Blackberry (The Phone Company), Market Research Problems Essay

Blackberry (The Phone Company), Market Research Problems - Essay Example When research data has to be shared, the same legal issues are adhered too. Blackberry in their endeavor to randomly survey about the market reach should and will encounter this as a challenge. Research is a successful endeavor when the respondents agree to give answers to the questions asked. Blackberry is a famous phone company known worldwide, but that should not be used as a way to get answers from respondents. All costs considered; respondents are given their fair share of both time, chance and will respond or not to respond. Cases will arise where sometimes the respondents understand their rights and demand not to respond. Protecting information and or data in the current level of technology is a significant challenge faced by researchers. Ethically private information should be kept private. Across the globe, all countries have in the statutes a law the gives its citizens the right to privacy and confidentiality so do researchers. Survey carried on the internet or in the public domain can be subject to preview from a third party hence infringing of the code. Some question is sensitive and more so when a question concerning personal choice of products in the market. In addition, some responds personality involves analyzing options available in the market and the consequences of the options available before giving answers. In such cases, researchers might waste a lot of time on the research in order to get the content of their survey right. The journey through data collection is tiring, and the researchers might decide to fake results and responses to the questionnaire. Doing so will affects negatively on the real picture about the market perception. Moreover, during policy development, wrongly analyzed data will lead to a wrong strategy implementation hence inefficiency of the research. In analyzing data, a high objective should be considered without which biases might arise. Researchers will undoubtedly face trick from some of the clients they

Industrial production of aluminium from bauxite and recycling Essay

Industrial production of aluminium from bauxite and recycling - Essay Example The following work serves to outline the processes involved in extraction of aluminum from bauxite ore and further details more on aluminum recycling in the United Arab Emirates. The initial step in aluminum manufacture involves the mining of bauxite through the open cast technique. This mined bauxite is crushed and then washed to remove the mud and other dirt that may be attached. Having done this, the washed bauxite is taken through the purification process also called the Baeyers Process. The Baeyers process success follow the idea acidity of silica oxide, basicity of iron oxide and titania and the fact that alumina is amphoteric. Here, the crushed ore mixes with sodium hydroxide (NaOH) or caustic soda to make a solution that is then heated. Following this process the alumina together with silica that in the form of reactive crystalline are dissolved, a process that leaves the iron oxide, titania and large percentage of silica that is already mixed with other elements. At this point filtration is done to separate the dissolved elements from the remaining residue. Following the cooling of the alumina and silica solution, a complex alluminosilicate or â€Å"sand† is precipitated out first before altering the process, a condition that allow crystallization of pure aluminum hydroxide. To speed up this process, a small amount of crystalline hydroxide, which is in its pure form, is added to act as an area where the crystal develops. The uncontaminated aluminum hydroxide crystals Al (OH)3. 3H2O are then heated in an increasingly heated furnace until the temperature is 1100o C, a factor that causes them to decompose and thus form alumina (Al2O3) and water. Since alumina is covalently bonded, the electrolysis process can only be achieved when presented in an ionic form. To realize this, the alumina is dissolved in an electrolyte, which in this case is a mixture formed from molten

Telecommuting Essay Example for Free

Telecommuting Essay Telecommuting or telework allows employees of a company to work from home or any other remote location other than an office. Telecommuting requires employees to be able to access all of the computer applications they have available to them at work in order to perform their jobs adequately. The company should provide Internet access to employees at their homes and make sure they have the appropriate equipment to run and access company provided software. While some experts argue telecommuting is more cost-efficient, may increase productivity and create a better work/life balance, others say the cost of decreased face time co-workers, effect it has on workers left at the office, and its failure to live up to some of its expectations could make it a less attractive option. By implementing telecommuting, a company has the possibility to save significantly. Because of telework, employees will be able to work from remote locations and will not have a need to come into the office. This will eliminate the need for a physical location for most employees, which will result in a large savings per month. Each employee can use their computer at home or be provided one by the company. By implementing telecommuting, it would prevent the need to expand physical locations in the future. Savings would also increase based on the lack of utility bills associated with the physical location, cancelling T1 lines, and landline phones. Each employee can communicate with each other and customers via their company cell phone, which usually is already provided to them or their home landline phone if they wish. The company will then be responsible for their Internet connection in the form of a reimbursement. The figure above outlines the total costs of each arrangement. It is clear that telecommuting has the potential to save a company more money almost immediately after implementation. This is true only if every person in the company telecommutes. As some companies telecommuting policies say, the employee who telecommutes must report to a centralized workplace for a portion of time each week. If this is true, telecommuting is not as cost efficient as it seems. Transportation costs are also drastically reduced for employees. Because they would no longer need to commute to the office everyday, costs associated with a daily commute would be drastically reduced. This would also save money for the company. The federal government offers tax incentives to companies who make efforts to reduce their carbon footprint. By implementing telecommuting, any company would be eligible for the tax incentives the very next year. In a study conducted at the Kentucky American Water Company, performed from 1998-2003, it was concluded that a significant savings could be made per employee (Butler, Aasheim, Williams, 2007). The article points out that for the Kentucky American Water Company, â€Å"savings include reduced expenses for office space and parking, and a reduction in complaints handled by the managers. † In a chart produced in the study, it compares the costs and savings of implementing the telecommuting process in the call center portion of the company. Their conclusion, on average, was telecommuting will save KAWC $1,361 per employee (p. 102). Research has shown that telework is related to higher job satisfaction and a variety of positive employee outcomes,† writes Karen Fonner for the Journal for Applied Communication Research (Fonner Roloff, 2010, p. 340). Telework helps employees manage their personal and work lives more effectively than working in an office setting. By releasing employees from the constraints of a physical office, they are empowered to create their own schedules to accomplish work more effectively. This empowerment enables employees to take ownership of their position and will otivate them to perform to the best of their abilities. With the ability of employees to create their own schedules around the clock, it will benefit companies by allowing the employee to have a flexible schedule to adapt to the demanding schedules of business in the new millennium. Another benefit of telecommuting is less absenteeism at work. If an employee has a doctor’s appointment, they can set their work schedule around the appointment and include it in their schedule around both personal and work appointments. If they were to report to a physical location and be forced to be stationary for a set amount of time in an office, the employee would be inclined to take the entire day off for the doctor’s appointment. With the flexibility of telework, the employee would not be inclined to call off and would still be able to work before and after the appointment. The same is true for employees who require creativity breaks in between sessions of working. The flexibility of telework enables more frequent breaks so that employees can use the time set aside for work to be most efficient. Telecommuting also takes employees out of the stressors of the office. Office politics plays a huge role in stress at work and is a huge distraction for employees. â€Å"By working remotely the majority of the time, teleworkers can avoid or ignore some of the unjust practices within the organization, such as cronyism, self-interested behavior, and pressure against speaking out against those in power,† writes Fonner (Fonner, 2010, p. 361). Without the politicking at work, employees who work from home can use their downtime for more productive personal task that don’t induce more stress on their job. In a survey conducted at the telcom company Ericsson in July of 2006, respondents were asked a series of questions related to telecommuting. Employees who were not currently telecommuting were asked what important factors would persuade them to telecommute in the future (Borjesson Markus, 2006, p. 526). The most rated saving time as the most influential reason to adapt telecommunication with increasing efficiency, reducing stress, and having more independence in their daily life as the top four reasons (Borjesson Markus, 2006). Ironically, reducing traveling costs had the smallest amount of supporters. Employees at Ericsson put more emphasis on empowerment as their main reason to choose telecommuting over monetary reasons. Plus, its an important tool for attracting a younger generation of employees who expect that flexibility and greater sense of control over their lives, says Danette Campbell, senior adviser for telework with the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office in Washington when speaking about telework in the article â€Å"Washington Tapping Into Telework For More Flexibility† (Silver, 2010, p. 0). Adding telecommuting as a workplace option will make any company a more attractive employer. The Kentucky American Water Company study proved telecommuters are more productive workers than their on-site employees (Butler, Aasheim, Williams, 2007, p. 101). The study measured productivity based on four factors, â€Å"amount of work; intensity of work; efficiency of work; and adjustments for additional costs associated with telecommuting (such as expenses for equipment, technology support, training, managerial support, and so forth)† (2007, p. 101). The study found, â€Å"the average productivity of telecommuters in the 13 months immediately after the â€Å"go live† period increased by 154%, while the average productivity of in-office agents fell by 13. 3%. Because overall customer service improved considerably (the percentage of abandoned calls decreased from 12. 2% to 3. 6%)† (p. 102). Understanding that all jobs at the KAWC call center can be performed using telecommunication, parallels can still be drawn from call center work and the type of work performed by most companies. The majority of daily work performed by most employees consists of communicating with clients and co-workers. All communication in most jobs does not rely on an employee being in a centralized workspace. By allowing employees to telecommute, they will be free to meet with customers and clients during any time of the day, thus allowing them to be more productive and available to them. Many clients and customers have problems meeting during a normal â€Å"9-to-5† workday because they are also at work. By implementing telecommuting, employees will be free to meet with them in the evening when they usually wouldn’t be at â€Å"work† if they worked in a centralized location or during business hours if they need to. Telecommuting also requires the use of technology to perform work from remote locations. â€Å"People who use more IT in their work are more productive, and by its very nature telecommuting requires more use of IT,† writes Ralph Westfall in his article â€Å"Does Telecommuting Really Improve Productivity? † (Westfall, 2004, p. 95). By implementing telecommuting at a company, they will be forced to update their technology and train people to use the new technology effectively. In doing this, employees will be forced to become more productive based on their new knowledge and the use of new technology. An argument against telecommuting is the lack of human interaction involved with the â€Å"Employees who worked away from their offices for three or more days a week reported worsening of their relationships with coworkers,† stated Pam Willenz for the American Psychological Association (Willenz, 2007). Employees may seem disenfranchised from their co-workers who report to an office, which has detrimental effects on employee morale to all employees. Telecommuting also could have detrimental effects on promotions for employees. The idea behind â€Å"out of sight, out of mind† plays a large role in the fear that employees who telecommute have less likely of a chance to get promoted from their current position because of their lack of face time with superiors. The lack of office politicking could be a double-edged sword where employees don’t have the chance to mingle with co-workers that could potentially advance their careers. Telecommuting had negative effects on the employees that are â€Å"left behind† in a centralized workplace. In-office employees took less satisfaction in their jobs and felt less of a relationship and obligation to their company as the number of telecommuting coworkers grew,† in a study that David Chartier reported in the article, â€Å"Study: Telecommuting makes work worse for non-telecommuters† (Chartier, 2009). Many of the workers that are left behind perceived that more work was left for them and are forced into other difficulties posed by telecommuting such as, building strong working relationships and finishing group work. Telecommuting is not appropriate for every job. There are still many jobs that cannot be performed through telecommuting. Contemporary Business states, â€Å"the cubicle- filled office will likely never become obsolete† (Boone, p. 22). Many jobs will never be able to completely translate over to a telecommuting environment so many workers will still have to report to a centralized workplace. Many face-to-face customer service jobs cannot be performed via telecommuting and many workers will still have to report to work therefore telecommuting is not an alternative to every job. Since telecommuting is so new, many employers are still experimenting with it and require that the employees who telecommute have to report to the office at least one day a week. Telecommuting is difficult to implement in situations where workers are paid on an hourly basis. The old adage, â€Å"Time worked equals time paid,† does not necessarily translate into the telecommuting environment very well. In hourly positions that can be transferred to telecommuting settings, clocking in and clocking out will be at the discretion of the worker with no oversight available. Employees who are compensated on an hourly basis would have to change their pay scale to a salaried position in order for telecommuting to be fair (Boone, 2010). If that is not the case, truant workers would be enabled by the lack of supervision and can â€Å"run the clock† more easily than if they reported to a centralized workspace (Boone, 2010). Telecommuting also puts company assets and information in an uncontrolled environment where it is difficult to keep track of how and for what they are used. It raises some questions where company information and assets could be compromised in a telecommuting situation. Many employees would easily be put in a situation where they could steal or copy customer information and use it outside of their work (Boone, 2010). Telecommuting is cost effective depending on how it is implemented and can save a company a lot of money only if every employee telecommutes in order to alleviate the need for a centralized workplace. Research supports these benefits of implementing telecommuting saying it will alleviate many stressors on employees by reducing time spent getting ready for work, commuting to an office on a daily basis, and office politics. There are negatives aspects, however, to telecommuting. It cannot be implemented for every job and there will still be a need for a centralized workspace so it may not be as profitable as expected. Telecommuting also puts company property and information inside someone else’s home. Truant workers are enabled to â€Å"run the clock† in a telecommuting setting since there is no oversight on when they are actually working. Telecommuting does have its strengths, but it also has weaknesses. The future will open up doors for telecommuting as technology improves and our culture becomes more technologically savvy. For now, telecommuting in most situations is a hybrid of some workdays reporting to work and others worked from home.

