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171-503: The Mundaneum was an institution which aimed to gather together all the world's knowledge and classify it according to a system called the Universal Decimal Classification . It was developed at the turn of the 20th century by Belgian lawyers Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine . The Mundaneum has been identified as a milestone in the history of data collection and management, and (somewhat more tenuously) as

342-593: A precursor to the Internet . In the 21st century, the Mundaneum is a non-profit organisation based in Mons , Belgium , that runs an exhibition space, website and archive, which celebrate the legacy of the original Mundaneum. The Mundaneum was created in 1910, following an initiative begun in 1895 by Belgian lawyers Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine, as part of their work on documentation science . Otlet first called it

513-719: A Mundaneum project to be built in Geneva, Switzerland in 1929. Although never built, the project triggered the Mundaneum Affair , a theoretical argument between Corbusier and Czech critic and architect Karel Teige . In 1933, with Otlet's agreement, Otto Neurath founded the Mundaneum Institute as a branch in The Hague in 1933, which became central to his activities when he moved to the Netherlands as

684-407: A belief if this belief is to amount to knowledge. When the belief is challenged, the person may justify it by referring to their reason for holding it. In many cases, this reason depends itself on another belief that may as well be challenged. An example is a person who believes that Ford cars are cheaper than BMWs. When their belief is challenged, they may justify it by claiming that they heard it from

855-474: A belief is involved. The main controversy surrounding this definition concerns its third feature: justification. This component is often included because of the impression that some true beliefs are not forms of knowledge, such as beliefs based on superstition , lucky guesses, or erroneous reasoning . For example, a person who guesses that a coin flip will land heads usually does not know that even if their belief turns out to be true. This indicates that there

1026-461: A broad social phenomenon that is similar to culture. The term may further denote knowledge stored in documents like the "knowledge housed in the library" or the knowledge base of an expert system . Knowledge is closely related to intelligence , but intelligence is more about the ability to acquire, process, and apply information, while knowledge concerns information and skills that a person already possesses. The word knowledge has its roots in

1197-405: A complex web of interconnected ideas that is justified by its coherence rather than by a few privileged foundational beliefs. One difficulty for this view is how to demonstrate that it does not involve the fallacy of circular reasoning . If two beliefs mutually support each other then a person has a reason for accepting one belief if they already have the other. However, mutual support alone is not

1368-430: A contemporary metaphysics, 1925), Alfred Rosenberg ( Der Mythus des 20.Jahrhunderts ; The myth of the twentieth century, 1930), Josef Weinheber , Hans Grimm ( Volk ohne Raum ; People without living space , 1926), and Joseph Goebbels ( Michael , 1929). Hitler favored hugeness, especially in architecture, as a means of impressing the masses. "A once mediocre artist and aspiring architect, Hitler also pronounced upon

1539-573: A controlled experiment to compare whether predictions based on the hypothesis match the observed results. As a last step, the results are interpreted and a conclusion is reached whether and to what degree the findings confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis. The empirical sciences are usually divided into natural and social sciences . The natural sciences, like physics , biology , and chemistry , focus on quantitative research methods to arrive at knowledge about natural phenomena. Quantitative research happens by making precise numerical measurements and

1710-456: A critic: "The heroic element stands out. The worker, the farmer, the soldier are the themes .... Heroic subjects dominate over sentimental ones". With the advent of war, war paintings became far more common. The images were romanticized, depicting heroic sacrifice and victory. Still, landscapes predominated, and among the painters exempted from war service, all were noted for landscapes or other pacific subjects. Even Hitler and Goebbels found

1881-488: A cup of coffee made by a reliable coffee machine has the same value as an equally good cup of coffee made by an unreliable coffee machine. This difficulty in solving the value problem is sometimes used as an argument against reliabilism. Virtue epistemology, by contrast, offers a unique solution to the value problem. Virtue epistemologists see knowledge as the manifestation of cognitive virtues. They hold that knowledge has additional value due to its association with virtue. This

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2052-645: A destructive influence on our national life, and the closure of organizations opposing the above made demands. Nazis began plundering Jewish collections from 1933 in Germany with the Aryanization of Jewish art dealerships like that of Alfred Flechtheim and the transfer to non-Jewish owners. In each country occupied by the Nazis, including Austria, France, Holland and others, Jewish art collectors and art dealers were forced out of business and plundered as part of

2223-440: A dialectic terms: old gods were mobilized against the false values of the immediate past to offer legitimacy to the epiphany of Adolf Hitler and the music representation of his realm." Composers, librettists, educators, critics, and especially musicologists, through their public statements, intellectual writings, and journals contributed to the justification of a totalitarian blueprint to be implanted through nazification. All music

2394-678: A faction led by Rosenberg despised Expressionism, leading to a bitter ideological dispute which was settled only in September 1934, when Hitler declared that there would be no place for modernist experimentation in the Reich. Document No. 2030-PS : Decree Concerning the Duties of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda of June 1933 stated that: "The Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda has jurisdiction over

2565-408: A few works by jurist Ziegler himself." "...The show was essentially a flop and attendance was low. Sales were even worse and Hitler ended up buying most of the works for the government." At the end of four months Entartete Kunst had attracted over two million visitors, nearly three and a half times the number that visited the nearby Grosse deutsche Kunstausstellung . The early twentieth century

2736-493: A forerunner of the Internet (or, perhaps more appropriately, of systematic knowledge projects such as Misplaced Pages and WolframAlpha ), and Otlet himself had dreams that one day, somehow, all the information he collected could be accessed by people from the comfort of their own homes. An English pamphlet published in 1914 described it: The International Centre organises collections of world-wide importance. These collections are

2907-519: A form of inevitable ignorance that can affect both what is knowable about the external world as well as what one can know about oneself and about what is good. Some limits of knowledge only apply to particular people in specific situations while others pertain to humanity at large. A fact is unknowable to a person if this person lacks access to the relevant information, like facts in the past that did not leave any significant traces. For example, it may be unknowable to people today what Caesar 's breakfast

3078-477: A good reason for newly accepting both beliefs at once. A closely related issue is that there can be distinct sets of coherent beliefs. Coherentists face the problem of explaining why someone should accept one coherent set rather than another. For infinitists, in contrast to foundationalists and coherentists, there is an infinite number of reasons. This view embraces the idea that there is a regress since each reason depends on another reason. One difficulty for this view

3249-562: A large quantity of interlinked documents. His idea included the ability to send messages between researchers and to create virtual communities. Too early for computers, his plan made use of physical cards and telegraphs. The Mundaneum was originally housed at the Palais du Cinquantenaire in Brussels (Belgium). This was originally renamed Palais Mondial, before the name Mundaneum was adopted. Otlet commissioned architect Le Corbusier to design

3420-430: A letter, a newspaper, or a blog . The problem of testimony consists in clarifying why and under what circumstances testimony can lead to knowledge. A common response is that it depends on the reliability of the person pronouncing the testimony: only testimony from reliable sources can lead to knowledge. The problem of the limits of knowledge concerns the question of which facts are unknowable . These limits constitute

3591-492: A major center of avant-garde art. It was the birthplace of Expressionism in painting and sculpture , the atonal musical compositions of Arnold Schoenberg , and the jazz-influenced work of Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill . Robert Wiene 's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Fritz Lang 's Metropolis brought expressionism to cinema . In September 1933, the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Culture Chamber)

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3762-690: A manner to overtly undermine or challenge popular values and morality. In July 1937, two officially sponsored exhibitions opened in Munich : Entartete Kunst , (the Degenerate Art Exhibition ), displayed modern art in a deliberately chaotic installation accompanied by defamatory labels that encouraged the public to jeer; in contrast, the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung (Great German art exhibition) made its premiere amid much pageantry. This exhibition, held at

