Reading Dalrymple first gave me the idea that there might be something very wrong with the figures venerated by my radical professors.
After the loss of Johnson and Scruton, who is left to carry the torch against the intellectuals? I am thankful every day for Ed West, Dalrymple, Christopher Caldwell and Helen Andrews. The trick is getting their writings onto the screens of the impressionable youth.
There is an "atelier movement" that attempts to provide worthwhile artistic training, not necessarily religious:
This is a characteristically engaging post, but I think that what Paul Johnson (God rest his soul) did in Intellectuals was somewhat questionable. No doubt it was fun to dwell on the hypocrisies and cruelties of men whose politics he despised. But there's no necessary connection the truth or falsehood of a political dogma and the vice or virtue of its proponents. Rousseau was, it's clear, a bad man. But he he would have been a pernicious influence, even if in his personal life he had been good and kind. He was dangerous because his ideas were dangerous.
A couple of other points. Firstly, Ibsen didn't say "the minority is always right". Rather, he put these words into the mouth of a character, Dr Stockman, in An Enemy of the People. Granted, the play seems to take Stockman's side. But Ibsen took the other side in his very next play. Indeed, as critic Susan Taylor Soyars wrote, "Doctor Stockman is Ibsen's only hero whose uncompromising idealism never really threatens the happiness of others." In The Wild Duck, by contrast, Ibsen "mercilessly criticizes the messianic idealist," Gregers Werle, whose meddling leads to tragedy. Ibsen, Soyars writes, "praises Doctor Stockman for exposing the truth; but he denounces Gregers Werle for doing the same thing. [...] in An Enemy of the People, he completely supports the radical; and in The Wild Duck, he totally rejects him. "
In other words, it's false, or at least misleading, for Johnson to claim that "Ibsen preached the revolt of the individual against the ancient regime of inhibitions and prejudices which held sway in every small town, indeed in every family." Ibsen endorsed Dr Stockman's revolt, and condemned Gregers Werle's revolt. He was a great dramatist, and no mere ideologue, because he understood that what might be the right course of action in certain circumstances could be the wrong one in others.
Finally, it may be true that Brechtian drama, as Johnson tells us, "reached 'its nadir with the grim opera-dramas staged by Madame Mao'". But one can't hold an artist directly responsible for the people he influenced. Brecht had been dead for more than a decade by the time Jiang Qing produced her ghastly revolutionary operas. At his best, he was a fine playwright. Mother Courage is a magnificent play - it's didactic, of course, but it's more than that. George Steiner rightly wrote that "in the duel between artist and dialectician, [Brecht] allows the artist a narrow but constant margin of victory." As a result, somewhat to Brecht's chagrin, the audience sympathised with a protagonist that the author had expected and wanted them to despise!
If I recall correctly the chapter on Tolstoy was called “God’s Elder Brother” which I thought was very funny and which to this day makes it hard for me not to smile whenever I see quotes about the moral life from the bearded sage.
Yes fair enough. I need to read more about Ibsen. I’m going to do in the week a Scott Alexander style readers comments round up and I will include this and Irene’s defence of Sartre.
Those who want to change the world are dissatisfied, bad-natured gits, whose chronic dissatisfaction spills over into their private lives, whereas those who are satisfied with the world generally get on well with their family and friends. That's my thesis and it's so neat I'd rather not hear from anyone who has any counter-examples. So let's do a one-to-one comparison, say, Jacob Rees-Mogg with...Pol Pot.
Within polemology, Rousseau is the antipode to Hobbes. Two men using pure reason, one concluding that pre-state life must have been violent, the other imagining that pre-state life was idyllic. As you noted here, Rousseau was one of these "great thinkers" who dismissed contrary evidence. A survey of archaeology, anthropoogy, enthography, and history now shows that Hobbes was correct on this point and Rousseau entirely wrong. Chiefdoms, kingdoms, and states evolved as managing mechanisms for intergroup violence. Note the word "managing," because eliminating violence altogether is a dream.
I've never quite fully understood the mindset that openly rejects and condemns the same society that rewards you at the same time. All these men were guilty of it. As are most modern progressives these days. The Western world is simultaneously a hotbed of oppressiveness while also tolerant enough to allow all these extremities of individualism over culture to flourish, and even be openly praised and welcomed.
"But even Brecht is vaguely human compared to Jean-Paul Sartre, perhaps the most appalling of Johnson’s subjects."
