Individual Relativity; With Regards to Spinoza’s Ethics
In PHIL 3000, Philosophical Ethics, I wrote a response paper to Benedict De Spinoza’s Part IV of Ethics and created a visual element to demonstrate ideas from Spinoza. The assignment was to draw a connection between the reading and the topic of your final paper. I focused on Spinoza’s definition of good and evil, and how they pertained to the question, “How can one ethically consume art?”
Below is the visual element I created:
A Bit More:
This artwork illustrates our limited and individual perception of reality, according to Spinoza, and how it changes as we experience different things.
The drawing of the brain symbolizes our values, thought processes, and emotions that we hold, (and feel, presently).
The ring around the brain shows the limit to which we can perceive things. Within the ring, we can understand the world, but only in a finite sense, and only through relation to our mind.
Finally, outside of the ring, is everything that we cannot imagine or comprehend, signified by the color difference and slight blur toward the edge of the frame.
The different iterations show that while the relationship between us and the external world is fixed, our perceptions of it can shift. Further, the key art video shows the colors (and our individual realities) changing.