The infinite beauty hidden in your life

An essay on beauty and how to find it. Patreon:   / viniciusgheolan   Socials: @viniciusgheolan ----------- References & Recommendations: EAGLEMAN, David. "The Brain: The Story of You" (2017). On the beginning of chapter 2 Eagleman presents the story of Mike May. Great book overall, I think it's an excellent summary on what we know about neuroscience and can open the door to many deeper studies. Eagleman is a great scientific communicator in my opinion. KANT, Immanuel. "Critique of Judgement", Oxford University Press (2009). This is Kant, so I just recommend it if you don't mind the pain of reading him. Bro couldn't write anything remotely intelligible. This book is the seminal work that gives birth to Aesthetics as an independent philosophical field of inquiry and, by Kant standards, I do think it's one of the most well written and understandable ones. The first 15 paragraphs, where he presents his 3 definitions for Beauty, are enough to get the gist of it. Also, on § 9, he reaches his idea of "free play" between understanding and sensibility (or imagination, which is an intermediate faculty between sensibility and understanding — I decided not to make this differentiation on the video to avoid overcomplicating). This free play constitutes the universal mental state that the representation of beautiful objects provoke. KANT, Immanuel. "Critique of Pure Reason", Penguin Books (2008). Put this here because a lot of the things I talk about concepts are ideas that Kant doesn't tackle on the critique of judgement (where he mostly talks about beauty and the sublime), but here instead. SCHILLER, Friedrich. "On the Aesthetic Education of Man". This is an astounding book. It's one of the most beautiful philosophical works I've read. It's not very easy, but if you realize that the book itself is not only a philosophical work, but also an aesthetic work (or a work of art), I think you can appreciate its poetic intricacies. Also, you do need to read at least the first 15 paragraphs from Kant Critique of Judgement to better understand where he is coming from. The letters are, in themselves, an expression of Schiller's belief in the aesthetic state as the moment where man becomes truly free, and truly man. The aesthetic state is described as transition, but also unification, of the natural state (when man relies purely on sensibility and feelings, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain) and the ethical state (where man relies on intellect, seeking what is right and avoiding what is wrong). He is trying to make a philosophical point, but he is also going for an artistic / aesthetic point. His point is that for the true and most important revelations, these two things can't be separated. The first 7 or 9 letters should be enough to get what he means about the aesthetic experience as this state of internal harmony in humans. He takes a while to talk about love though; it only happens in the final letters. SCHOPENHAUER, A. "The World as Will and Representation", Vol 1. Dover (1966). I had never read Schopenhauer before (took it specifically for this video) and was very pleasantly surprised. Since I was researching his ideas on beauty, I read only the Third book of Vol 1, and I didn't feel any need to read the first two books to understand what was going on — which means you can most likely do the same, if you are also interested primarily in his ideas about Beauty. This video here should also be helpful as a starting point. To practice pure contemplation is to become what he calls a "pure subject of knowing", that is, to know the world simply as an object for a subject, without any extra projection (i.e., as objectively as possible). Also, people call him a pessimist, but I came to the conclusion that he is just a buddhist. His idea of life = suffering is simply a buddhist idea. He even uses buddhist terms (he refers to the total world of representation as "mara" for example). I would describe Schopenhauer is simply the complete philosophical sistematization of buddhism. Which, you might argue, ceases to be buddhism at all. Fair point. ---------- Soundtrack credits: "Salut d'amour, Op. 12" was performed by Emanuel Salvador and is licensed under the license Creative Commons 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... "The Carnival of the Animals - I. Lions Royal March (Solo piano version)" was performed by Markus Staab and is licensed under the license Creative Commons 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... "Piano Concerto no. 5 in Eb 'Emperor', Op. 73 - II. Adagio un poco mosso" was performed by Ursula Oppens and DuPage Symphony Orchestra and is licensed under the license Creative Commons 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Other tracks are public domain.