3933-566: A more explicit structure and is not articulated in terms of universal ideas. The term is often used in feminism and postmodernism to argue that many forms of knowledge are not absolute but depend on the concrete historical, cultural, and linguistic context. Explicit knowledge is knowledge that can be fully articulated, shared, and explained, like the knowledge of historical dates and mathematical formulas. It can be acquired through traditional learning methods, such as reading books and attending lectures. It contrasts with tacit knowledge , which

4104-469: A negative sense: many see it as a serious challenge to any epistemological theory and often try to show how their preferred theory overcomes it. Another form of philosophical skepticism advocates the suspension of judgment as a form of attaining tranquility while remaining humble and open-minded . A less radical limit of knowledge is identified by fallibilists , who argue that the possibility of error can never be fully excluded. This means that even

4275-489: A negative value. For example, if a person's life depends on gathering the courage to jump over a ravine, then having a true belief about the involved dangers may hinder them from doing so. Besides having instrumental value, knowledge may also have intrinsic value . This means that some forms of knowledge are good in themselves even if they do not provide any practical benefits. According to philosopher Duncan Pritchard , this applies to forms of knowledge linked to wisdom . It

4446-519: A pain or to confuse the experience of a slight ellipse for the experience of a circle. Perceptual and introspective knowledge often act as a form of fundamental or basic knowledge. According to some empiricists , they are the only sources of basic knowledge and provide the foundation for all other knowledge. Memory differs from perception and introspection in that it is not as independent or basic as they are since it depends on other previous experiences. The faculty of memory retains knowledge acquired in

4617-520: A person knows that cats have whiskers then this knowledge is dispositional most of the time and becomes occurrent while they are thinking about it. Many forms of Eastern spirituality and religion distinguish between higher and lower knowledge. They are also referred to as para vidya and apara vidya in Hinduism or the two truths doctrine in Buddhism . Lower knowledge is based on the senses and

4788-556: A practically useful characterization. Another approach, termed analysis of knowledge , tries to provide a theoretically precise definition by listing the conditions that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient , similar to how chemists analyze a sample by seeking a list of all the chemical elements composing it. According to a different view, knowledge is a unique state that cannot be analyzed in terms of other phenomena. Some scholars base their definition on abstract intuitions while others focus on concrete cases or rely on how

4959-472: A practice that aims to produce habits of action. There is still very little consensus in the academic discourse as to which of the proposed modifications or reconceptualizations is correct, and there are various alternative definitions of knowledge . A common distinction among types of knowledge is between propositional knowledge, or knowledge-that, and non-propositional knowledge in the form of practical skills or acquaintance. Other distinctions focus on how

5130-468: A priori knowledge exists as innate knowledge present in the mind of each human. A further approach posits a special mental faculty responsible for this type of knowledge, often referred to as rational intuition or rational insight. Various other types of knowledge are discussed in the academic literature. In philosophy, "self-knowledge" refers to a person's knowledge of their own sensations , thoughts , beliefs, and other mental states. A common view

5301-442: A proposition, one has to be acquainted with its constituents. The distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge depends on the role of experience in the processes of formation and justification. To know something a posteriori means to know it based on experience. For example, by seeing that it rains outside or hearing that the baby is crying, one acquires a posteriori knowledge of these facts. A priori knowledge

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5472-740: A refugee following the defeat of the Austrian Social Democratic Party in the Austrian Civil War . In 1936 the Mundaneum Institute launched the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science . When Nazi Germany invaded Belgium in 1940, the Mundaneum was replaced with an exhibit of Third Reich art , and some material was lost. The Mundaneum was reconstituted in a large but decrepit building in Leopold Park . It remained there until it

5643-536: A reliable source. This justification depends on the assumption that their source is reliable, which may itself be challenged. The same may apply to any subsequent reason they cite. This threatens to lead to an infinite regress since the epistemic status at each step depends on the epistemic status of the previous step. Theories of the structure of knowledge offer responses for how to solve this problem. Three traditional theories are foundationalism , coherentism , and infinitism . Foundationalists and coherentists deny

5814-414: A slightly different sense, self-knowledge can also refer to knowledge of the self as a persisting entity with certain personality traits , preferences , physical attributes, relationships, goals, and social identities . Metaknowledge is knowledge about knowledge. It can arise in the form of self-knowledge but includes other types as well, such as knowing what someone else knows or what information

5985-707: A specialist in 'Aryan' roles, which were greatly praised by the Nazis. Having had his fun, Reuss revealed he was a Jew, signed a contract with MGM, and departed for the United States". Apart from auctioning art that was to be purged from Germany's collection, Germany's art that was considered as especially favourable by Hitler were to be combined to create a massive art museum in Hitler's hometown of Linz , Austria for his own personal collection. The museum to-be by 1945 had thousands of pieces of furniture, paintings, sculptures and several other forms of fine craft. The museum

6156-405: A specific domain and is only possessed by experts. Situated knowledge is knowledge specific to a particular situation. It is closely related to practical or tacit knowledge, which is learned and applied in specific circumstances. This especially concerns certain forms of acquiring knowledge, such as trial and error or learning from experience. In this regard, situated knowledge usually lacks

6327-427: A sufficient degree of coherence among all the mental states of the believer is necessary for knowledge. According to infinitism, an infinite chain of beliefs is needed. The main discipline investigating knowledge is epistemology , which studies what people know, how they come to know it, and what it means to know something. It discusses the value of knowledge and the thesis of philosophical skepticism , which questions

6498-423: A that-clause. Propositional knowledge takes the form of mental representations involving concepts, ideas, theories, and general rules. These representations connect the knower to certain parts of reality by showing what they are like. They are often context-independent, meaning that they are not restricted to a specific use or purpose. Propositional knowledge encompasses both knowledge of specific facts, like that

6669-461: Is a widely accepted feature of knowledge. It implies that, while it may be possible to believe something false, one cannot know something false. That knowledge is a form of belief implies that one cannot know something if one does not believe it. Some everyday expressions seem to violate this principle, like the claim that "I do not believe it, I know it!" But the point of such expressions is usually to emphasize one's confidence rather than denying that

6840-434: Is able to pass that exam or by knowing which horse is the fastest, one can earn money from bets. In these cases, knowledge has instrumental value . Not all forms of knowledge are useful and many beliefs about trivial matters have no instrumental value. This concerns, for example, knowing how many grains of sand are on a specific beach or memorizing phone numbers one never intends to call. In a few cases, knowledge may even have

7011-411: Is already true. The problem of the value of knowledge is often discussed in relation to reliabilism and virtue epistemology . Reliabilism can be defined as the thesis that knowledge is reliably formed true belief. This view has difficulties in explaining why knowledge is valuable or how a reliable belief-forming process adds additional value. According to an analogy by philosopher Linda Zagzebski ,

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7182-420: Is also referred to as knowledge-that , as in "Akari knows that kangaroos hop". In this case, Akari stands in the relation of knowing to the proposition "kangaroos hop". Closely related types of knowledge are know-wh , for example, knowing who is coming to dinner and knowing why they are coming. These expressions are normally understood as types of propositional knowledge since they can be paraphrased using

7353-564: Is an active process in which sensory signals are selected, organized, and interpreted to form a representation of the environment. This leads in some cases to illusions that misrepresent certain aspects of reality, like the Müller-Lyer illusion and the Ponzo illusion . Introspection is often seen in analogy to perception as a source of knowledge, not of external physical objects, but of internal mental states . A traditionally common view

7524-552: Is applied to draw inferences from other known facts. For example, the perceptual knowledge of a Czech stamp on a postcard may give rise to the inferential knowledge that one's friend is visiting the Czech Republic. This type of knowledge depends on other sources of knowledge responsible for the premises. Some rationalists argue for rational intuition as a further source of knowledge that does not rely on observation and introspection. They hold for example that some beliefs, like

