By Tania Scroggie
The art of living and The Art of Collecting are two fundamental branches of the existential journey of mankind.
Why is it that we always want to surround ourselves with beauty? Why are we so hopelessly in love in wonder of the beauty of our thinking in relation of analyzing the flow of nature and societies of which we are part of?
These questions become the foundations of philosophy and have guided us through the millenniums.Since our aim is to really find the blood relationship between The Art of Collecting and philosophy, we plan to always have something interesting in our philosophy corner that will bridge our past and present searches for wisdom and its outcome in the form of beauty.
Since everything somewhat started in old Greece, I think we will give Greece a first shot.
Around 500 BC in Athens, there was a man of great wisdom. His name is Socrates, whose teachings, thanks to Plato, were recorded and have survived the passage of time.
Not that the term did not exist before, nor that other cultures had not searched for wisdom either, but, it was Socrates who coined the word philosopher, as “the lover of wisdom” and philosophy as the “love of wisdom.”
Socrates stated that we all have a perception of what is good. Therefore we are attracted to and chase after what represents our highest standard of good, or beautiful. There are times when what exists is not enough and we must bypass existence as we know it and create a new.
The history of humanity can be observed in the various legacies of “good” and “beautiful” which have been left in the form of paintings, music, literature, theoretical science, applied technology, and many other art forms and human achievements of the various civilizations.
Endless schools of philosophy and art have seen their days and nights in their pursuit to study, understand, question and create what is beautiful.
It is this perpetual perception of what is good or beautiful, that leads us into a search for higher understanding of truth, and truth becomes wisdom.
The love of wisdom does not belong to a specific age, civilization, gender or social class. It belongs to the one who dares to love and pursue that which he/she perceives as the highest form of beauty. Now the question is, will your love take you to the highest form of Wisdom?