When composer Igor Stravinksy met Pablo Picasso in Italy in 1917, Picasso drew Stravinsky and gave him the portrait as a gift. But when Stravinksy tried to cross the border with it, he was suspected of attempting to smuggle secret plans out of the country. As Stravinsky tells it in his autobiography: “I shall never […]
Interpreting Picasso — amusing anecdote from Stravinksy Read More »
George Orwell in 1944: “To admit that an opponent might be both honest and intelligent is felt to be intolerable. It is more immediately satisfying to shout that he is a fool or a scoundrel, or both, than to find out what he is really like. It is this habit of mind, among other things,
Year 1500 context: 50 years earlier Gutenberg had developed his printing press, eight years earlier Columbus had crossed the Atlantic, Michelangelo had just finished his Pietà, Luther was in school, and Copernicus was in university. Fewer than 10% of Europeans were literate. Source: Robert C. Allen, Global Economic History, Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 26.
Literacy Rates in Early Modernity Read More »
“The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth: and this without a particle of regard to the results to which the exercise of
Liberal Education vs. Indoctrination (quotation from J.S. Mill when younger) Read More »
In her Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in 20th-Century Art, Wendy Steiner, a professor of literature at Penn, argues that “In modernism, the perennial rewards of aesthetic experience — pleasure, insight, empathy — were largely withheld, and its generous aim, beauty, was abandoned” (p. xv). Steiner notes that “the main symbol of such
Wendy Steiner on Kant and what Modern Art Abandoned Read More »
Description: “Andy Schmitt and Stephen Hicks on the evolution of Western philosophy, especially the transition from modern to postmodern thought. They begin with fifteenth-century globalization unleashed by Columbus, Gutenberg’s press, and Martin Luther’s insistence on individual Scripture reading, through the emergence of scientific reasoning and the radical individualism of the Quakers. “They examine how postmodern
Orthodox Christian Andy Schmitt interviews Stephen Hicks Read More »
Description: Join Dr. Stephen Hicks, philosopher, professor, author and Mark Michael Lewis as they discuss the philosophies of Postmodernism and Marxism and their strange union in modern woke politics—and the Objectivist contrast. Timestamps: 00:00 – Introduction to Ayn Rand, Objectivism, and Its Application 02:50 – Cultural Conversations: Postmodernism vs. Modernism 06:06 – The Impact of Postmodernism on Society 09:01 – Historical Perspectives on
Capitalism, Socialism, & Communism are visiting and chatting. Socialism says he needs to do an errand. Three hours later he returns with a small package.“What took you so long?” asks Capitalism.“I had to buy some sausage, and there was a long line,” Socialism explains.“What’s a line?” asks Capitalism.And Communism inquires, “What’s sausage?” (A Soviet joke)
Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, and the sausage line Read More »