7695-528: Is argued that there is no perceptual knowledge of the external world. This thought experiment is based on the problem of underdetermination , which arises when the available evidence is not sufficient to make a rational decision between competing theories. In such cases, a person is not justified in believing one theory rather than the other. If this is always the case then global skepticism follows. Another skeptical argument assumes that knowledge requires absolute certainty and aims to show that all human cognition

7866-512: Is at home". Other types of knowledge include knowledge-how in the form of practical competence , as in "she knows how to swim", and knowledge by acquaintance as a familiarity with the known object based on previous direct experience, like knowing someone personally. Knowledge is often understood as a state of an individual person, but it can also refer to a characteristic of a group of people as group knowledge, social knowledge, or collective knowledge. Some social sciences understand knowledge as

8037-401: Is based on the idea that cognitive success in the form of the manifestation of virtues is inherently valuable independent of whether the resulting states are instrumentally useful. Acquiring and transmitting knowledge often comes with certain costs, such as the material resources required to obtain new information and the time and energy needed to understand it. For this reason, an awareness of

8208-427: Is called epistemology or the theory of knowledge. It examines the nature of knowledge and justification, how knowledge arises, and what value it has. Further topics include the different types of knowledge and the limits of what can be known. Despite agreements about the general characteristics of knowledge, its exact definition is disputed. Some definitions only focus on the most salient features of knowledge to give

8379-412: Is circular and requires interpretation, which implies that knowledge does not need a secure foundation. Coherentists and infinitists avoid these problems by denying the contrast between basic and non-basic reasons. Coherentists argue that there is only a finite number of reasons, which mutually support and justify one another. This is based on the intuition that beliefs do not exist in isolation but form

8550-608: Is contained in a scientific article. Other aspects of metaknowledge include knowing how knowledge can be acquired, stored, distributed, and used. Common knowledge is knowledge that is publicly known and shared by most individuals within a community. It establishes a common ground for communication, understanding, social cohesion, and cooperation. General knowledge encompasses common knowledge but also includes knowledge that many people have been exposed to but may not be able to immediately recall. Common knowledge contrasts with domain knowledge or specialized knowledge, which belongs to

8721-460: Is controversial whether all knowledge has intrinsic value, including knowledge about trivial facts like knowing whether the biggest apple tree had an even number of leaves yesterday morning. One view in favor of the intrinsic value of knowledge states that having no belief about a matter is a neutral state and knowledge is always better than this neutral state, even if the value difference is only minimal. A more specific issue in epistemology concerns

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8892-453: Is fallible since it fails to meet this standard. An influential argument against radical skepticism states that radical skepticism is self-contradictory since denying the existence of knowledge is itself a knowledge-claim. Other arguments rely on common sense or deny that infallibility is required for knowledge. Very few philosophers have explicitly defended radical skepticism but this position has been influential nonetheless, usually in

9063-409: Is impossible, meaning that one cannot know what is morally good or whether a certain behavior is morally right. An influential theory about the limits of metaphysical knowledge was proposed by Immanuel Kant . For him, knowledge is restricted to the field of appearances and does not reach the things in themselves , which exist independently of humans and lie beyond the realm of appearances. Based on

9234-415: Is knowledge acquired because of specific social and cultural circumstances, such as knowing how to read and write. Knowledge can be occurrent or dispositional . Occurrent knowledge is knowledge that is actively involved in cognitive processes. Dispositional knowledge, by contrast, lies dormant in the back of a person's mind and is given by the mere ability to access the relevant information. For example, if

9405-553: Is more to knowledge than just being right about something. These cases are excluded by requiring that beliefs have justification for them to count as knowledge. Some philosophers hold that a belief is justified if it is based on evidence , which can take the form of mental states like experience, memory , and other beliefs. Others state that beliefs are justified if they are produced by reliable processes, like sensory perception or logical reasoning. The definition of knowledge as justified true belief came under severe criticism in

9576-472: Is not aware of this, stops in front of the real barn by a lucky coincidence, and forms the justified true belief that they are in front of a barn. This example aims to establish that the person does not know that they are in front of a real barn, since they would not have been able to tell the difference. This means that it is a lucky coincidence that this justified belief is also true. According to some philosophers, these counterexamples show that justification

9747-552: Is not easily articulated or explained to others, like the ability to recognize someone's face and the practical expertise of a master craftsman. Tacit knowledge is often learned through first-hand experience or direct practice. Cognitive load theory distinguishes between biologically primary and secondary knowledge. Biologically primary knowledge is knowledge that humans have as part of their evolutionary heritage, such as knowing how to recognize faces and speech and many general problem-solving capacities. Biologically secondary knowledge

9918-415: Is not possible to know them because if a person knew about such an idea then this idea would have occurred at least to them. There are many disputes about what can or cannot be known in certain fields. Religious skepticism is the view that beliefs about God or other religious doctrines do not amount to knowledge. Moral skepticism encompasses a variety of views, including the claim that moral knowledge

10089-453: Is not required for knowledge and that knowledge should instead be characterized in terms of reliability or the manifestation of cognitive virtues . Another approach defines knowledge in regard to the function it plays in cognitive processes as that which provides reasons for thinking or doing something. A different response accepts justification as an aspect of knowledge and include additional criteria. Many candidates have been suggested, like

10260-436: Is often characterized as true belief that is distinct from opinion or guesswork by virtue of justification . While there is wide agreement among philosophers that propositional knowledge is a form of true belief, many controversies focus on justification. This includes questions like how to understand justification, whether it is needed at all, and whether something else besides it is needed. These controversies intensified in

10431-404: Is possible without any experience to justify or support the known proposition. Mathematical knowledge, such as that 2 + 2 = 4, is traditionally taken to be a priori knowledge since no empirical investigation is necessary to confirm this fact. In this regard, a posteriori knowledge is empirical knowledge while a priori knowledge is non-empirical knowledge. The relevant experience in question

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10602-446: Is primarily identified with sensory experience . Some non-sensory experiences, like memory and introspection, are often included as well. Some conscious phenomena are excluded from the relevant experience, like rational insight. For example, conscious thought processes may be required to arrive at a priori knowledge regarding the solution of mathematical problems, like when performing mental arithmetic to multiply two numbers. The same

10773-414: Is public, reliable, and replicable. This way, other researchers can repeat the experiments and observations in the initial study to confirm or disconfirm it. The scientific method is often analyzed as a series of steps that begins with regular observation and data collection. Based on these insights, scientists then try to find a hypothesis that explains the observations. The hypothesis is then tested using

10944-404: Is that inquiry should not aim for truth or absolute certainty but for well-supported and justified beliefs while remaining open to the possibility that one's beliefs may need to be revised later. The structure of knowledge is the way in which the mental states of a person need to be related to each other for knowledge to arise. A common view is that a person has to have good reasons for holding

11115-413: Is that introspection has a special epistemic status by being infallible. According to this position, it is not possible to be mistaken about introspective facts, like whether one is in pain, because there is no difference between appearance and reality. However, this claim has been contested in the contemporary discourse and critics argue that it may be possible, for example, to mistake an unpleasant itch for

11286-472: Is that self-knowledge is more direct than knowledge of the external world, which relies on the interpretation of sense data. Because of this, it is traditionally claimed that self-knowledge is indubitable, like the claim that a person cannot be wrong about whether they are in pain. However, this position is not universally accepted in the contemporary discourse and an alternative view states that self-knowledge also depends on interpretations that could be false. In

11457-414: Is that the human mind is limited and may not be able to possess an infinite number of reasons. This raises the question of whether, according to infinitism, human knowledge is possible at all. Knowledge may be valuable either because it is useful or because it is good in itself. Knowledge can be useful by helping a person achieve their goals. For example, if one knows the answers to questions in an exam one

11628-442: Is the case for the experience needed to learn the words through which the claim is expressed. For example, knowing that "all bachelors are unmarried" is a priori knowledge because no sensory experience is necessary to confirm this fact even though experience was needed to learn the meanings of the words "bachelor" and "unmarried". It is difficult to explain how a priori knowledge is possible and some empiricists deny it exists. It

11799-402: Is usually seen as unproblematic that one can come to know things through experience, but it is not clear how knowledge is possible without experience. One of the earliest solutions to this problem comes from Plato , who argues that the soul already possesses the knowledge and just needs to recollect, or remember, it to access it again. A similar explanation is given by Descartes , who holds that

11970-547: The Mona Lisa , and all were hidden in the Loc-Dieu Abbey located near Martiel during the chaos of invasion by German forces. Art dealers did their best to hide artwork in the best places possible; Paul Rosenberg managed to move over 150 great pieces to a Libourne bank, which included works by Monet , Matisse , Picasso, and van Gogh. Other collectors did whatever they could to remove France's artistic treasures to

12141-511: The Reich confiscate and reallocate countless masterpieces from occupied territories during the war, but also put to auction a large portion of Germany's collection of great art from museums and art galleries. In the end, the confiscation committees removed over 15,000 works of art from German public collections alone. It took four years to "refine" the Nazi art criteria; in the end what was tolerated

12312-438: The knowledge of one's own existence and the content of one's ideas. The view that basic reasons exist is not universally accepted. One criticism states that there should be a reason why some reasons are basic while others are not. According to this view, the putative basic reasons are not actually basic since their status would depend on other reasons. Another criticism is based on hermeneutics and argues that all understanding

12483-469: The senses , is identified as the most important source of empirical knowledge. Knowing that a baby is sleeping is observational knowledge if it was caused by a perception of the snoring baby. However, this would not be the case if one learned about this fact through a telephone conversation with one's spouse. Perception comes in different modalities, including vision , sound , touch , smell , and taste , which correspond to different physical stimuli . It

12654-770: The " blood and soil " values of racial purity , militarism , and obedience . Other popular themes for Nazi art were the Volk at work in the fields, a return to the simple virtues of Heimat (love of homeland), the manly virtues of the National Socialist struggle, and the lauding of the female activities of child bearing and raising symbolized by the phrase Kinder, Küche, Kirche ("children, kitchen, church"). In general, painting—once purged of "degenerate art"—was based on traditional genre painting . Titles were purposeful: "Fruitful Land", "Liberated Land", "Standing Guard", "Through Wind and Weather", "Blessing of Earth", and

12825-565: The 12th-century Old English word cnawan , which comes from the Old High German word gecnawan . The English word includes various meanings that some other languages distinguish using several words. In ancient Greek, for example, four important terms for knowledge were used: epistēmē (unchanging theoretical knowledge), technē (expert technical knowledge), mētis (strategic knowledge), and gnōsis (personal intellectual knowledge). The main discipline studying knowledge

12996-435: The 1920s and '30s were buzzing with jazz clubs , cabaret houses and avant-garde music . In contrast, the Nazi regime made concentrated efforts to shun modern music (which was considered degenerate and Jewish in nature) and instead embraced classical German music . Highly favored was music which alluded to a mythic, heroic German past such as Johann Sebastian Bach , Ludwig van Beethoven and Richard Wagner . Anton Bruckner

13167-488: The 1930s the Mitteilungen der Reichsmusikkammer became another prominent journal that reflected the music policy, organizational and personnel changes in musical institutions. In the early years of Nazi rule, the musicologists and musicians redirected the orientation of music, defining what was "German Music" and what was not. Nazi ideology was applied to the evaluation of musicians for hero status; musicians defined in

13338-463: The 20th century, when epistemologist Edmund Gettier formulated a series of counterexamples. They purport to present concrete cases of justified true beliefs that fail to constitute knowledge. The reason for their failure is usually a form of epistemic luck: the beliefs are justified but their justification is not relevant to the truth. In a well-known example, someone drives along a country road with many barn facades and only one real barn. The person

13509-594: The Artists , Adolf Hitler who came to power in 1933 (quote): "saw Greek and Roman art as uncontaminated by Jewish influences. Modern art was [perceived by him as] an act of aesthetic violence by the Jews against the German spirit. Such was true to Hitler – wrote Grosshans – even though only Liebermann , Meidner , Freundlich , and Marc Chagall , among those who made significant contributions to

13680-432: The German modernist movement, were Jewish. But Hitler ... took upon himself the responsibility of deciding who, in matters of culture, thought and acted like a Jew." The supposedly "Jewish" nature of art that was indecipherable, distorted, or that represented "depraved" subject matter was explained through the concept of degeneracy, which held that distorted and corrupted art was a symptom of an inferior race. By propagating

13851-519: The German population was literate. "The most widely-read-or displayed-book of the period was Hitler's Mein Kampf , a collection (according to Lion Feuchtwanger ) of 164,000 offences against German grammar and syntax; by 1940, it was, with 6 million copies sold, the solitary front-runner in the German best-seller list, some 5 million copies ahead of Rainer Maria Rilke and others." Richard Grunberger says, "In 1936 literary criticism as hitherto understood

14022-664: The Holocaust. Later, as the occupiers of Europe, the Germans trawled the museums and private collections of Europe for suitably "Aryan" art to be acquired to fill a bombastic new gallery in Hitler's home town of Linz . At first a pretense was made of exchanges of works (sometimes with Impressionist masterpieces, considered degenerate by the Nazis), but later acquisitions came through forced "donations" and eventually by simple looting. The purge of art in Germany and occupied countries

14193-708: The Institute for Journalism); Radio; National anthem; German Library in Leipzig; Art; Music (including the Philharmonic Orchestra); Theater; Moving Pictures; Campaign against dirty and obscene literature" ... Propaganda for tourism." Signed by The Reich Chancellor, Adolf Hitler. Document No. 2078-PS : Decree concerning the establishment of the Reichs Ministry of Science, Education and Popular Culture of 1 May 1934 stated that: "The Chancellor of

14364-787: The International Museum, the International Library, the International Bibliographic Catalogue and the Universal Documentary Archives. These collections are conceived as parts of one universal body of documentation, as an encyclopedic survey of human knowledge, as an enormous intellectual warehouse of books, documents, catalogues and scientific objects. Established according to standardised methods, they are formed by assembling cooperative everything that

14535-503: The Internet in Europe', the '100th Anniversary of a Nobel Peace Prize', and 'Mapping Knowledge'." The story of the Mundaneum, including its founding and subsequent replacement by Nazi Germany, is the subject of the book Mundaneum by Mel Croucher . Knowledge Knowledge is an awareness of facts , a familiarity with individuals and situations , or a practical skill . Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge,

14706-461: The Nazi period were Max Reger and Hans Pfitzner . Richard Strauss continued to be the most performed contemporary German composer, as he had been prior to the Nazi regime. However, even Strauss had his opera The Silent Woman banned in 1935 due to his Jewish librettist Stefan Zweig . Music by non-German composers was tolerated if it was classically inspired, tonal , and not by a composer of Jewish origin or having ties to ideologies hostile to

14877-452: The Nazi press as a documentary to emphasize the cinema as truth, when in reality it was nothing more than propaganda to raise hatred against the Jewish community in its viewers. The filmmaker, Fritz Hippler , used numerous visual techniques to portray Jews as a filthy, degenerate, and disease-infested population. Purporting to provide the viewer with an in-depth look at the Jewish lifestyle,

15048-748: The Nazi regime. The Nazis recognized Franz Liszt for having German origin and fabricated a genealogy that purported that Frédéric Chopin was German. The Nazi Governor-General of occupied Poland even had a "Chopin Museum" built in Kraków . Music of the Russian Peter Tchaikovsky could be performed in Nazi Germany even after Operation Barbarossa . Operas by Gioacchino Rossini , Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini got frequent play. The most-performed modern non-German composers prior to

15219-443: The Nazi seizure of Czechoslovakia, the conductor Karel Ančerl was blacklisted as a Jew and was sent in turn to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz . As the Nazi regime accrued power in 1933, musicologists were directed to rewrite the history of German music in order to accommodate Nazi mythology and ideology. Richard Wagner and Hans Pfitzner were now seen as composers who conceptualized a united order ( Volksgemeinschaft ) where music

15390-537: The Nazis' condemnation of Western society as corrupt. However, when the United States entered the war, all foreign authors were strictly censored. Themes in Nazi literature were defined as a range of "permissible literary expression" largely limited to four subjects: German war glorification, Nazism and race , blood and soil , and the Nazi movement ." Popular Nazi Germany authors included Agnes Miegel , Rudolf Binding , Werner Bumelburg and Börries von Münchhausen . This

15561-670: The Palais Mondial ("world palace"), and it occupied the left wing of the Palais du Cinquantenaire , a government building in Brussels. Otlet and La Fontaine organized an International Conference of International Associations, which was the origin of the Union of International Associations (UIA). Otlet regarded the project as the centrepiece of a new "world city"—a centrepiece, which eventually became an archive with more than 12 million index cards and documents. Some consider it

15732-595: The Reich will determine the various duties of the Reich Ministry for Science, Education, and Popular Culture." Signed by The President of the Reich, von Hindenburg, and The Chancellor of the Reich, Adolf Hitler. Document No. 1708-PS : The program of the NSDAP stated that: only members of the German race can be citizens (Jews, specifically are denied citizenship), and that non-members of the race can only live in Germany as registered 'guests'. Point 23 stated: "We demand legal prosecution of artistic and literary forms which exert

15903-489: The Reich's efforts to free Germany of conflicting art, authorities of the Nazi party realized the potential revenue of Germany's own collection of art that was considered degenerate art which was to be purged from German culture. The Reich began to collect and auction countless pieces of art—for example, "on June 30, 1939 a major auction took place at the elegant Grand Hotel National in the Swiss resort town of Lucerne ". All of

16074-470: The United States, which was used to insinuate that Jews withhold money from the government. Through the repetitive use of side angles of Jewish people, who were filmed (without knowledge) while looking over their shoulder at the camera, Der ewige Jude created a visual suggesting a shifty and conspiring nature of Jews. Yet another propaganda technique was superposition. Hippler superimposed the Star of David onto

16245-432: The abilities responsible for knowledge-how involve forms of knowledge-that, as in knowing how to prove a mathematical theorem, but this is not generally the case. Some types of knowledge-how do not require a highly developed mind, in contrast to propositional knowledge, and are more common in the animal kingdom. For example, an ant knows how to walk even though it presumably lacks a mind sufficiently developed to represent

16416-425: The atomic mass of gold is 196.97 u , and generalities, like that the color of leaves of some trees changes in autumn. Because of the dependence on mental representations, it is often held that the capacity for propositional knowledge is exclusive to relatively sophisticated creatures, such as humans. This is based on the claim that advanced intellectual capacities are needed to believe a proposition that expresses what

16587-444: The average sales value of the books produced took third place in the statistics on goods, after coal and wheat. The first Nazi literature commission set itself the goal of eradicating the literature of the 'System Period', as Weimar was contemptuously called, and of propagating volkisch-nationalist literature in the Nazis state. Literature was recognized early on as an essential political tool in Nazi Germany, as virtually 100 percent of

16758-437: The beginning of the war this department supervised no less than 2,500 publishing houses, 23,000 bookshops, 3,000 authors, 50 national literary prizes, 20,000 new books issued annually, and a total of 1 million titles constituting the available book market." Germany was Europe's biggest producer of books—in terms both of total annual production and the number of individual new titles appearing each year. In 1937, at 650 million RM,

16929-413: The behavior of genes , neutrinos , and black holes . A key aspect of most forms of science is that they seek natural laws that explain empirical observations. Scientific knowledge is discovered and tested using the scientific method . This method aims to arrive at reliable knowledge by formulating the problem in a clear way and by ensuring that the evidence used to support or refute a specific theory

17100-433: The best-researched scientific theories and the most fundamental common-sense views could still be subject to error. Further research may reduce the possibility of being wrong, but it can never fully exclude it. Some fallibilists reach the skeptical conclusion from this observation that there is no knowledge but the more common view is that knowledge exists but is fallible. Pragmatists argue that one consequence of fallibilism

17271-483: The blues, surrealism, cubism, and Dadaism." By 1935, the Reich Culture Chamber had 100,000 members. Goebbels made clear that: "In the future only those who are members of the chamber will be allowed to be productive in our cultural life. Membership is open only to those who fulfil the entrance condition. In this way all unwanted and damaging elements have been excluded." Nonetheless, there was, during

17442-636: The charge of the Registrar of the Exchequer Court of Canada where they were to remain until the end of the war. Similar shipments landed in New York. By the end of June, Hitler controlled most of the European continent. As people were detained, their possessions were confiscated; if they were lucky enough to escape, their belongings left behind or in storage became the property of Germany. By

17613-525: The corresponding proposition. Knowledge by acquaintance is familiarity with something that results from direct experiential contact. The object of knowledge can be a person, a thing, or a place. For example, by eating chocolate, one becomes acquainted with the taste of chocolate, and visiting Lake Taupō leads to the formation of knowledge by acquaintance of Lake Taupō. In these cases, the person forms non-inferential knowledge based on first-hand experience without necessarily acquiring factual information about

17784-421: The course of history. Knowledge is a form of familiarity, awareness , understanding , or acquaintance. It often involves the possession of information learned through experience and can be understood as a cognitive success or an epistemic contact with reality, like making a discovery. Many academic definitions focus on propositional knowledge in the form of believing certain facts, as in "I know that Dave

17955-406: The existence of an infinite regress, in contrast to infinitists. According to foundationalists, some basic reasons have their epistemic status independent of other reasons and thereby constitute the endpoint of the regress. Some foundationalists hold that certain sources of knowledge, like perception, provide basic reasons. Another view is that this role is played by certain self-evident truths, like

18126-479: The face of a tragic destiny—existed long before the rise of the Nazis; Richard Wagner celebrated such ideas in his work. Beginning before World War I the well-known German architect and painter Paul Schultze-Naumburg 's influential writings, which invoked racial theories in condemning modern art and architecture, supplied much of the basis for Adolf Hitler's belief that classical Greece and the Middle Ages were

18297-401: The faces, shapes, and colors all serve a propagandistic purpose; they are all the same stylized statements of Nazi virtues—power, strength, solidity, Nordic beauty." Art of Nazi Germany was characterized by a style of Romantic realism based on classical models . While banning modern styles as degenerate , the Nazis promoted paintings that were narrowly traditional in manner and that exalted

18468-446: The film showed staged scenes of Łódź (soon to be ghetto) with the presence of flies and rats, to suggest a dangerous-to-life area of Europe, which, in turn, only perpetuated underlying superstition and fear to the viewer. To add to this staged and exaggerated scene of filth was a warning released by officials of The Reich : an advisory that Łódź is an area of widespread infectious disease. The film director utilized racist cinema to bolster

18639-635: The force of law to a degree rarely known before. In the case of Germany, the model was to be classical Greek and Roman art , seen by Hitler as an art whose exterior form embodied an inner racial ideal. It was, furthermore, to be comprehensible to the average man. This art was to be both heroic and romantic . The Nazis viewed the culture of the Weimar period with disgust. Their response stemmed partly from conservative aesthetics and partly from their determination to use culture as propaganda . As indicated by historian Henry Grosshans in his book Hitler and

18810-447: The illusion that Jews were parasites and corruptors of German culture. Hippler made use of voice-overs to cite hate speeches or fictitious statistics of the Jewish population. He also borrowed numerous scenes from other films, and presented them out of context from the original: for example, a scene of a Jewish businessman in the United States hiding money was accompanied with a bogus claim that Jewish men get taxed more than non-Jews in

