Another religious phenomenon worth consideration

At church today, I was struck again and again by the structure, power, and significance of the prayers we offer in public settings. Their ability to set a mood or structure a gathering is incredible. They have all the makings of a focal practice as outlined by Borgmann. Pretty nifty!

I suggest that you add that to your list of religious things to devote further thought to, Marty.

Even More Art for the Philosophy Themed Deck

UPDATED 07/20/2012: Started proofing the prototype and asked the POD a few printing questions. Improved some of the artwork. My wife thinks that my tuck box art is better than the Flammarion colored engraving and so I should just use it for the back as well. What do you think? I have it in the card back format below.
UPDATED 07/19/2012: Finished the tuck box art! The original part of the School of Athens that inspired this work is also posted here, so you can see how I tried to model the "new school" on the old one. I also placed the art in a rough template to get an idea of the look I am going for. Take a look below.
UPDATED 07/18/2012: Finished a good chunk of the tuck box art coloring. Finished placing cards in templates. All backgrounds completed (samples below).
UPDATED 07/17/2012: Finished sketch for tuck box art. I chose to recreate the School of Athens by Raphael. I only kept Aristotle, Plato, and Hypatia from the ancient Greeks, and added in Kant, Wittgenstein, Descartes, Husserl, Russell, Nietzsche, Thomas Aquinas, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, and Hume. I tried to pose them mostly correctly into the piece, and studied some clothing from the different time periods to place them in it. You will have to tell me what you think. Now, I need to vectorize and color it. Ugh, another 10 hours, here we come!
UPDATED 07/11/2012: Started putting art into card templates. Decided on quotes. Created card face backgrounds for ancient/medieval, modern, and analytic philosophers. Progress shown below.
UPDATED 07/10/2012: Added Hypatia and G. E. M. Anscombe. Replaced Austin with William James. Although I originally did not include James due to being unable to easily identify him in one of the camps, I compared his novel ideas and philosophical contributions and saw that they far outweighed J. L. Austin. It felt wrong to include Austin comparatively speaking, and so I stuck James in the analytic camp as his replacement. IMO, while James has definitely had influence in Continental philosophy, and his pragmatism is often a middle road, his scientific background makes him fit more in the analytic camp anyway. This concludes the portraits for philosophers! Now there is just color formatting, standardization, and creating the cards themselves. I also plan on doing an art for a tuckbox.
UPDATED 07/09/2012: Adjusted Card Back art (Flammarion engraving).
UPDATED 07/08/2012: Added the Brain in a Vat and Plato.
UPDATED 07/05/2012: Added new Merleau-Ponty. Worked on card content.
UPDATED 07/02/2012: Added Thales and Parmenides. Revised Aristotle.
UPDATED 07/01/2012: Further cleaning up and revision of continentals.
UPDATED 06/30/2012: Further cleaning up and revision of continentals.
UPDATED 06/29/2012: Added Peter Abelard.
UPDATED 06/28/2012: Further cleaning up and revision of continentals.
UPDATED 06/27/2012: Added Chrysippus and Euclid.
UPDATED 06/26/2012: Cleaned up line work and coloring on lots of philosophers. Also improved the quality of older artwork; the greeks and medievals were looking too good comparitively speaking! More will have to be done in the future.
UPDATED 06/25/2012: Added Anaximander and Augustine.
UPDATED 06/22/2012: Added Rudolf Carnap and Socrates.

This post I will continue to update with art work as I finish more drawings of philosophers, as mentioned in the prior post.

Abstract for my Term Paper

Philosophersof the modern era, typified by Immanuel Kant, defined objects interms of human perception. Arguing that we could never have arelationship with the thing-in-itself, these thinkers felt it moreproductive to focus on our cognition of the objects. This ontology ofobjects, woven through human thought for centuries, has led to manyresults both good and bad, including scientific, medical, andtechnological advances. However, this ontology comes with a cost; ittends to abstract us from the world of objects, fragmenting ourexistence. The disconnect is apparent in our uncertainty-plagued foodsystem. Contemporary continental philosophers have rejected Kant'sontology begun to propose new theories of objects, theories thatilluminate the nature of objects and how they structure ourexistence. The concepts outlined by these philosophers of technologyand objects are refocusing our ontological gaze back to the thingsthemselves. New perspective arms us with tools to understand thecrucial part food plays in our life, an understanding that can be used to develop coping methods and solutions to the current foodcrises.

