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Francis Schaeffer pictured below:
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Francis Schaeffer has written extensively on art and culture spanning the last 2000years and here are some posts I have done on this subject before : Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 10 “Final Choices” , episode 9 “The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence”, episode 8 “The Age of Fragmentation”, episode 7 “The Age of Non-Reason” , episode 6 “The Scientific Age” , episode 5 “The Revolutionary Age” , episode 4 “The Reformation”, episode 3 “The Renaissance”, episode 2 “The Middle Ages,”, and episode 1 “The Roman Age,” . My favorite episodes are number 7 and 8 since they deal with modern art and culture primarily.(Joe Carter rightly noted, “Schaeffer—who always claimed to be an evangelist and not aphilosopher—was often criticized for the way his work oversimplifiedintellectual history and philosophy.” To those critics I say take a chill pillbecause Schaeffer was introducing millions into the fields of art andculture!!!! !!! More people need to read his works and blog about thembecause they show how people’s worldviews affect their lives!
J.I.PACKER WROTE OF SCHAEFFER, “His communicative style was not that of acautious academic who labors for exhaustive coverage and dispassionate objectivity. It was rather that of an impassioned thinker who paints his vision of eternal truth in bold strokes and stark contrasts.Yet it is a fact that MANY YOUNG THINKERS AND ARTISTS…HAVE FOUND SCHAEFFER’S ANALYSES A LIFELINE TO SANITY WITHOUT WHICH THEY COULD NOT HAVE GONE ON LIVING.”
Francis Schaeffer’s works are the basis for a large portion of my blog posts andthey have stood the test of time. In fact, many people would say that many of the things he wrote in the 1960’s were right on in the sense he saw where ourwestern society was heading and he knew that abortion, infanticide and youthenthansia were moral boundaries we would be crossing in the coming decadesbecause of humanism and these are the discussions we are having now!)
There is evidence that points to the fact that the Bible is historically true asSchaeffer pointed out in episode 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? There is a basis then for faith in Christ alone for our eternal hope. This linkshows how to do that.
Francis Schaeffer in Art and the Bible noted, “Many modern artists, it seems to me, have forgotten the value that art has in itself. Much modern art is far too intellectual to be great art. Many modern artists seem not to see the distinction between man and non-man, and it is a part of the lostness of modern man that they no longer see value in the work of art as a work of art.”
Many modern artists are left in this point of desperation that Schaeffer points out and it reminds me of the despair that Solomon speaks of in Ecclesiastes. Christian scholar Ravi Zacharias has noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term ‘under the sun.’ What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system, and you are left with only this world of time plus chanceplus matter.” THIS IS EXACT POINT SCHAEFFER SAYS SECULAR ARTISTSARE PAINTING FROM TODAY BECAUSE THEY BELIEVED ARE A RESULTOF MINDLESS CHANCE.
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How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)
#02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer
The clip above is from episode 9 THE AGE OF PERSONAL PEACE AND AFFLUENCE
In above clip Schaeffer quotes Paul’s speech in Greece from Romans 1 (from Episode FINAL CHOICES)
A Christian Manifesto Francis Schaeffer
A video important to today. The man was very wise in the ways of God. And of government. Hope you enjoy a good solis teaching from the past. The truth never gets old.
Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR
And so we ask again: Can a person espousing this Eastern world-view live consistently with it? In his 1974 book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig relates an interesting anecdote. The author, who calls himself Phaedrus in the story, studied philosophy at Benares University for about ten years. He tells how his time there came to an end.
One day in the classroom the professor of philosophy was blithely expounding on the illusory nature of the world for what seemed the fiftieth time and Phaedrus raised his hand and asked coldly if it was believed that the atomic bombs that had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illusory. The professor smiled and said yes. That was the end of the exchange.
…Within the traditions of Indian philosophy that answer may have been correct, but for Phaedrus and for anyone else who reads newspapers regularly and is concerned with such things as mass destruction of human beings that answer was hopelessly inadequate. He left the classroom, left India and gave up.88
There are, then, only two main alternative world-views to Christianity, both of which begin with the impersonal. The West has a materialistic view and is nonreligious. The East has an immaterialistic view and is religious. But both are impersonal systems. This is the important point; by comparison, their differences pale into insignificance. The result is that, in both the West and the East, men and women are seen as abnormal aliens to the way things really are. In Eastern terms they are spoken of as maya or illusion; in Western terms, as absurd machines.