18981-441: The intellect. It encompasses both mundane or conventional truths as well as discoveries of the empirical sciences. Higher knowledge is understood as knowledge of God, the absolute , the true self , or the ultimate reality . It belongs neither to the external world of physical objects nor to the internal world of the experience of emotions and concepts. Many spiritual teachings stress the importance of higher knowledge to progress on

19152-470: The knowledge is acquired and on the content of the known information. Propositional knowledge, also referred to as declarative and descriptive knowledge, is a form of theoretical knowledge about facts, like knowing that "2 + 2 = 4". It is the paradigmatic type of knowledge in analytic philosophy . Propositional knowledge is propositional in the sense that it involves a relation to a proposition. Since propositions are often expressed through that-clauses, it

19323-693: The latter half of the 20th century due to a series of thought experiments called Gettier cases that provoked alternative definitions. Knowledge can be produced in many ways. The main source of empirical knowledge is perception , which involves the usage of the senses to learn about the external world. Introspection allows people to learn about their internal mental states and processes. Other sources of knowledge include memory , rational intuition , inference , and testimony . According to foundationalism , some of these sources are basic in that they can justify beliefs, without depending on other mental states. Coherentists reject this claim and contend that

19494-498: The like. Hitler's favorite painter was Adolf Ziegler and Hitler owned a number of his works. Landscape painting featured prominently in the Great German Art exhibition. While drawing on German Romanticism traditions, it was to be firmly based on real landscape, Germans' Lebensraum , without religious moods. Peasants were also popular images, reflecting a simple life in harmony with nature. This art showed no sign of

19665-412: The limits of knowledge is radical or global skepticism , which holds that humans lack any form of knowledge or that knowledge is impossible. For example, the dream argument states that perceptual experience is not a source of knowledge since dreaming provides unreliable information and a person could be dreaming without knowing it. Because of this inability to discriminate between dream and perception, it

19836-408: The mathematical belief that 2 + 2 = 4, are justified through pure reason alone. Testimony is often included as an additional source of knowledge that, unlike the other sources, is not tied to one specific cognitive faculty. Instead, it is based on the idea that one person can come to know a fact because another person talks about this fact. Testimony can happen in numerous ways, like regular speech,

20007-519: The mechanization of farm work. The farmer labored by hand, with effort and struggle. Not a single painting in the first exhibition showed urban or industrialized life, and only two in the exhibition in 1938. Nazi theory explicitly rejected "materialism", and therefore, despite the realistic treatment of images, "realism" was a seldom used term. A painter was to create an ideal picture, for eternity. The images of men, and still more of women, were heavily stereotyped, with physical perfection required for

20178-564: The military, which relies on intelligence to identify and prevent threats. In the field of education, the value of knowledge can be used to choose which knowledge should be passed on to the students. The scientific approach is usually regarded as an exemplary process of how to gain knowledge about empirical facts. Scientific knowledge includes mundane knowledge about easily observable facts, for example, chemical knowledge that certain reactants become hot when mixed together. It also encompasses knowledge of less tangible issues, like claims about

20349-595: The natural sciences often rely on advanced technological instruments to perform these measurements and to setup experiments. Another common feature of their approach is to use mathematical tools to analyze the measured data and formulate exact and general laws to describe the observed phenomena. Art of the Third Reich The Nazi regime in Germany actively promoted and censored forms of art between 1933 and 1945. Upon becoming dictator in 1933, Adolf Hitler gave his personal artistic preference

20520-491: The new German musical era were given titles of prophets, while their accomplishments and deeds were seen as direct accomplishments of the Nazi regime. The contribution of German musicologists led to the justification of Nazi power and a new German music culture in whole. The musicologists defined the greater German values that musicians would have to identify with, because their duty was to integrate music and Nazism in way that made them look inseparable. Nazi myth making and ideology

20691-546: The new paintings disappointing, although Goebbels tried to put a good face on it with the observation that they had cleared the field, and that these desperate times drew many talents into political life rather than cultural. In a speech at the Great German Art Exhibition in Munich Hitler said in 1939: The first goal of our new German creation of art [...] has surely been achieved. Analogous to

20862-435: The nude paintings. This may have been the cause of there being very few anti-Semitic paintings; while such works as Um Haus and Hof , depicting a Jewish speculator dispossessing an elderly peasant couple exist, they are few, perhaps because the art was supposed to be on a higher plane. Explicitly political paintings were more common but still very rare. Heroic imagery, on the other hand, was common enough to be commented on by

21033-420: The object. By contrast, it is also possible to indirectly learn a lot of propositional knowledge about chocolate or Lake Taupō by reading books without having the direct experiential contact required for knowledge by acquaintance. The concept of knowledge by acquaintance was first introduced by Bertrand Russell . He holds that knowledge by acquaintance is more basic than propositional knowledge since to understand

21204-421: The observation that metaphysics aims to characterize the things in themselves, he concludes that no metaphysical knowledge is possible, like knowing whether the world has a beginning or is infinite . There are also limits to knowledge in the empirical sciences, such as the uncertainty principle , which states that it is impossible to know the exact magnitudes of certain certain pairs of physical properties, like

21375-697: The outbreak of war were Claude Debussy , Maurice Ravel , Jean Sibelius and Igor Stravinsky . After the outbreak of war, the music of German allies became more often performed, including the Hungarian Béla Bartók , the Italian Ottorino Respighi and the Finn Jean Sibelius . Composers of enemy nations (such as Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky) were largely banned and almost never performed – although there were some exceptions. There has been controversy over

21546-438: The paintings and sculptures had recently been on display in museums throughout Germany. This collection offered over 100 paintings and sculptures by numerous famous artists, such as Henri Matisse , Vincent van Gogh , and Pablo Picasso ; all of which were considered "degenerate" pieces by Nazi authorities and were to be banished from Germany. An auction of this magnitude was viewed as suspicious by potential buyers, who feared that

21717-414: The palatial Haus der deutschen Kunst (House of German Art), displayed the work of officially approved artists such as Arno Breker and Adolf Wissel . "The audience entered the portals of the new museum, already dubbed "Palazzo Kitschi" and "Munich Art Terminal", to a stultifying display carefully limited to idealized German peasant families, commercial art nudes, and heroic war scenes, including not just

21888-465: The participating associations may gather or classify. Closely consolidated and coordinated in all of their parts and enriched by duplicates of all private works wherever undertaken, these collections will tend progressively to constitute a permanent and complete representation of the entire world (Union of International Associations, 1914, p. 116). Otlet created plans for a "réseau" or network of "electric telescopes" in 1934 to allow people to search through

22059-503: The past and makes it accessible in the present, as when remembering a past event or a friend's phone number. It is generally seen as a reliable source of knowledge. However, it can be deceptive at times nonetheless, either because the original experience was unreliable or because the memory degraded and does not accurately represent the original experience anymore. Knowledge based on perception, introspection, and memory may give rise to inferential knowledge, which comes about when reasoning

22230-553: The period 1933–1934, some confusion within the Party on the question of Expressionism . Goebbels and some others believed that the forceful works of such artists as Emil Nolde , Ernst Barlach and Erich Heckel exemplified the Nordic spirit; as Goebbels explained, "We National Socialists are not un-modern; we are the carrier of a new modernity, not only in politics and in social matters, but also in art and intellectual matters." However,

22401-416: The position and momentum of a particle, at the same time. Other examples are physical systems studied by chaos theory , for which it is not practically possible to predict how they will behave since they are so sensitive to initial conditions that even the slightest of variations may produce a completely different behavior. This phenomenon is known as the butterfly effect . The strongest position about

22572-702: The possibility of knowledge. Knowledge is relevant to many fields like the sciences , which aim to acquire knowledge using the scientific method based on repeatable experimentation , observation , and measurement . Various religions hold that humans should seek knowledge and that God or the divine is the source of knowledge. The anthropology of knowledge studies how knowledge is acquired, stored, retrieved, and communicated in different cultures. The sociology of knowledge examines under what sociohistorical circumstances knowledge arises, and what sociological consequences it has. The history of knowledge investigates how knowledge in different fields has developed, and evolved, in