het reisgedrag van de nederlanders

het reisgedrag van de nederlanders Het reisgedrag van de Nederlanders Nederlanders staan er om bekend dat je ze overal tegen komt, in dit opzicht zou je zeggen dat er een bepaald reisgedrag typerend is voor Nederlanders. Toch is dit wel het geval, ook Nederlanders hebben een aantal belangrijke overeenstemmingen wanneer het gaat over hun reisgedrag. In dit deel van het adviesrapport zal u dit kenbaar gemaakt worden. Hierbij word gebruik gemaakt van betrouwbare bronnen die u terug kunt vinden in dit document. Vakantieparticipatie De duur van de vakantie Bestemmingen binnenland Bestemmingen buitenland Vakantieparticipatie Opvallend is dat een hoog percentage Nederlanders op vakantie gaat. Zowel voor korte vakanties (2 tot 7 dagen) als lange vakanties (8 of meer dagen). Dit percentage komt neer op 82% (2008). Dit percentage is erg stabiel het verschilt namelijk slechts 1 procent als u kijkt in de periode van 2003 tot 2008. Dit percentage komt neer op 12,5 miljoen Nederlanders die jaarlijks op vakantie gaan. Hoewel wintersport de laatste jaren steeds meer in opkomst is blijft de lange vakantie in de zomer favoriet onder de Nederlanders. Het aantal Nederlanders dat in 2008 op wintersport is gegaan bedraagt 5,1 miljoen tegenover 10,0 miljoen zomervakanties. Hierbij gaat het wel om vakanties die 5 of meer dagen duren. Korte vakanties daar in tegen worden meer gedaan in de winter. Een belangrijke toevoeging hieraan is wel dat de winter periode 7 maanden (oktober april) duurt en de zomer periode slechts 5 maanden (mei september). De duur van de vakantie Een gemiddelde lange vakantie in 2008 duurde 12 dagen. Buitenlandse lange vakanties duurden gemiddeld 3 dagen langer dan binnenlandse lange vakanties. Korte vakanties duurden gemiddeld iets meer dan 3 dagen. Hierbij was bijna geen verschil tussen het gemiddelde van binnenlandse en buitenlandse vakanties. Bij het lezen van deze statistieken is het echter wel belangrijk dat u zich realiseert dat zowel de dag van vertrek als de dag van aankomst bij de duur van de vakantie worden gerekend. Zo worden korte vakanties vaak in het weekend doorgebracht. Tijdens de deze vakanties moest er natuurlijk ook een overnachtingsplaats gevonden worden, hiervoor boekte Nederlanders voor lange vakanties in totaal 253 miljoen overnachtingen. Meer dan de helft van deze overnachtingen vonden plaats in het buitenland. Op alle bestemmingen overtrof de zomerovernachtingen die van de winter. De meeste overnachtingen tijdens lange vakanties werden gemaakt in Frankrijk (17%), Spanje (11%) en Duitsland (9%). Bij korte vakanties waren de resultaten van het onderzoek anders. Hier vonden de meeste van de 70 miljoen overnachtingen plaats in Nederland. Zowel in Nederland als in het buitenland waren er weinig verschillen in het aantal overnachtingen in de winter en de zomer. Bestemmingen binnenland Door de statistieken van het ContinuVakantieOnderzoek van TNS Nipo hebben we tijdens het onderzoek een goed beeld gekregen van het Nederlandse Reisgedrag in Nederland. Het toeristengebied Veluwe en Veluwerand blijkt in 2008 met 12% het meest bezochte gebied door Nederlandse vakantiegangers. Daarna komt met 11% de toeristen gebieden Groningse, Friese en Drentse zandgronden en Noordzeebadplaatsen op de ranglijst. Opvallend is dat het laats genoemde gebied de laatste jaren wel steeds minder Nederlandse toeristen trekt. Trokken ze in 2003 nog 1,3 miljoen Nederlanders, nu is dat nog slechts 1 miljoen binnenlandse toeristen. Hieraan kun je zien dat de bosrijke gebieden meer in opkomst zijn en juist de water (zee, rivieren en meren) gebieden minder interessant worden. Dit word ook beaamd door de volgende statistiek. Hierin staat de ontwikkeling van het aantal bezoekers in de periode van 2003 tot 2008. http://www.cbs.nl/NR/rdonlyres/8665248B-16B7-4C08-B980-4159B7AE0F6F/0/2008g72pub.pdf Grafiek binnenland verdeling overtypen/invoegen!

