“With his Fountain (1917), Duchamp made the quintessential statement about the history and future of art. Duchamp of course knew the history of art and, given recent trends, where art was going. He knew what had been achieved — how over the centuries art had been a powerful vehicle that called upon the highest development of the human creative vision and demanded exacting technical skill; and he knew that art had an awesome power to exalt the senses, the minds, and the passions of those who experience it. With his urinal, Duchamp offered presciently a summary statement. The artist is not a great creator — Duchamp went shopping at a plumbing store. The artwork is not a special object — it was mass-produced in a factory. The experience of art is not exciting and ennobling — it is puzzling and leaves one with a sense of distaste. But over and above that, Duchamp did not select just any ready-made object to display. He could have selected a sink or a door-knob. In selecting the urinal, his message was clear: Art is something you piss on.”
In my Philosophy of Art course, we are discussing Plato’s philosophy of art, by means of selections from Statesman and Books 3 and 10 of The Republic, along with snippets from Ion, Phaedrus, and Symposium.
In The Republic, Plato makes a systematic case for censoring all arts. The task of the Platonic philosopher is to take up the “ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry” [607b] and to assert the State-enforced dominance of philosophy. To that end, The Republic as a whole is a powerful integration of philosophy, religion, education, and politics, and its argument for the political suppression of most art follows from that integrated system.
Rhetorically, Plato uses Socrates’ discussion with Glaucon and Adeimantus to list a series of grievances against poetry, music, and painting:
* A good portrait of the gods and heroes will show them as worthy and exalted beings — but poets such as Homer and Hesiod often tell tales of the gods and heroes fighting and bickering and acting immorally [e.g., 390b-391e].
* A moral citizen’s soul will be composed and dignified — but many musical modes stir us up inside and make us jangled and unsettled [398e-400d.].
* Good people and gods do not deceive — but painters constantly deceive us by trying to make their fake imitations look real [598c, 602d]. (Meanwhile, Plato allows that politicians (and only politicians) ought to be allowed to lie to their citizens [389b-c].)
* A strong and moral man will not grieve the death of a friend by moaning and wailing like a woman — but poets regularly have their characters issue long, pathetic lamentations [387d-388d].
* Courageous men are willing to die in battle — but the poets tell scary stories about the afterlife and make us fear death [386b-d].
* A proper moral of the story will teach that good people meet good ends and bad men meet bad ends [613d-614a] — but tragic poets have will often have bad men profit and protagonists fail and suffer despite their virtues [392b].
* Decent people respect and strive for worthiness — but comic poets appeal to our basest desires and mock and deride everything [e.g., 395d-e, 606c].
And so on.
The Republic’s overall argument for censorship thus combines a particular conception of morality with religion and authoritarian politics. Formalizing the argument:
1. To have a good society, we must have good citizens.
2. To have good citizens, children must be well educated. 3. To be well educated, children must be exposed to good material and shielded from bad material [386a].
4. So, to have a good society, children must be exposed to good material and shielded from bad material.
5. It is the obligation of the State to educate its citizens.
6. So the State should allow only good material and suppress bad material.
7. The State’s censorship applies also to art.
8. So the State should allow only good art and suppress bad art [401b, 595a].
[Next: Evaluating Plato's argument for censoring the arts. Return to the Intellectual History page.]
More data showing that culture, not race, is crucial to educational performance: “Africans outperform African-Americans in Seattle schools: Even the children of destitute Somali refugees do better.” From the Seattle Times report: “African-American students whose primary language is English perform significantly worse in math and reading than black students who speak another language at home — typically immigrants or refugees.”
Also relevant is the great education work by NFTE, successfully teaching entrepreneurship to low-income students, giving them the knowledge and skill set to overcome their cultural deprivations, and Marva Collins’ classic achievements.
And fundamentally relevant are those individuals of any race or culture who decide to make something of themselves no matter what.
Here is a simplified flowchart, developed for my business ethics courses, reflecting my understanding of subprime mortgages’ contribution to the crisis.
Let me emphasize that this is only about the subprime contribution of the overall crisis. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac enabled much spillover into non-subprime mortgage sectors, government-set capital requirements and other regulations enabled the AAA ratings of mortgage-based securities that encouraged speculators, and there were plenty of imprudent and unscrupulous characters in the private sector too.
One of my talks at Francisco Marroquín University was on making sense of our mixed economy–an unwieldy combination of market and socialist elements. The 28-minute talk integrates themes from my intellectual heroes–Smith, Mill, Mises, Hayek, Rand, Popper, Friedman, Buchanan, and Tullock–and connects market economics, politics, ethics, history, and public choice to explaining our semi-coherent mixed economy. The flowchart worked through is online here.
Entrepreneurship and Fashion Design. The latest issue of Kaizen features my interview with entrepreneur Chan Luu, whose designs have been worn by many celebrities, including Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, Kate Hudson, Reese Witherspoon, Sandra Bullock, Janet Jackson, and Jennifer Aniston.
I met with Luu in Los Angeles to discuss growing up in Vietnam, the relevance of business education to entrepreneurial success, and the complexities of doing business in the fast-changing world of celebrities and fashion.
Also featured in this issue of Kaizen [pdf] are student essay contest winners Farzaneh Farhangi, Kelly Foster, and Rebecca Robinson, guest speaker Douglas Den Uyl, who visited us from Indianapolis, and, guest speakers Federico Fernández and Martin Sarano, who visited us from Argentina.
