives, if not directly change the course of history. I think some of Wilde's bold statements and classic quotes sound all very clever and brilliant on first hearing them, but not all of them stand up to intense scrutiny. From what I have gathered he was making these type of statements in response to, and in defence of, his own work because it had been savaged by some of the critics of his time, and all these eternally quotable statements of opinion later ended up as the preface to Dorian Gray.
 
mydrugbuddy said:
"We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless."
- Oscar Wilde.

It would be interesting to hear Morris and Wilde thrash that one out between themeselves.
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Fuck....yes!

Personally I'm fully in the Morris camp! Something about a beautifully designed functional item that speaks to me in the way a 'useless' item never will.

Of course you could argue that simply by someone finding an item/person beautiful it immediately becomes a useful item because it is bringing joy to someone. I think that's the real resolution of the argument, but I like the sentiment of the Morris quote.
 
Not really no. What is useful to one person or in one situation can be quite useless in another. William Morris wallpaper was quite useful to the person who made it cos they got paid to make it helping them to eat or pay the rent. It could be argued it was useful to an interior designer. It would be nice if I had a few rolls cos it's worth a fortune but as I don't it is of no use whatsoever to me. Usefulness depends very much on context. 'Is' less so.
 
Shambles said:
Not really no. What is useful to one person or in one situation can be quite useless in another.
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That doesn't change whether the item is intrinsically useful, just because it might not be useful in a certain situation it doesn't stop it from being useful. That logic would dictate that for an item to be considered useful it must be of utility to all people at all times....which would be a bizarre definition of useful.

Anyway, I think I kind of summed it up best in my earlier post with regards to something being considered useful simply by being beautiful because it is fulfilling the individuals desire to witness beauty, which exposes something of a fallacy or paradox in the quote. I still like it though.
 
I agree that beauty is in and of itself a useful thing. I'd actually say it is a universally useful thing except people would define beauty differently. I don't really see how usefulness can be defined without relation to context though. Things are only useful in context - nothing is intrinsically useful is it? You need somebody to have use for it - you need a person for a start. If some calamity wiped all people from the Earth in what sense is a roll of William Morris wallpaper useful? It was previously - to some people in some situations - but without relevant context how does it retain its intrinsic usefulness? What does have truly intrinsic usefulness?
 
Granted, the use of the word intrinsic is one that opens a whole can of worms that I should have avoided because it has a conversational use and then you can get into the deeper argument that you proposed (which is the true nature of the word). Personally I would take the context of the world (universe...) as a whole rather than choosing to segment off a section and say that because an item might not be useful to a certain person in a certain situation it loses it's right to be described as useful. Certainly I don't think the definition of the word useful is interesting in diseccting the quote because most people would agree on a consensus definition something along the lines of it meaning the item fulfills a need of someone/thing. To claim that any item has any intrinsic usefullness in the true sense of the word was fallacious though. Whatever it was you said about poor choice of phrasing the other day, that here...=D
 
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