Category: ideas

“There has always been a certain incommensurability between political activities that depend on mass mobilization and the idiosyncratic sensibility of the aesthete — even the public-spirited, politically active aesthete. For every argument that aesthetic concerns are a luxury in the face of political injustice, there is the rebuttal that aesthetic freedom is as necessary for the human spirit as any political right.”

Why is academic writing so bad? “One reason academic bad writing is evergreen is vocational. The bad writing in question is not the merely quotidian clunkiness and hack writing that’s inevitable in a vast profession under constant pressure to publish – it’s the notoriously opaque, preening, self-admiring, inflated prose of ‘theory.’ And for the moment, for whatever bizarre reason, ‘theory’ is what gets promoted and given tenure, therefore aspiring Assistant Professors and adjuncts have to crank it out, whether they actually like doing the stuff or not. But another reason, and one with a more malign effect, is the easy availability of an array of defense mechanisms.”

“Only two decades ago, the central principle of anti-racism was that all individuals in our society should be treated equally, regardless of ethnic origin or religion. Yet through multiculturalism, the malign ideological spawn of anti-discrimination, we have moved far away from that stance. We are now told that, in the name of ‘celebrating diversity’, we must respect every aspect of every culture in our midst. Not only must we act correctly in word and deed, but, more importantly, we must also be trained to harbour no negative thoughts about the behaviour of any other ethnic group. This outlook is utterly inimical to personal freedom and equality before the law, the very pillars of our civilisation.”

“My theory is that in all areas of creative human endeavor, the presence of true talent is almost always the kiss of death. It’s no accident that three people who were tragically forced into bankruptcy late in their lives were Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, and Mark Twain. It’s no fluke of fate that Schubert died shortly after giving the world the Unfinished Symphony. You probably wouldn’t have finished it either if you had syphilis and twelve cents in your pocket. Or how would you like to have died at age 29 in the back seat of a Cadillac? If you’re Hank Williams, that’s what talent got you. But what is talent? And why would anyone in his right mind want it? As Albert Einstein often said, ‘I don’t know’.”

Terry Teachout ponders Charles Murray’s attempts to statistically analyze “greatness.” “The question of whether or not it is possible to demonstrate objectively the existence of absolute standards of aesthetic quality will probably always remain open. That such absolute standards do exist, however, seems to me indisputable. No matter how aggressively postmodern thinkers may deny the significance of the consensus of judgment—or the overwhelming dominance of Western culture—the whole of human history and experience is arrayed against them. It cannot be coincidental that, as Clement Greenberg observed, ‘the people who try hardest and look hardest end up, over the ages, by agreeing with one another in the main’.”