Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Two nineteenth-century riots

A watershed event in American business history was the Homestead Riot of 1892. At the Homestead Steel Works near Pittsburgh, union leaders and workers rejected wage cuts proposed by owner Andrew Carnegie and plant manager Henry Frick. Negotiations failed, a strike began, the plant was closed, workers armed themselves, the Pinkertons were called in, and a battle ensued, killing three Pinkertons and nine workers.

But did you also know about the riot at New York’s Astor Place Opera House in 1849, in which angry factions clashed over the proper theatrical interpretation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth? One faction preferred the “ruggedly masculine” and “forceful acting style” of Edwin Forrest, while the other advocated the “more restrained” approach of William Macready. Critics pronounced, insults were slung, tempers flared, one night the crowd went wild, the state militia was called in, and twenty-two people were killed.

So: Twelve people were killed over a wage dispute, while twenty-two were killed at the theatre. Interesting times when riots over Shakespeare can be more deadly than riots over money.

My interview for ReelNews on art and free markets

I was interviewed recently by Prodos Marinakis, Secretary of the Australian Council of Film Societies, on the theme “Two Views on Cinema & Capitalism.”

From the interview’s description: “The highly articulate pioneers and founders of the Film Society Movement of Australia, like Ken Coldicutt of Melbourne and Beatrice Tildesley of Sydney, were critical of Capitalism and its effects on cinema and the Arts. Prodos pitches their arguments to Dr Stephen Hicks, a documentary filmmaker, Professor of Philosophy at Rockford College, USA, and the author of Explaining PostModernism.”

Coldicutt was an Australian Communist. Tildesley advocated using both encouragement and censorship to create a morally and aesthetically high film culture. Prodos put their arguments to me for response.

The interview came about in connection with my current video documentary project When Art Flourishes. Shooting begins this winter.

Related posts:
Talk at Liberty Fund on art and free markets.
Artists, Capitalists, and the Fate of Art under Capitalism.

Michael Strong on Socratic teaching

I like this paragraph from Michael Strong’s The Habit of Thought:

“The effort of Socratic Practice is to develop students’ own standard of intellectual judgment by means of placing the onus of responsibility for understanding entirely on them and providing them with the tools and experiences necessary to develop their intellectual judgment. ‘Does it make sense to you?’ is the central question to students whenever we are working to understand a text. As long as the student knows that, whether by didactic instruction or by subtle conversational manipulation, she will ultimately be led to the ‘right’ answer, she will never rely on her own judgment in the deepest sense. In order to come to rely on her judgment, and to feel a need to refine it, she must continually be put in situations where she is completely on her own.” (p. 15)

This semester Marsha Enright and I are experimenting with Socratic Seminars in my Philosophical Foundations of Education course. So far we have done sessions with selections from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave [pdf] from The Republic, John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education [pdf], and John Dewey’s Democracy in Education [pdf] .

“Why Art Became Ugly” — Spanish translation

A Spanish translation of my “Why Art Became Ugly” has been published online. I do not know the translator, but to him or her I say: “Thanks!”

The original piece was published in English in Navigator in 2004 and is now online here and has been translated into German [pdf], and Korean [pdf]. It’s also included as a supplement in the Expanded Edition of my Explaining Postmodernism.

Kindle edition of Explaining Postmodernism, Expanded Edition, now available

The Kindle version of the new, Expanded Edition of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault is now available. The hardcover will be out next month.

The expanded edition also includes my Free Speech and Postmodernism and From Modern to Postmodern Art: Why Art Became Ugly essay. Images of the art works discussed and referred to in the latter essay are available at a dedicated page at my website here.

More on the Expanded Edition here.

Talk at Liberty Fund on art and free markets

Earlier this week I gave a talk in Indianapolis at the excellent Liberty Fund on whether free-market capitalism is good or bad for art.

The question matters in today’s intellectual context because thinkers on both left and right argue regularly that art suffers under free market systems. Traditional conservatives such as Robert Bork and neo-conservatives such as Irving Kristol believe that capitalism’s freedom allows and encourages us to indulge our basest impulses, which means irrational and immoral work comes to dominate the art world. Meanwhile leftish thinkers such as Benjamin Barber and Richard Brustein believe that capitalism’s mass market means that middlebrow taste is where the money is, which seduces true artists to sell out for the lowest common denominator.

My view is that both left and right are badly wrong on this issue. The talk I gave at Liberty Fund comes out of my current documentary and book project with the working title The Fate of Art under Capitalism. In the talk I focused mostly on one strand of my overall argument — the historical thesis that the outstanding eras in art history have all arisen in cultures that had relatively free markets and democratic or republican politics. Classical Athens, Renaissance Florence, the Dutch Golden Age, and nineteenth-century Paris all fit this pattern.

The question-and-answer session after my talk was a lively discussion of a wide variety of examples of cultures — ancient Egypt, Naples in the Renaissance, Elizabethan England, China — and whether their art achievements supported or contradicted my thesis. Great fun, for which I thank the participants. Thanks also to philosopher Douglas Den Uyl for the invitation.

Liberty Fund, in case you are not familiar with it, is an organization that sponsors a wide variety of conferences for academics. It also hosts the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, a widely-used resource, especially for students, in economics, business, political science, and public policy; Econlog, the web log of three very smart and clear-writing economists, Bryan Caplan, David Henderson, and Arnold Kling; and Russ Roberts’s EconTalk, an ongoing series of podcasts devoted to interviews with a wide range of economists on timely subjects. Liberty Fund’s site also hosts an astounding free online collection of books and essays from the history of economics, history, political theory, and philosophy. Over the past few years I’ve used many of them in my courses.

[Images: The statue is the Riace Warrior (c. 450 BCE). The symbol, which Liberty Fund uses as its logo, is the ancient Sumerian cuneiform "amagi," which is thought to be first written reference to the concept of liberty.]

Atlas movie outing for Rockford College students

Update: The movie is now playing in Janesville but not Rockford. So we are heading up to Janesville’s Wildwood theatre for the 7:10 p.m. showing of Saturday, May 7. Here is a Google map.

Free movie outing this weekend for Rockford College students.

See the new Atlas Shrugged movie this weekend.

Cost to students: Free. Courtesy of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, which will buy your ticket (but not your popcorn).

Where: Showplace 16, 8301 East State Street, Rockford, IL 61108.

When: Saturday, May 7. The movie starts at 4:20 p.m. Please arrive at Showplace 16 by 4:15. Look for Professor Stephen Hicks or Professor Shawn Klein.

About the movie:
Based on the novel by Ayn Rand
MPAA Rating: PG-13 Length: 1 hr 42 min
Genre: Drama
Director: Paul Johansson Screenplay: Brian Patrick O’Toole and John Aglialoro
Cast: Taylor Schilling, Edi Gathegi, Paul Johansson, Michael O’Keefe
Synopsis: With American society in decay, railroad magnate Dagny Taggart begins to notice the mysterious disappearance of the world’s leading artists, businessmen and thinkers. While struggling to keep her business afloat despite an economic crisis marked by collectivism and groupthink, Dagny soon discovers the truth about an organized “strike” against those who use the force of law and moral guilt to confiscate the accomplishments of society’s productive members.

Here’s a flier with the above information [pdf].

Dagny and Nike

Now I remember what this picture of Dagny Taggart reminded me of.

Works of art, indeed.