Really? Let me guess: Johnson was jealous of Sartre. Sartre definitely flirted (perhaps more than flirted) with totalitarianism, but he was a brave figure. He survived a couple of assassination attempts, which were due to his support of Algerian independence (a plus in my book, and if it's not in yours, then I don't know what to tell you), and he seemed unfazed. And of course, he was active in the French Resistance (he wasn't super effective, but he did what he could, and he could definitely have gotten himself killed). He was certainly a womaniser, but he was generous to a fault (as he got older, he lived in quasi-poverty despite his substantial income, because he supported so many of his former mistresses, which he was in no way obliged to do). None of that was in Johnson's book? Then there's a book that I don't need to read.
I assume you're talking about Simone de Beauvoir. They had an open relationship, and so he didn't cheat on her. While we're at it, she slept with plenty of men (and apparently some women, too) while they were a couple. In a sense, they were a couple until his death, but they stopped sleeping with each other some time in the 1940s. They had a strong intellectual and emotional bond after that, though. But they (both of them) slept with other people.
You can think what you want about this particular arrangement (I'm not particularly impressed by it myself), but given the nature of their relationship, it simply doesn't count as "cheating."
Their relationship became sexless when they were in their 30s. So, hardly toward the end of their lives. It's perfectly possible that de Beauvoir felt jealous of some of Sartre's lovers, but that doesn't mean she was coerced into the arrangement. As I said, she had plenty of lovers herself, and this included some very serious relationships, such as those with Nelson Algren and Claude Lanzmann. But interestingly, even while she was deeply attached to those men (she even lived with Lanzmann for a number of years), her actual soulmate remained Sartre. Anyway, it was an odd relationship. Back when I was a college student (it's been a while...), I read her memoires in their entirety. I was open-minded about their relationship, but in the end, I was convinced it was a bad arrangement. It sort of worked for them, but it left some people (the "third" parties) badly emotionally hurt. Well, it was an experiment that they chose to live. As I said, I'm not particularly impressed by the arrangement, but painting Sartre (or indeed, de Beauvoir) as some sort of irredeemable monster strikes me as either ignorant or badly biased and dishonest. They were both complex characters, certainly flawed, but hardly without positive qualities. And they happen to have written some of my favorite novels of all time.
You're probably right. I don't think I have the spirituality gene. But then again I can't see the point of 99% of art, whether religious or not.
By the way, I did answer your last comment on another topic but I clicked on something, ended up deleting what I'd written, and just didn't have the heart to re-write it. However, know that I noted your points.
I remember struggling through one of Johnsons tomes and thinking it was worth the struggle although all I retained was some ideas about the linguistic history of Mesopotamia. The best Conservatives are ex-Leftists even when some (not Johnson) let momentum carry them all the way to anti-liberalism.
I feel about religious painting the way I do about paintings of classical Greek subjects, namely, it helps to know who the characters are. I can usually recognise God, Jesus, Mary, Adam and Eve, Moses (if he's holding a flat stone and coming down a mountain) and St. Sebastian (he's the one with arrows in his side) but the others are just a blur. I dislike Modern Art but I tend to agree with the idea that enjoying art shouldn't require too much background knowledge.
I would feel differently if the spirituality radiated out from the painting to bathe the viewer in a warm, loving glow but all I can see are lots of blokes with beards and almost identical-looking women, all with soppy expressions on their bland faces. Perhaps I would except Caravaggio from these complaints.
"I dislike Modern Art but I tend to agree with the idea that enjoying art shouldn't require too much background knowledge." Of course, when many of the great works of religious art were painting, that background knowledge was part of the common cultural currency of a still widely Christian Europe.
Yes, I'm sure you're right in saying that to an educated 16th century Italian there would have been nothing obscure about 'Madonna with the Long Neck'. Unfortunately that is no help to me, though I get your point. I'm just worried that Ed actually will start funding a New Religious Art school and I'll have to go to Bible Studies classes before I can join in the conversation.
"I would feel differently if the spirituality radiated out from the painting . . . "
In order to comprehend (or perhaps to divine) such art, the spirituality, that is,, faith, must come from oneself. No amount of education, Biblical or artistic will help.
RIP. Theodore Dalrymple on Ibsen is also excellent: https://www.city-journal.org/html/ibsen-and-his-discontents-12881.html
And on Le Corbusier: https://www.city-journal.org/html/architect-totalitarian-13246.html
Reading Dalrymple first gave me the idea that there might be something very wrong with the figures venerated by my radical professors.
After the loss of Johnson and Scruton, who is left to carry the torch against the intellectuals? I am thankful every day for Ed West, Dalrymple, Christopher Caldwell and Helen Andrews. The trick is getting their writings onto the screens of the impressionable youth.
There is an "atelier movement" that attempts to provide worthwhile artistic training, not necessarily religious:
https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2019/05/politicized-art-schools-are-losing-students-to-the-atelier-movement/
The Catholic Art Institute offers a prize for sacred art:
https://www.catholicartinstitute.org/sacredartprize2022
"Madame Louise d'Épinay, a lover who he treated terribly". Ed! WHOM! Et tu!
This is a characteristically engaging post, but I think that what Paul Johnson (God rest his soul) did in Intellectuals was somewhat questionable. No doubt it was fun to dwell on the hypocrisies and cruelties of men whose politics he despised. But there's no necessary connection the truth or falsehood of a political dogma and the vice or virtue of its proponents. Rousseau was, it's clear, a bad man. But he he would have been a pernicious influence, even if in his personal life he had been good and kind. He was dangerous because his ideas were dangerous.
A couple of other points. Firstly, Ibsen didn't say "the minority is always right". Rather, he put these words into the mouth of a character, Dr Stockman, in An Enemy of the People. Granted, the play seems to take Stockman's side. But Ibsen took the other side in his very next play. Indeed, as critic Susan Taylor Soyars wrote, "Doctor Stockman is Ibsen's only hero whose uncompromising idealism never really threatens the happiness of others." In The Wild Duck, by contrast, Ibsen "mercilessly criticizes the messianic idealist," Gregers Werle, whose meddling leads to tragedy. Ibsen, Soyars writes, "praises Doctor Stockman for exposing the truth; but he denounces Gregers Werle for doing the same thing. [...] in An Enemy of the People, he completely supports the radical; and in The Wild Duck, he totally rejects him. "
In other words, it's false, or at least misleading, for Johnson to claim that "Ibsen preached the revolt of the individual against the ancient regime of inhibitions and prejudices which held sway in every small town, indeed in every family." Ibsen endorsed Dr Stockman's revolt, and condemned Gregers Werle's revolt. He was a great dramatist, and no mere ideologue, because he understood that what might be the right course of action in certain circumstances could be the wrong one in others.
Finally, it may be true that Brechtian drama, as Johnson tells us, "reached 'its nadir with the grim opera-dramas staged by Madame Mao'". But one can't hold an artist directly responsible for the people he influenced. Brecht had been dead for more than a decade by the time Jiang Qing produced her ghastly revolutionary operas. At his best, he was a fine playwright. Mother Courage is a magnificent play - it's didactic, of course, but it's more than that. George Steiner rightly wrote that "in the duel between artist and dialectician, [Brecht] allows the artist a narrow but constant margin of victory." As a result, somewhat to Brecht's chagrin, the audience sympathised with a protagonist that the author had expected and wanted them to despise!
If I recall correctly the chapter on Tolstoy was called “God’s Elder Brother” which I thought was very funny and which to this day makes it hard for me not to smile whenever I see quotes about the moral life from the bearded sage.
Yes fair enough. I need to read more about Ibsen. I’m going to do in the week a Scott Alexander style readers comments round up and I will include this and Irene’s defence of Sartre.
Those who want to change the world are dissatisfied, bad-natured gits, whose chronic dissatisfaction spills over into their private lives, whereas those who are satisfied with the world generally get on well with their family and friends. That's my thesis and it's so neat I'd rather not hear from anyone who has any counter-examples. So let's do a one-to-one comparison, say, Jacob Rees-Mogg with...Pol Pot.
Within polemology, Rousseau is the antipode to Hobbes. Two men using pure reason, one concluding that pre-state life must have been violent, the other imagining that pre-state life was idyllic. As you noted here, Rousseau was one of these "great thinkers" who dismissed contrary evidence. A survey of archaeology, anthropoogy, enthography, and history now shows that Hobbes was correct on this point and Rousseau entirely wrong. Chiefdoms, kingdoms, and states evolved as managing mechanisms for intergroup violence. Note the word "managing," because eliminating violence altogether is a dream.
I've never quite fully understood the mindset that openly rejects and condemns the same society that rewards you at the same time. All these men were guilty of it. As are most modern progressives these days. The Western world is simultaneously a hotbed of oppressiveness while also tolerant enough to allow all these extremities of individualism over culture to flourish, and even be openly praised and welcomed.
Ah... what can one say.
"But even Brecht is vaguely human compared to Jean-Paul Sartre, perhaps the most appalling of Johnson’s subjects."