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This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. (May 2007) |
| Robert M. Pirsig | |
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Pirsig, July 7, 2005
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| Born | Robert Maynard Pirsig September 6, 1928 Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA |
| Occupation | Writer, philosopher |
| Nationality | USA |
| Genres | Philosophical fiction |
| Notable work(s) | Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991) |
| Spouse(s) | Nancy Ann James (m. 1954–1978) Wendy Kimball (m. 1978) |
| Children | Chris, Theodore, Nell |
Robert Maynard Pirsig (born September 6, 1928) is an American writer and philosopher, and the author of the philosophical novels Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974) and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991).
Background[edit]
Pirsig was born on September 6, 1928[1] to Harriet Marie Sjobeck and Maynard Pirsig, and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is of German and Swedish descent.[2] His father was a University of Minnesota Law School(UMLS) graduate, and started teaching at the school in 1934. The elder Pirsig served as the law school dean from 1948 to 1955, and retired from teaching at UMLS in 1970.[3] He resumed his career as a professor at theWilliam Mitchell College of Law, where he remained until his final retirement in 1993.[3]
Because he was a precocious child, with an I.Q. of 170 at age 9, Robert Pirsig skipped several grades and was enrolled at the Blake School in Minneapolis.[2] Pirsig was awarded a high school diploma in May 1943 and entered the University of Minnesota to study biochemistry that autumn. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, he described the central character, thought to represent him, as being far from a typical student; he was interested in science as a goal in itself, rather than as a way to establish a career.
While doing laboratory work in biochemistry, Pirsig became greatly troubled by the existence of more than one workable hypothesis to explain a given phenomenon, and, indeed, that the number of hypotheses appeared unlimited. He could not find any way to reduce the number of hypotheses—he became perplexed by the role and source of hypothesis generation within scientific practice. This led to his determination of a previously unarticulated limitation of science, which was something of a revelation to him. The question distracted him to the extent that he lost interest in his studies and failed to maintain good grades; and finally, he was expelled from the university.
Pirsig enlisted in the United States Army in 1946 and was stationed in South Korea until 1948. Upon his discharge from the army, he returned to the U.S. and lived in Seattle, Washington for less than a year, at which point he decided to finish the education he had abandoned. He earned a bachelor of arts in Eastern Philosophy in May 1950. He then attended Banaras Hindu University in India, to study Eastern Philosophy and culture. Although he did not obtain a degree, he performed graduate-level work in philosophy and journalism at the University of Chicago. His difficult experiences as a student in a course taught by Richard McKeon were later described, thinly disguised, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.[4] In 1958, he became a professor at Montana State University in Bozeman, and taught creative writing courses for two years.
Pirsig suffered a nervous breakdown and spent time in and out of psychiatric hospitals between 1961 and 1963. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and clinical depression as a result of an evaluation conducted by psychoanalysts, and was treated with electroconvulsive therapy on numerous occasions, a treatment he discusses in his novel, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
In the years following the publication of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance he has been solitary and reclusive. Pirsig has traveled around the Atlantic Ocean by boat, and has resided in Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Ireland, England, and in various places throughout the United States since 1980.[citation needed]
On December 15, 2012, Montana State University bestowed Pirsig with an honorary doctorate in the field of philosophy during the university’s fall commencement. Pirsig was also honored with a commencement talk speech by MSU Regent Professor Michael Sexson.[5][6] Pirsig was an instructor in writing at what was then Montana State College from 1958–1960.[7] In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig writes about his time at MSC as a less than pleasurable experience due to the teaching philosophy of the agricultural college at the time that limited his ability to teach writing effectively as well as to develop his own philosophies and literature. Due to frailty of health, Pirsig did not travel to Bozeman in December 2012 from his residence in Maine in order to accept the accolade.
Personal life[edit]
Robert Pirsig married Nancy Ann James on May 10, 1954. They had two sons: Chris, born in 1956, and Theodore, born in 1958. On December 31, 1978, he married Wendy Kimball.
In 1979, Pirsig’s son Chris, who figured prominently in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, was stabbed to death during a mugging outside the San Francisco Zen Center. Pirsig discusses this incident in an afterword to subsequent editions of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, writing that he and his second wife, Kimball, decided not to abort the child she conceived in 1980, because he had come to believe that this unborn child was a continuation of the life pattern that Chris had occupied. This child’s name is Nell.
Published material[edit]
Pirsig’s work consists most notably of two novels. The more well known, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, develops around Pirsig’s exploration into the nature of “Quality”. Ostensibly a first person narrative based on a motorcycle trip he and his young son Chris took from Minneapolis to San Francisco, it is a deep exploration of the underlying metaphysics of western culture. He also gives the reader a short summary of the history of philosophy, including his interpretation of the philosophy of Socrates as part of an ongoing dispute between “cosmologists” admitting the existence of a Universal Truth and the Sophists, opposed by Socrates and his student Plato. Pirsig finds in “Quality” a special significance and common ground between Western and Eastern world views.