Isabel Allende?s ?Two Words :: essays research papers

Loss and Survival in Isabel Allende’s â€Å"Two Words† Because Belisa Crepusculario had such a difficult childhood in which she experienced so much loss in her life, she is forced to become a stronger person both mentally and physically to survive such devastating circumstances. It will ultimately be this strong sense of survival that she develops through these experiences of great loss, which will guide her through the survival of life threatening situations. Belisa had a rough childhood. She was born into a family that was very poor. On top of dealing with poverty, Belisa also had to deal with living in a place that wasn’t suited very well for inhabitants. This quote explains her childhood quite well. â€Å"Belisa Crepusculario had been born into a family so poor they did not even have names to give their children. She came into the world and grew up in an inhospitable land where some years the rains became avalanches of water that bore everything away before them and others when not a drop fell from the sky and the sun swelled to fill the horizon and the world became a desert. Until she was twelve, Belisa had no occupation or virtue other than having withstood hunger and the exhaustion of centuries† (10). I believe that this quote sets up the rest of the story about Belisa because it portrays her as someone who endured many hardships as a young child and those are what helped her become a stronger person for those hardships. Belisa also had to endure great loss of family members as a young child. She was the only child out of her five siblings to survive a horrible drought that swept through the area where she lived, that claimed her four siblings. This quote explains those circumstances. â€Å"During one interminable drought, it fell to her to bury four younger brothers and sisters; when she realized that her turn was next, she decided to set out across the plains in the direction of the sea, in hopes that she might trick death along the way† (10). I believe that her strong will to survive is what made her leave home, because she did not want to just whither away into death like the rest of her family had done. She wants to live and that was quite evident. While Belisa is making her way toward the sea, she encounters others who are doing likewise, to avoid the great drought.

Travels Through the Rhineland Essay -- Travel Writing Descriptive Ess

On mountain peak the gods' abode; resplendent shines the proud-standing hall! (From Wagner's Das Rheingold, qtd. in Evensen) My friend dropped me off at the KÃ ¶ln Hauptbahnhof under the warm summer afternoon. The train station was nearly under the shade of the KÃ ¶lner Dom, the great Gothic cathedral of KÃ ¶ln. I had first seen the Dom at night when it was partially illumed by floodlights and the moon, though most of it remained in shadows. The twin black spires hung over me and I stood, marveling underneath the 600 year old Gothic spectacle without knowing fully what I was experiencing. But between the midnight and the 500 foot sooty towers I was compelled to pause and reflect some of the cathedral's light. In the train station I marveled at the schedule board as it fluttered rhythmically when its times changed. I boarded a train for Mannheim and it rolled out of KÃ ¶ln into the countryside of the Rhineland. The countryside was definitely different from what I was used to in Canada and I did enjoy the pleasant scenery. But I must admit that I was not wholly concerned with taking in the splendor and that my memory of my travel down the Rhine is limited (it was only a two hour journey by train after all). However, I found that the more Romantic descriptions of the Rhine I read the more my memory was restored. Also, as I read I begin to understand my experience differently and new sensations on those old memories are evoked. The day was perfect for travel: the weather was warm but not uncomfortable, and the sky was a matte cerulean though it was speckled throughout the journey with cirrus and cumulus clouds. As far as I can remember, the train followed the Rhine for most of the journey to Mannheim where I caught another... ...ts of text and music in Wagner. 2 Apr. 2005 http://www.trell.org/wagner/multi.html. Miall, David. "Wordsworth: Rhine (3)." Romanticism: The CD-ROM. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. "Rhine." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2 Apr. 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine. Radcliffe, Ann. Excerpts from A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794 through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany, with a Return Down the Rhine: to which are added, Observations During a Tour to the Lakes of Lancashire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland. Romanticism: The CD-ROM. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1997. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Oxford: Project Gutenberg, 1993. 2 Apr. 2005 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext93/frank14.txt. Wordsworth, William. "Tintern Abbey." Romanticism: An Anthology. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1998. Travels Through the Rhineland Essay -- Travel Writing Descriptive Ess On mountain peak the gods' abode; resplendent shines the proud-standing hall! (From Wagner's Das Rheingold, qtd. in Evensen) My friend dropped me off at the KÃ ¶ln Hauptbahnhof under the warm summer afternoon. The train station was nearly under the shade of the KÃ ¶lner Dom, the great Gothic cathedral of KÃ ¶ln. I had first seen the Dom at night when it was partially illumed by floodlights and the moon, though most of it remained in shadows. The twin black spires hung over me and I stood, marveling underneath the 600 year old Gothic spectacle without knowing fully what I was experiencing. But between the midnight and the 500 foot sooty towers I was compelled to pause and reflect some of the cathedral's light. In the train station I marveled at the schedule board as it fluttered rhythmically when its times changed. I boarded a train for Mannheim and it rolled out of KÃ ¶ln into the countryside of the Rhineland. The countryside was definitely different from what I was used to in Canada and I did enjoy the pleasant scenery. But I must admit that I was not wholly concerned with taking in the splendor and that my memory of my travel down the Rhine is limited (it was only a two hour journey by train after all). However, I found that the more Romantic descriptions of the Rhine I read the more my memory was restored. Also, as I read I begin to understand my experience differently and new sensations on those old memories are evoked. The day was perfect for travel: the weather was warm but not uncomfortable, and the sky was a matte cerulean though it was speckled throughout the journey with cirrus and cumulus clouds. As far as I can remember, the train followed the Rhine for most of the journey to Mannheim where I caught another... ...ts of text and music in Wagner. 2 Apr. 2005 http://www.trell.org/wagner/multi.html. Miall, David. "Wordsworth: Rhine (3)." Romanticism: The CD-ROM. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. "Rhine." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2 Apr. 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine. Radcliffe, Ann. Excerpts from A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794 through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany, with a Return Down the Rhine: to which are added, Observations During a Tour to the Lakes of Lancashire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland. Romanticism: The CD-ROM. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1997. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Oxford: Project Gutenberg, 1993. 2 Apr. 2005 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext93/frank14.txt. Wordsworth, William. "Tintern Abbey." Romanticism: An Anthology. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1998.