22743-484: The profits would end up funding the Nazi party: "The auctioneer had been so worried about this perception that he had sent letters to leading dealers assuring them that all profits would be used for German museums". In reality, all of the proceeds from the auction were deposited into "German controlled-accounts", and the museums "... as all had suspected, did not receive a penny". Belief in a Germanic spirit—defined as mystical, rural, moral, bearing ancient wisdom, noble in

22914-471: The prohibition of practising art, agents of the Gestapo routinely made unexpected visits to artist's homes and studios. Wet brushes found during the inspections or even the smell of turpentine in the air was reason enough for arrest. In response to the oppressive restrictions, many artists chose to flee Germany. Before the impending war and a time of simply looting occupied nation's art treasures, but during

23085-467: The question of whether or why knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief. There is wide agreement that knowledge is usually good in some sense but the thesis that knowledge is better than true belief is controversial. An early discussion of this problem is found in Plato's Meno in relation to the claim that both knowledge and true belief can successfully guide action and, therefore, have apparently

23256-653: The recovering of architectural art which began here in Munich, here also started the purification in the sphere of painting and sculpture, that maybe had been even more devastated. The whole swindle of a decadent or pathological trend-art has been swept away. A decent common level has been reached. And this means a lot. Only out of this can the truly creative genius arise." By 1938, nearly 16,000 works by German and non-German artists had been seized from German galleries and either sold abroad or destroyed. The monumental possibilities of sculpture offered greater material expression of

23427-399: The requirements that the justified true belief does not depend on any false beliefs, that no defeaters are present, or that the person would not have the belief if it was false. Another view states that beliefs have to be infallible to amount to knowledge. A further approach, associated with pragmatism , focuses on the aspect of inquiry and characterizes knowledge in terms of what works as

23598-407: The road, showed the other side of German art : modern, abstract, non-representational—or as the Nazis saw it, "degenerate". According to Klaus Fischer, "Nazi art, in short, was colossal, impersonal, and stereotypical. People were shorn of all individuality and became mere emblems expressive of assumed eternal truths. In looking at Nazi architecture, art, or painting one quickly gains the feeling that

23769-546: The safest locations feasible at the time; filling cars, or large crates en route to Vichy , or south through France and into Spain to reach transport by boat. Art dealer Martin Fabiani , whom after WWII was arrested for his involvement in Nazi art looting, moved mass quantities of pictures: drawings and paintings from Lisbon destined for New York, however they were seized by the Royal Navy which relocated them to Canada, in

23940-479: The same value. For example, it seems that mere true belief is as effective as knowledge when trying to find the way to Larissa . According to Plato, knowledge is better because it is more stable. Another suggestion is that knowledge gets its additional value from justification. One difficulty for this view is that while justification makes it more probable that a belief is true, it is not clear what additional value it provides in comparison to an unjustified belief that

24111-588: The spiritual path and to see reality as it truly is beyond the veil of appearances . Sources of knowledge are ways in which people come to know things. They can be understood as cognitive capacities that are exercised when a person acquires new knowledge. Various sources of knowledge are discussed in the academic literature, often in terms of the mental faculties responsible. They include perception, introspection, memory, inference, and testimony. However, not everyone agrees that all of them actually lead to knowledge. Usually, perception or observation, i.e. using one of

24282-405: The term is used in ordinary language . There is also disagreement about whether knowledge is a rare phenomenon that requires high standards or a common phenomenon found in many everyday situations. An often-discussed definition characterizes knowledge as justified true belief. This definition identifies three essential features: it is (1) a belief that is (2) true and (3) justified . Truth

24453-422: The theories of Nazism . The Great German Art Exhibition promoted the genre of sculpture at the expense of painting. As such, the nude male was the most common representation of the ideal Aryan; the artistic skill of Arno Breker elevated him to become the favourite sculptor of Adolf Hitler. Josef Thorak was another official sculptor whose monumental style suited the image Nazi Germany wished to communicate to

24624-412: The theory of degenerate art , the Nazis combined their anti-Semitism with their drive to control the culture, thus consolidating public support for both campaigns. Their efforts in this regard were unquestionably aided by a popular hostility to Modernism that predated their movement. The view that such art had reflected Germany's condition and moral bankruptcy was widespread, and many artists acted in

24795-485: The tops of world capitals, insinuating an illusion of Jewish world domination. Der ewige Jude is notorious for its anti-Semitism and its use of cinema in the fabrication of propaganda, to satisfy Hitler and to embrace the Germanic ideology that would fuel a nation in support of an obsessive leader. "On the lighter side, a Jewish actor named Leo Reuss fled Germany to Vienna, where he dyed his hair and beard and became

24966-520: The true sources of Aryan art. Among the well-known artists endorsed by the Nazis were the sculptors Josef Thorak and Arno Breker , and painters Werner Peiner , Arthur Kampf , Adolf Wissel and Conrad Hommel . In July 1937, four years after it came to power, the Nazi party put on two art exhibitions in Munich . The Great German Art Exhibition was designed to show works that Hitler approved of, depicting statuesque blonde nudes along with idealized soldiers and landscapes. The second exhibition, just down

25137-464: The typeface as "Judenlettern" and decreed that only Roman type should be used. Modern sans-serif typefaces were condemned as cultural Bolshevism , although Futura continued to be used owing to its practicality. Imagery frequently drew on heroic realism . Nazi youth and the SS were depicted monumentally, with lighting posed to produce grandeur. Graphic design also played a part in Nazi Germany through

25308-593: The use of certain composers' music by the Nazi regime, and whether that implicates the composer as implicitly Nazi. Composers such as Richard Strauss, who served as the first director of the Propaganda Ministry's music division, and Carl Orff have been subject to extreme criticism and heated defense. Jews were quickly prohibited from performing or conducting classical music in Germany. Such conductors as Otto Klemperer , Bruno Walter , Ignatz Waghalter , Josef Krips , and Kurt Sanderling fled Germany. Upon

25479-500: The use of the swastika . The swastika was in existence long before Hitler came into power—serving purposes that were much more benign than the ones it [the swastika] is associated with today. Because of the stark, graphic lines used to create a swastika, it was a symbol that was very easy to remember. The Reich Chamber of Literature Reichsschriftstumskammer Literature was under the jurisdiction of Goebbels's Ministry of Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment. According to Grunberger, "At

25650-438: The value of knowledge is crucial to many fields that have to make decisions about whether to seek knowledge about a specific matter. On a political level, this concerns the problem of identifying the most promising research programs to allocate funds. Similar concerns affect businesses, where stakeholders have to decide whether the cost of acquiring knowledge is justified by the economic benefits that this knowledge may provide, and

25821-454: The war; thereafter, dance bands officially played " swing " rather than the banned jazz. A film premiered in Berlin on November 28, 1940, which was clearly a tool used to promote Nazi Ideology. The release of the film Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew) was only two months prior to the announcement made by German officials of the establishment of the ghetto in Łódź . The film was portrayed in

25992-648: The whole field of spiritual indoctrination of the nation, of propagandizing the State, of cultural and economic propaganda, of enlightenment of the public at home and abroad; furthermore, he is in charge of the administration of all institutions serving these purposes". This increased the jurisdiction of the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda to include "enlightenment in foreign countries; art; art exhibitions; moving pictures and sport abroad" ... [and increased jurisdiction in domestic] "Press (including

26163-405: The world is like. Non-propositional knowledge is knowledge in which no essential relation to a proposition is involved. The two most well-known forms are knowledge-how (know-how or procedural knowledge ) and knowledge by acquaintance. To possess knowledge-how means to have some form of practical ability , skill, or competence , like knowing how to ride a bicycle or knowing how to swim. Some of