Art for the Philosophy Playing Card Decks

I wanted to give you the idea I had for the art of the playing card decks. For me, art is an important part of any game, providing the body for the concept and gameplay. Everyone is familiar with poker playing cards, and so adding something artistic for this philosophic theme is crucial. For the art, I chose to find what I thought were the most common or characteristic portraits of the philosophers (for recognition purposes), and then I drew them in a slightly cartoonish style. I chose to add color to the drawings, with each color introduced having both a light and dark shade. Hegel shown above is my first, generally finished art piece to exhibit (it still will be tweeked somewhat). I have finished the line drawings for all of the continental philosophers and I am in the process of adding color to them. What do you think of this style? Just looking for some feedback before I move ahead.

Here are 4 others that I just finished: Martin Heidegger, Soren Kierkegaard, F. W. J. Schelling, and Emmanuel Levinas.









This group may help you think of the art more as a series.

Critical Review of "Food Inc."

     The movie Food, Inc. effectively accomplishes its goal of alerting the viewer of the precariousness and unsustainability of the modern food system. Whether its mono-cropping practices, loss of genetic diversity, or bacterial resistance of antibiotics, the producers of Food Inc. make it very clear that maintaining the current system of food production will ultimately lead to ruin. It is abundantly clear that change is necessary. However, the food system does not exist in a vacuum, and how that change is enacted and what tradeoffs are required are integral questions. Several political ideological questions arise in connection with implied solutions to the problems manifested in Food, Inc.

     A frequently recurring idea for reforming the American food system is to cancel or overhaul the subsidies of industries and foods that are detrimental to the health and the ecosystem. However, these systems of subsidies directly affect the bottom line of food producers, and increases in cost will often be transferred to the consumer. Are we willing to accept a significant increase in price in staple foods that have become incredibly cheap relative to income levels? Will any politician or legislative group that passes laws that result in dramatically higher prices in milk, bread, or eggs be excoriated and removed from their positions of influence? It is possible to utilize local farmers and local distribution to offer quality food at cheaper prices, but it would require a major “backward” step in the long, steady migration away from farms among American workers. Are Americans willing to return to an agricultural lifestyle?

     Gary Hirshberg argues that the only way to achieve the desired results of the organic/local/sustainable movement is to work through the current capitalist system. This leads to major food conglomerates, whose goals and motivations appear to be more closely aligned with profits than with the safety and sustainability of the American food system, owning and operating most of the organic brands. Can the ideals of the minority alternative food groups be enacted on a large scale through companies like Wal-Mart or is a rejection of these massive systems necessary?

     Tony Airoso, Chief Dairy Purchaser for Wal-Mart, argues that customer demand dictates Wal-Mart's purchasing and supply process. Can consumer choice bring about the sort of change that is needed? Albert Borgmann, in his book Crossing the Postmodern Divide, argues that consumer choice is a poor political motivator. The decisions made by consumers, from the producer's perspective, are vague. “Does the purchase of an article signal approval, thoughtlessness, or a lack of a better alternative? Does the refusal to buy show dissatisfaction with the style of the article, its safety, durability, or its very existence?” queries Borgmann. Additionally, consumers are at the mercy of marketing and availability of products when they enter a market. Consumers are not, effectively, free to choose whatever they want. They are only free to choose among the alternatives offered them by the company that they are purchasing from. With these considerations in mind, is it prudent to rely on consumer choice to enact change? Certainly over the course of time good things stem from this theory, such as the proliferation of organic products in Wal-Mart, but is it enough?

    Each of these problems is accompanied by a host of complications and ideological difficulties: Conservative vs. Liberal, Libertarian vs. Communitarian, Invisible Hand vs. Controlled Markets... Given the pressing need to address the massive and unrelenting issues in our food system, it seems we would do well to pursue as many avenues as possible that offer a glimpse of helping solve the problem. In addition to good intentions and exuberant effort, however, the situation requires serious discussion about our goals, what we are willing to change to achieve them, designing the framework of our food system, and what sort of systemic changes can be put into place to promote lasting and substantive change.