Concept of Beauty According to the Western Philosophers Essay

Beauty is an emotional element, a pleasure of ours, which nevertheless we regard as a quality of thing. The ideas of beauty is found in almost every culture and at almost every time in human history, with many similarities. Beauty was and still is a term of great esteem linking human beings and nature with artistic practices and works since the early civilizations. From the early cultures, beauty, goodness and truth are customarily related. Beauty here carries a double meaning, inclusive and exclusive. In the inclusive sense, beauty pertains to anything worthy of approbation, to human virtues and characters, to nobility and goodness, to hidden things and truth, to the natural and divine worlds. In the exclusive, restricted sense, it pertains to how things appear, their manifestations, and to the joys human beings experience when presented with beautiful things, human bodies, artifacts, natural creatures and things. When we talk about the beauty in works of art, we are talking about this latter beauty, and experiencing this beauty refers to the aesthetic experience. Such beauty is the higher degree of it and the experience of it last in us beyond the time and space. The nature of beauty and its role in philosophy and aesthetics was explained from the early periods and its evolution as described by the philosophers and writers as follows: ~PLATO~ ( 428 or 427 – 348 or 347 B. C ) Plato had a love-hate relationship with the arts. He must have had some love for the arts, because he talks about them often, and his remarks show that he paid close attention to what he saw and heard. He was also a fine literary stylist and a great story-teller; in fact he is said to have been a poet before he encountered Socrates and became a philosopher. Some of his dialogues are real literary masterpieces. On the other hand, he found the arts threatening. He proposed sending the poets and playwrights out of his ideal Republic, or at least censoring what they wrote; and he wanted music and painting severely censored. The arts, he thought, are powerful shapers of character. Thus, to train and protect ideal citizens for an ideal society, the arts must be strictly controlled. Plato had two theories of art. One may be found in his dialogue The Republic, and seems to be the theory that Plato himself believed. According to this theory, since art imitates physical things, which in turn imitate the Forms, art is always a copy of a copy, and leads us even further from truth and toward illusion. For this reason, as well as because of its power to stir the emotions, art is dangerous. Plato’s other theory is hinted at in his shorter dialogue Ion, and in his exquisitely crafted Symposium. According to this theory the artist, perhaps by divine inspiration, makes a better copy of the True than may be found in ordinary experience. Thus the artist is a kind of prophet. Here are some features of the two theories: 1. Art is imitation This is a feature of both of Plato’s theories. Of course he was not the first or the last person to think that art imitates reality. The idea was still very strong in the Renaissance, when most people thought that a picture must be a picture of something, and that an artist is someone who can make a picture that â€Å"looks just like the real thing†. It wasn’t until late in the nineteenth century that the idea of art as imitation began to fade from western aesthetics, to be replaced by theories about art as expression, art as communication, art as pure form, art as whatever elicits an â€Å"aesthetic† response, and a number of other theories. So art is imitation. But what does it imitate? In the Republic, Plato says that art imitates the objects and events of ordinary life. In other words, a work of art is a copy of a copy of a Form. It is even more of an illusion than is ordinary experience. On this theory, works of art are at best entertainment and at worst a dangerous delusion. Whereas in the Symposium, he talks of art as imitation of the divine beauty and eternal truth. 2. Art is powerful, and therefore dangerous Poetry, drama, music, painting, dance, all stir up our emotions. All of the arts move people powerfully. They can strongly influence our behavior, and even our character. For that reason Plato insisted that music (especially music), along with poetry and drama and the other arts, should be part of the education of young citizens in his ideal republic, but should be strictly censored to present, at first, only the good. Plato’s influence came into the medieval European tradition through the filter of Neoplatonism, a much later modification of Platonic teachings that flourished in the centuries just before and after the time of Jesus. The most famous neo-Platonist was Plotinus. Plotinus and the other neo-Platonists made much of the idea of Beauty, and the soul’s quest for it, as described in the Symposium. Through neoplatonism, Plato’s second theory (art as imitation of eternal Beauty and eternal Truth) became the channel of his influence on the western middle ages and the renaissance. ~ARISTOTLE~ ( 384-322 BC ) In The School of Athens, the fresco by Raphael, Plato and Aristotle stand side by side. Plato points to the heavens, to the ideal world of the