"Meet Dr. Puddle, our man in the philosophy of life."
sounds obtuse. It tends to implicate that Dr. Puddle does not know what he
is doing. Usually, 'he is a philosopher' ENTAILS he has some idea of what
'life' is all about.
Not Popper, perhaps. His (his life, that is) was unended quest. And 'life'
tends to be an ambiguous noun, referring to some ambiguous concept in need
of some clear conceptual analysis.
Not Popper would start with
i. x lives.
This usually entails something like
ii. x is not dead.
But when 'x' is a 'rolling stone', say, the idea of 'life' just does not
apply. We don't say a 'stone' is _dead_ -- less so a 'rolling stone', who
keeps gathering no moss (as Mick Jagger likes to say).
Popper distinguishes three realms (a realm is a 'reich'). Life begins in
his second realm, since the first realm is pure matter. Hartmann was, like
Popper, also concerned with this. But Hartmann was perhaps more cautious.
After all, there is inorganic chemistry and organic chemistry, and organic
chemistry seems MORE like life.
Artists studying art (i.e. those artists who will become members of, say,
the Royal Academy) have to undergo two main courses, 'drawing from the
antique', and 'drawing from life' (usually naked people). The 'antique' is also
usually naked people, but in a mimetic form. Thus, Millais, the painter,
composed a number of sketches at the British Museum, where all the casts of
the antique were held, of, say, the Belvedere Torso. I think the idea is
that the antique does not move, while if you draw from life, the 'model', so
called (usually a badly paid job) will MOVE his or her arm, making the point
of 'drawing' it more difficult (or a 'trick' as Millais would say.
Being imaginative, when painting stuff that is no longer alive, or is
hardly alive, the English speak of 'still life', which the Italians express
differently. Literally, 'dead nature'.
Thus from wiki:
"La natura morta è un tipo di rappresentazione pittorica che consiste nel
ritrarre oggetti inanimati. Solitamente gli oggetti ritratti sono frutta e
fiori, ma anche oggetti di vario tipo, come strumenti musicali, pesci ed
altri animali."
"Dead nature is a type of pictoric representation which consists of
portraying objects which are inanimated."
Without an 'anima', that is, i.e. not animals.
"Usually, the objects portrayed are fruits or flowers..."
-- which is when the sobriquet, 'dead nature', best applies, since a fruit
comes from a tree that is alive, and a flower is alive -- but NOT when
painted by a still-life artist.
"but also objects of various types, like musical instruments, fish, or
other animals."
I think the author is thinking of Matisse. But surely his fish in a bowl
are alive, so the phrase has to be understood implicaturally.
The keyword "PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE" perhaps includes the keyword "MEANING OF
LIFE", and Phatic's query about the implicature by some French philosophers
when they say that we should stop the quest for the meaning of life.
Phatic is pointing to the ambiguity in the implicature. Stop questing for
the Meaning of Life, may implicate: "Since there is none", or "since there
is just not ONE meaning", but meanings.
"Life", however, is not strictly multiguous, but uniguous ("Do not multiply
senses beyond necessity" -- Do not multiply the sense of 'life' beyond
necessity").
Geary was quoting from Marx withsitting, which reminds me of a phrase that
Marx would usually utter in German. The rough translation would be, "For
the life of me", the implicature of which was clear to Marx (but only, one
does not usually implicate to oneself, only to others).
Cheers,
Speranza
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