Art, the Arts, and the Great Ideas (Unabridged)

Does a piece of visual or musical art have any content? Do the fine arts have anything at all to say about ideas? How is a sonata different from a poem? In Art, the Arts, and the Great Ideas, Mortimer Adler challenges us to precision in language, tracing the historical permutations of pivotal words like "art," "idea," and "significance." He ambitiously defines these three words in terms of their everyday meanings, and then their (often very different) philosophical meanings. Fundamental to his argument is the question of whether art (such as paintings and sculptures) and the performing arts (such as music and dancing) can elicit the discussion of ideas and basic concepts as do books. Listeners will ultimately discover how the great ideas are related to the arts.