Forms. Aristotle is shown with his hand open toward the earth. The painting shows how passionate Renaissance intellectuals were about the views and achievements of the ancient Greeks and Romans. It also accurately portrays the difference between Plato and Aristotle. It’s a difference that shows up in their approaches to the arts. Aristotle took time and change more seriously than did Plato. Not surprisingly, he was also somewhat friendlier to the passions than was Plato; though he, too, thought that the moral virtues were various habits of rational control over the passions. Like Plato, Aristotle thought that art involved imitation (mimesis), though on this point as on many others he was flexible and allowed for exceptions. He also thought harder than Plato about what art imitated. For example, he says that Tragedy is an imitation â€Å"not of persons but of action and life, of happiness and misery† (Poetics 1451b). Thus he leans toward the â€Å"art as imitation of the ideal† theory that Plato might have developed, but never did. Aristotle’s Poetics is largely devoted to drama, in particular to tragedy. Aristotle provides both a history of the development of poetry and drama, and a critical framework for evaluating tragic drama. The Poetics is the first systematic essay in literary theory, full of insight, and showing a high degree of flexibility in the application of its general rules. Like many of Aristotle’s other attempts to systematize knowledge about an area, this framework has had a strong influence up to the present day, and was particularly influential during the Renaissance and the early modern European periods. Aristotle stresses the need for a work to be unified. The plot should be unified, portraying, in effect, one extended action which is set up, develops, and comes to a climactic conclusion. The character of the protagonists should be consistent, and the action should be the sort of action those characters would produce under those circumstances. The time of the action should also be unified, so that the plot can be held in memory as one action. Aristotle thought this would usually imply that the action would occur within one day. These â€Å"Unities† of action, character, and time were developed and added to by Renaissance writers to produce a code of â€Å"decorum† for dramatic productions, and failure to observe the â€Å"Unities† was often taken to mean failure of a work. Of course this brought a rebellion against Aristotle, who was not in fact responsible for the excesses of this code, and no doubt had no intention of producing a set of rules for dramatists in the first place. His critical standards no longer rule the evaluation of plays and novels, let alone other works. But the Poetics remains an impressive accomplishment, and many of its insights continue to ring true. It still seems a good general rule that a plot should be unified; that in a drama character should be revealed by action; that surprising turns are a great help to a plot, as long as they are not implausible; that one should not try to cover too great a length of actual time within the time of the play. The idea of catharsis is a potent one; and so is the idea that art portrays the universal, â€Å"not a thing that has been, but a kind of thing that might be. † ~RENE DESCARTES~ (1596-1650) He described the beauty and perfection of god’s works and the divine light. As late as the eighteenth century, beauty retained its relation to divinity and perfection, expressed in art. Even so, with Descartes and his time a transformation of the world began that included alterations in the practice and understanding of art and in the thought of beauty and beautiful things. In a universe made by god, the beauty and perfection of the world are immediate and infinitely important. ~GEORGE BERKELEY~ (1685-1753) â€Å"A man needs no argument to make him discern and approve what is beautiful; it strikes as first sight, and attracts without a reason. And as this beauty is found in shape and form of corporeal thins, so is there analogous to it, which is a beauty of another kind; an order, a symmetry, and comeliness in the moral world. And as the eyes perceive, so do by a certain interior sense perceive the other, which sense, talent or faculty is ever quickest and purest in the noble mind. † George Berkeley (1685-1753) is Irish philosopher and critics. He had moral sense theory of ethical judgment, which eliminates the traditional conception of moral rules as divine commands known by revelation as a main target of Berkeley’s attack. Francis Hutcheson offered his account of the sense of beauty as an introduction to his theory of the moral sense, Berkeley extended his attack to Hutcheson’s aesthetics. He exclaimed his response to beauty need not always be a response to the appearance of usefulness; e. g. Greek columns are tapered to look stable even though they would actually be stable with being tapered. The arguing issue raised remained a live one for aesthetics theory entities radical transformation in the post- Kantian period. ~IMMANUEL KANT~ (1724-1804) Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), German Enlightenment philosopher whose original and powerful philosophy has shaped most subsequent western thought. He was a popular lecturer, and was capable of a