Pirsig’s publisher’s recommendation to his board ended, “This book is brilliant beyond belief, it is probably a work of genius, and will, I’ll wager, attain classic stature.”[8] Pirsig noted in an early interview that Zen was rejected 121 times before being accepted by William Morrow Publishers. In his book review, George Steiner compared Pirsig’s writing to Dostoevsky, Broch, Proust, and Bergson, stating that “the assertion itself is valid… the analogies with Moby-Dick are patent”.[9] The Times Literary Supplement called it “profoundly important, disturbing, deeply moving, full of insights, a wonderful book”.
In 1974, Pirsig was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to allow him to write a follow-up, Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991), in which he developed a value-based metaphysics, called Metaphysics of Quality, that challenges our subject-object view of reality. The second book follows on from where Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance left off.
Philosophy[edit]
Rhetoric and Dialectic Forms of Philosophies[edit]
Pirsig’s work in his book, Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance, analyzes the rhetoric and dialectic forms of philosophies and their implications in the context of modern science and lifestyle.
See also[edit]
- American philosophy
- Gumption trap
- List of American philosophers
- Metaphysics of Quality – philosophy developed by Pirsig
- The Timeless Way of Building
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People are out there searching. I wish more of them would search out the God of the Bible and not try to look inside of themselves for the answers that only God can give.
The Shadow Side of Truth
19FridaySep 2014
Posted in Soul Healing, The Journey
Tags
depression, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,Francis A. Schaeffer,God, Grief, marriage,Mental health,Philosophy, Reality,Religion and Spirituality,Robert Pirsig, Single-parent, The God Who is There, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
I spent most of this summer looking for a place to live. For some reason, I also spent it re-reading a book by Robert M. Pirsig: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; a book that was assigned in an English class my husband and I took years ago, before we were married. This is one of my all-time favorite books, not just because of the memories of my relationship with my husband, before everything went so horribly wrong, but because it’s probably one of the best philosophy books I’ve ever read. It was around that same time, that first semester of college, that I dug a used copy of Francis A. Schaeffer’s The God Who Is There out of a bin in the college bookstore. Although Pirsig circles spiritual truths and poignant realities without ever coming to actually know God in a personal way, and Schaeffer’s book argues from the other side, both books shaped much of my young-adult thinking. Anyway, I thought I was so desperately searching for Zen because I missed my husband, but I think I was really just looking for me. (The old pink copy from Mr. Baldwin’s English class was buried somewhere deep in a storage unit, so I finally went to Barnes and Noble and bought myself a new copy, which I liked much better anyway.)
I don’t actually read books, I ‘eat’ them, so to speak, and so I wandered pretty far off the path this summer in my thinking. Stress does this to me; I can think myself into a hole so deep only God can find me. He always does, but not without considerable grief on my part, usually ending in some kind of confused fog that no amount of therapy or medication can dissipate. I went all the way to Is there really a God, and do we even exist, and if we don’t, then what’s the point of it all anyway? full circle back to There is a God, and these are real tears, so I must exist, and therefore, there must be a point out there somewhere. The real value of a book like Pirsig’s is that while truth is approached but never arrived at, it gives you something to measure truth by. A theoretical plumb line. As in, okay, if I do not believe this to be truth, then what is? Or, more accurately, what exactly do I believe? “Truth is arrived at by the painstaking process of eliminating the untrue.” And while the Lord was more than patient with all of my midsummer wanderings, now it’s time to put things back in order and get back to work.
Mice.
An irritatingly re-occurring, and always traumatic reality in my life, they seem to have moved in to this place sometime before we did, and I can’t quite wrap my head around how to deal with them. I don’t want to; I want them gone. Can’t get a cat, either, because I’m as allergic to them as I am afraid of mice. Besides, a sign saying “This house is guarded by a kitten” is something only a real blond would put in the window. I had just been thinking, too, that I don’t actually meet the DSM criteria for PTSD anymore (said criteria having been obliterated by all of the ones required for a major depressive disorder) and haven’t for some time, but no, no such luck. Back with a vengeance, which is so humiliating, because this house was supposed to be both a blessing and a place of refuge. And so many, many people bent over backwards trying to help me, and are now so happy and relieved that my summer of homelessness is over, that I don’t have the heart to tell them how upset I am with where I am.
The proper response to “Blessed and highly favored; how are you?” is not“Stressed and suicidal, thank you.” (“Blessed and highly medicated” doesn’t go over so well, either, unless you actually like being obviously and hyper-actively avoided by other well-dressed, seemingly healthy, adults.) At least, not at our church. Our poor staff is just not prepared to deal with such disturbingly raw honesty, so out of kindness and consideration for them, from the goodness of my heart, I give the appropriate response, knowing full well that I’m lying through my teeth the whole time. God forgive me.