26334-498: The world. Nude females were also common, though they tended to be less monumental. In both cases, the physical form of the ideal Nazi man and woman showed no imperfections. Music was expected to be tonal and free of jazz influence; films and plays were censored . "Musical fare alternated between light music in the form of folk songs or popular hits ( Schlager ) and such acceptable classical music as Bach , Mozart , Beethoven , and Italian Opera ." Germany's urban centers in

26505-594: The ‘German viewpoint,’ entrenched in Wagnerian ideals, like the Zeitschrift für Musik and Die Musik , showed confidence in the new regime and affirmed the process of intertwining government policies with music. Joseph Goebbels used the Völkischer Beobachter , a journal that was disseminated to the general public in addition to elites and party officials, as an organ of Reich Culture. By the end of

26676-666: The ‘decadence’ of modern art and pushed his planners to create monumental buildings in older neoclassical or art deco styles." "The Reich Film Chamber ( Reichsfilmkammer ) controlled the lively German film industry, while a Film Credit Bank (also under Goebbels' control) centralized the financial aspects of film production." Approximately 1,363 feature pictures were made during Nazi rule (208 of these were banned after World War II for containing Nazi Propaganda). Every film made in Nazi Germany (including features, shorts, newsreels, and documentaries) had to be passed by Joseph Goebbels himself before they could be shown in public. Mass culture

26847-687: Was Hermann Lons 's Wehrwolf published in 1910. Klaus Fischer says Nazi literature emphasized "Historic Ethnicity—that is, how a group of people defines itself in a process of historical growth. Writers tried to highlight prominent episodes in the history of the German people; they stressed the German mission for Europe, analyzed the immutable racial essence of Nordic man, and warned against subversive or un-German forces—the Jews, Communists, or Western liberals." Prominent writers included: Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer ( Die Bauhutte: Elemente einer Metaphysik der Gerenwart ; The building hut: Elements of

27018-422: Was abolished; henceforth reviews followed a pattern: a synopsis of content studded with quotations, marginal comments on style, a calculation of the degree of concurrence with Nazi doctrine and a conclusion indicating approval or otherwise." The Nazis permitted much foreign literature to be read, in part because they believed that the writings of authors such as John Steinbeck and Erskine Caldwell substantiated

27189-892: Was an index of the German community. In a time of disintegration, Wagner and Pfitzner wanted to revitalize the country through music. In a book written about Hans Pfitzner and Wagner, published in Regensburg in 1939 followed not only the birth of contemporary musical parties, but also of political parties in Germany. The Wagner-Pfitzner stance contrasted ideas of other notable artists, such as Arnold Schoenberg and Theodor W. Adorno , who wanted music to be autonomous from politics, Nazi control and application. Although Wagner and Pfitzner predated Nazism, their sentiments and thoughts, Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk , were appropriated by Hitler and his propagandists—notably Joseph Goebbels . According to Michael Meyer, "The very emphasis on rootedness and on tradition music underscored Nazi understanding of itself in

27360-445: Was characterized by startling changes in artistic styles. In the visual arts, such innovations as cubism , Dada and surrealism , following hot on the heels of Symbolism , post-Impressionism and Fauvism , were not universally appreciated. The majority of people in Germany, as elsewhere, did not care for the new art which many resented as elitist, morally suspect and too often incomprehensible. During recent years, Germany had become

27531-562: Was established, with Joseph Goebbels , Hitler's Reichsminister für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda ) in charge. Individual divisions in the Chamber of Culture for the Reich included: "press, radio, literature, movies, theater, music, and visual arts." "The purpose of this chamber was to stimulate the Aryanization of German culture and to prohibit, for example, atonal Jewish music,

27702-503: Was extremely broad. The Nazi theft is considered to be the largest art theft in modern history including paintings, furniture, sculptures, and anything in between considered either valuable, or opposing Hitler's purification of German culture. During the Second World War, art theft by German forces was devastating, and the resurfacing of missing stolen art continues today, along with the fight for rightful ownership. Not only did

27873-518: Was forced to move again in 1972. The Mundaneum has since been relocated to a converted 1930s department store in Mons ( Wallonia ), where the existing museum opened in 1998. On August 23, 2015, a Google Doodle depicting the Mundaneum filing cabinets was released. The Doodle was meant to pay tribute to the creators of the Mundaneum as pioneers of open information. On Android phones, "The Mundaneum App offers visitors 3 unique experiences that delve into its rich and influential including 'The Origins of

28044-496: Was forced upon the new musical path of Germany rather than truly embedded in the rhetoric of German music. The poster became an important medium for propaganda during this period. Combining text and bold graphics, posters were extensively deployed both in Germany and in the areas occupied. Their typography reflected the Nazis' official ideology. The use of Fraktur was common in Germany until 1941, when Martin Bormann denounced

28215-601: Was highly favored, as his music was regarded as an expression of the zeitgeist of the German volk . The music of Arnold Schoenberg (and atonal music along with it), Gustav Mahler , Felix Mendelssohn and many others was banned because the composers were Jewish or of Jewish origin. Paul Hindemith fled to Switzerland in 1938, rather than fit his music into Nazi ideology. Some operas of Georg Friedrich Händel were either banned outright for themes sympathetic to Jews and Judaism or had new librettos written for them. German composers who had their music performed more often during

28386-616: Was less stringently regulated than high culture, possibly because the authorities feared the consequences of too heavy-handed interference in popular entertainment. Thus, until the outbreak of the war, most Hollywood films could be screened, including It Happened One Night , San Francisco , and Gone with the Wind . While performance of atonal music was banned, the prohibition of jazz was less strictly enforced. Benny Goodman and Django Reinhardt were popular, and leading English and American jazz bands continued to perform in major cities until

28557-744: Was one of the most popular themes during the interwar period. Writers celebrated the "heroics of front-line soldiers in [World War I], ... the thrill of combat and the sacredness of death when it is in the service of the fatherland." Popular writers in this genre included Ernst Jünger and Werner Beumelburg (de) , an ex-officer. Prominent books include Ernst Junger 's Storm of Steel (1920), Struggle as Inner Experience (1922), Storms (1933), Fire and Blood (1925), The Adventurous Heart (1929), and Total Mobilization (1931). Novels in this theme often featured an instinctive and soil-bound peasant community that warded off alien outsiders who sought to destroy their way of life. The most popular novel of this kind

28728-529: Was the day he was assassinated but it was knowable to him and some contemporaries. Another factor restricting knowledge is given by the limitations of the human cognitive faculties. Some people may lack the cognitive ability to understand highly abstract mathematical truths and some facts cannot be known by any human because they are too complex for the human mind to conceive. A further limit of knowledge arises due to certain logical paradoxes . For instance, there are some ideas that will never occur to anyone. It

28899-456: Was then composed for the occasions of Nazi pageantries, rallies, and conventions. Composers dedicated so called 'consecration fanfares,' inaugurations fanfares and flag songs to the Fuhrer. When the Fuhrer assumed power the Nazi revolution was immediately expressed in musicological journalism. Certain progressive journalism pertaining to modern music was purged. Journals that had been sympathetic to

29070-427: Was to be known as the " Führermuseum ". By the late spring of 1940 art collectors and museum curators were in a race against time to move thousands of pieces of collectables into hiding, or out of soon-to-be-occupied territory where it would be vulnerable to confiscation by German officials—either for themselves or for Hitler. On June 5, a particularly important movement of thousands of paintings occurred, which included

29241-480: Was whatever Hitler liked, and whatever was most useful to the German government from the point of view of creating propaganda. A thorough head-hunting of artists within Germany was in effect from the beginning of the Second World War, which included the elimination of countless members within the art community. Museum directors that supported modern art were attacked; artists that refused to comply with Reich-approved art were forbidden to practise art altogether. To enforce

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