Really? Let me guess: Johnson was jealous of Sartre. Sartre definitely flirted (perhaps more than flirted) with totalitarianism, but he was a brave figure. He survived a couple of assassination attempts, which were due to his support of Algerian independence (a plus in my book, and if it's not in yours, then I don't know what to tell you), and he seemed unfazed. And of course, he was active in the French Resistance (he wasn't super effective, but he did what he could, and he could definitely have gotten himself killed). He was certainly a womaniser, but he was generous to a fault (as he got older, he lived in quasi-poverty despite his substantial income, because he supported so many of his former mistresses, which he was in no way obliged to do). None of that was in Johnson's book? Then there's a book that I don't need to read.
I assume you're talking about Simone de Beauvoir. They had an open relationship, and so he didn't cheat on her. While we're at it, she slept with plenty of men (and apparently some women, too) while they were a couple. In a sense, they were a couple until his death, but they stopped sleeping with each other some time in the 1940s. They had a strong intellectual and emotional bond after that, though. But they (both of them) slept with other people.
You can think what you want about this particular arrangement (I'm not particularly impressed by it myself), but given the nature of their relationship, it simply doesn't count as "cheating."
Their relationship became sexless when they were in their 30s. So, hardly toward the end of their lives. It's perfectly possible that de Beauvoir felt jealous of some of Sartre's lovers, but that doesn't mean she was coerced into the arrangement. As I said, she had plenty of lovers herself, and this included some very serious relationships, such as those with Nelson Algren and Claude Lanzmann. But interestingly, even while she was deeply attached to those men (she even lived with Lanzmann for a number of years), her actual soulmate remained Sartre. Anyway, it was an odd relationship. Back when I was a college student (it's been a while...), I read her memoires in their entirety. I was open-minded about their relationship, but in the end, I was convinced it was a bad arrangement. It sort of worked for them, but it left some people (the "third" parties) badly emotionally hurt. Well, it was an experiment that they chose to live. As I said, I'm not particularly impressed by the arrangement, but painting Sartre (or indeed, de Beauvoir) as some sort of irredeemable monster strikes me as either ignorant or badly biased and dishonest. They were both complex characters, certainly flawed, but hardly without positive qualities. And they happen to have written some of my favorite novels of all time.
Rousseau was the godfather of all left-wing people.
Finally got around to reading this. As I told my wife, never in my life have I been more content with my own mediocrity.
You're probably right. I don't think I have the spirituality gene. But then again I can't see the point of 99% of art, whether religious or not.
By the way, I did answer your last comment on another topic but I clicked on something, ended up deleting what I'd written, and just didn't have the heart to re-write it. However, know that I noted your points.
Alexis de Tocqueville is on my radar to read this year. You've just made me a bit wary.
I remember struggling through one of Johnsons tomes and thinking it was worth the struggle although all I retained was some ideas about the linguistic history of Mesopotamia. The best Conservatives are ex-Leftists even when some (not Johnson) let momentum carry them all the way to anti-liberalism.
I feel about religious painting the way I do about paintings of classical Greek subjects, namely, it helps to know who the characters are. I can usually recognise God, Jesus, Mary, Adam and Eve, Moses (if he's holding a flat stone and coming down a mountain) and St. Sebastian (he's the one with arrows in his side) but the others are just a blur. I dislike Modern Art but I tend to agree with the idea that enjoying art shouldn't require too much background knowledge.
I would feel differently if the spirituality radiated out from the painting to bathe the viewer in a warm, loving glow but all I can see are lots of blokes with beards and almost identical-looking women, all with soppy expressions on their bland faces. Perhaps I would except Caravaggio from these complaints.
of course there is only great modern artist who gets anywhere near the greats:
https://www.instagram.com/grrrgraphics/?hl=en
"I dislike Modern Art but I tend to agree with the idea that enjoying art shouldn't require too much background knowledge." Of course, when many of the great works of religious art were painting, that background knowledge was part of the common cultural currency of a still widely Christian Europe.
Yes, I'm sure you're right in saying that to an educated 16th century Italian there would have been nothing obscure about 'Madonna with the Long Neck'. Unfortunately that is no help to me, though I get your point. I'm just worried that Ed actually will start funding a New Religious Art school and I'll have to go to Bible Studies classes before I can join in the conversation.
"I would feel differently if the spirituality radiated out from the painting . . . "
In order to comprehend (or perhaps to divine) such art, the spirituality, that is,, faith, must come from oneself. No amount of education, Biblical or artistic will help.
That was discouraging.