lively, readable style; although his major works are as dense and difficult as they are influential. (Kant defended this as a deliberate choice, since he wanted to examine what could be known about the mind in itself, or a priori, without depending on particular examples.) Kant produced an early treatise on aesthetics, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1763), and did not write on the subject again until the end of his career, in the Critique of Judgment (1790). In between the two works came the development of his influential critical philosophy. Although Kant saw the Critique of Judgment as the key work which connected his writings on epistemology (the theory of knowledge) in the Critique of Pure Reason with his writings on ethics in the Critique of Practical Reason, it is not necessary to know these other works in order to understand the most influential parts of Kant’s aesthetics. Like many other writers on aesthetics before him, Kant’s main interest was not in art per se, but in Beauty (and along with other eighteenth century writers, in the Sublime). Thus most of his remarks are as relevant to the beautiful or sublime in nature as in art. Like other Enlightenment writers, (e. g. , Hutcheson and Hume), Kant also thought that Beauty or Sublimity were not really properties of objects, but ways in which we respond to objects. And like these other writers, Kant was concerned to show that this focus on the subjective aesthetic response did not make aesthetic value a mere function of individual or personal taste. Kant’s way of working out these problems is what makes his aesthetics original and influential. He claimed that judgments of taste are both subjective and universal. They are subjective; because they are responses of pleasure, and do not essentially involve any claims about the properties of the object itself. (What matters is not the picture I see; rather it is the pleasing effect of the picture on me.) On the other hand, aesthetic judgments are universal and not merely personal. That’s because in a crucial way they must be disinterested. When I am appreciating a painting aesthetically, I am not thinking about how much money it’s worth, or whether it is a portrait of a family member, or even about who painted it, except in so far as knowing the painter helps me see what’s in the work. These non-aesthetic interests are extraneous to my appreciation of the painting. Rather I am pleased by the painting just for what it is, apart from anything I may get out of it. In fact I do not even take an ethical interest in the painting’s subject (that is, any ethical interest is separate from this disinterested pleasure I take in the painting). â€Å"Taste that requires an added element of charm and emotion for its delight, not to speak of adopting this as the measure of its approval, has not emerged from barbarism†. Kant thought that for aesthetic judgments to be both subjective and universal, they had to be about form. Beauty should be â€Å"a question merely of the form†. More specifically, the object being contemplated (e. g. , a work of art, or an actual landscape) must display a kind of undefined purposive ness, such that it seems to be organized with a final purpose in mind, although it is not possible to say what that purpose is. Thus a work of art, or a beautiful natural object, displays a kind of free play of forms, consistent with the presence of a purpose to which we don’t have access. So intent was Kant on emphasizing the formal properties of the objects of aesthetic attention that he was unwilling to include color among the aesthetically relevant properties of an object. Color, in his view, is mere decoration; design and composition are what really matter . To sum up this point about form in Kant’s own words: â€Å"A judgment of taste which is uninfluenced by charm or emotion (though these may be associated with the delight in the beautiful), and whose determining ground, therefore, is simply finality of form, is a pure judgment of taste. † Kant divided the kinds of aesthetic response into responses to the Beautiful and the Sublime. The one represents a pleasure in order, harmony, delicacy and the like. The other is a response of awe before the infinite or the overwhelming. While the beautiful presents the appearance of form, the sublime may often seem formless. The pleasure it gives us derives from our awareness that there is something in us that transcends the overwhelming power or infinity outside us. Finally, Kant had things to say about genius. In short, he thought that genius has its own rules, and one cannot dictate to it. How Kant arrived at his conclusions is not easily shown; and it is no surprise that the philosophical reasoning that grounds those conclusions did not follow them into the cultural mainstream. But the conclusions themselves proved quite influential. His remarks on genius, and on purposive ness in art and nature, had an impact on the development of Romantic aesthetics. Later, the idea of a disinterested appreciation of form became a watchword for philosophers and critics like Clement Greenberg who defended abstract art. In literary criticism, the New Criticism which focused on the text itself, and its philosophical defense by Beardsley and Wimsatt, were similarly inspired.