I really am grateful. Grateful for a place to think, to write, to sleep and study. I missed my bed. And my coffee maker.
It’s good to be back.
Artist featured today is Kerry James Marshall
Meet Kerry James Marshall
Published on Aug 1, 2013
An interview with artist Kerry James Marshall at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Kerry James Marshall is one of the leading contemporary painters of his generation. Over the past twenty-five years, he has become internationally known for monumental images of African American history and culture.
http://www.americanart.si.edu/collect…
Kerry James Marshall: On Museums | Art21 “Exclusive”
About Kerry James Marshall
Kerry James Marshall was born in 1955 in Birmingham, Alabama, and was educated at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, from which he received a BFA, and an honorary doctorate (1999). The subject matter of his paintings, installations, and public projects is often drawn from African-American popular culture, and is rooted in the geography of his upbringing: “You can’t be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 and grow up in South Central [Los Angeles] near the Black Panthers headquarters, and not feel like you’ve got some kind of social responsibility. You can’t move to Watts in 1963 and not speak about it. That determined a lot of where my work was going to go,” says Marshall. In his “Souvenir” series of paintings and sculptures, he pays tribute to the civil rights movement with mammoth printing stamps featuring bold slogans of the era (“Black Power!”) and paintings of middle-class living rooms, where ordinary African-American citizens have become angels tending to a domestic order populated by the ghosts of Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and other heroes of the 1960s. In “RYTHM MASTR,” Marshall creates a comic book for the twenty-first century, pitting ancient African sculptures come to life against a cyberspace elite that risks losing touch with traditional culture. Marshall’s work is based on a broad range of art-historical references, from Renaissance painting to black folk art, from El Greco to Charles White. A striking aspect of Marshall’s paintings is the emphatically black skin tone of his figures—a development the artist says emerged from an investigation into the invisibility of blacks in America and the unnecessarily negative connotations associated with darkness. Marshall believes, “You still have to earn your audience’s attention every time you make something.” The sheer beauty of his work speaks to an art that is simultaneously formally rigorous and socially engaged. Marshall lives in Chicago.
Kerry James Marshall’s painting below is featured in Bentonville, Arkansas:
Kerry James Marshall: Being an Artist | Art21 “Exclusive”
Uploaded on Jul 8, 2008
Episode #018: Kerry James Marshall discusses three recent paintings, all Untitled (2008), during the installation of his exhibition Black Romantic at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Kerry James Marshall’s work is based on a broad range of art-historical references, from Renaissance painting to folk art. A striking aspect of his paintings is the emphatically black skin tone of his figures, a development the artist says emerged from an investigation into the invisibility of blacks in America and the unnecessarily negative connotations associated with darkness.
Kerry James Marshall is featured in the Season 1 (2001) episode Identity of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.
Learn more about Kerry James Marshall: http://www.art21.org/artists/kerry-ja…
VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller and Nick Ravich. Camera & Sound: Nick Ravich. Editor: Mary Ann Toman. Artwork Courtesy: Kerry James Marshall. Thanks: Jack Shainman Gallery.
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Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 10 “Final Choices” (Schaeffer Sundays)
E P I S O D E 1 0 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode X – Final Choices 27 min FINAL CHOICES I. Authoritarianism the Only Humanistic Social Option One man or an elite giving authoritative arbitrary absolutes. A. Society is sole absolute in absence of other absolutes. B. But society has to be […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 9 “The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence” (Schaeffer Sundays)
E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min T h e Age of Personal Peace and Afflunce I. By the Early 1960s People Were Bombarded From Every Side by Modern Man’s Humanistic Thought II. Modern Form of Humanistic Thought Leads […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 8 “The Age of Fragmentation” (Schaeffer Sundays)
E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min I saw this film series in 1979 and it had a major impact on me. T h e Age of FRAGMENTATION I. Art As a Vehicle Of Modern Thought A. Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 7 “The Age of Non-Reason” (Schaeffer Sundays)
E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason I am thrilled to get this film series with you. I saw it first in 1979 and it had such a big impact on me. Today’s episode is where we see modern humanist man act […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 6 “The Scientific Age” (Schaeffer Sundays)
E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 5 “The Revolutionary Age” (Schaeffer Sundays)
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Francis Schaeffer noted, “Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 4 “The Reformation” (Schaeffer Sundays)
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer makes three key points concerning the Reformation: “1. Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. 2. Bible gives needed answers not only as to […]
“Schaeffer Sundays” Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance”
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 2 “The Middle Ages” (Schaeffer Sundays)
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 1 “The Roman Age” (Schaeffer Sundays)
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
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The Daily Hatch 
