“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)
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.
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.
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.]
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.
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.
As someone who read and loved the book, this movie totally worked for me.
Schilling’s Dagny is intelligent, emotionally expressive, and beautiful. Bowler’s Hank Rearden is equally intelligent and competent, with occasionally bemused, understated humor and equally occasionally understated anger. And the sexual chemistry between the two — yes, indeed.
Wisocky is tone-perfect as that bitch, Lillian Rearden. The casting of Marsden as James won me over — he could be good-looking, but his inner Jim-Taggart character weasels out and undercuts his potential.
Rand’s original novel is philosophically principled and stylized romantically, so it grates on the nerves of those who are intellectually opposed to a free society and/or who are emotionally cynical or neutered. For the same reasons, the movie will have its automatic opponents.
Also, the movie’s script is a highly essentialized version of the thematically jam-packed original novel, so I sense that the pace of the movie will be a challenge for those who haven’t read the book. (I’ll be curious to hear from those who only see the movie, though.)
Yet the movie is a very satisfying ride for those, like me, who know and resonate with the novel.
Looking forward to Part II.
Posted 1 year, 1 month ago at 8:13 pm. 10 comments
“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) 
About the movie:
