Postmodernism exposed

[Belle]

This empty ideology is under attack, at last, and thank heavens:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9EZbSTAgHg

And:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1pJ8vYxL3Q

[jbuck919]

I loved the hilarious one by Dawkins. (Dawkins is always good.) But unless you have what linguists call aural communicative competency in French, I don't know how you could even follow the other one for the screwed-up subtitles.

[Belle]

I loved the hilarious one by Dawkins. (Dawkins is always good.) But unless you have what linguists call aural communicative competency in French, I don't know how you could even follow the other one for the screwed-up subtitles.

It's really only what the other academics/public intellectuals argue in their discussions which is relevant. There's also this which is quite dense but still readable: amazing that it's nearly 20 years old now. Richard Dawkins is phenomenally intelligent and I admire his work! This is the book review Dawkins was referring to in the link I posted before:

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/dawkins.html

One of the intellectuals on my previous link and a man whom I hugely admire - Jordan Peterson - always says that the most effective way to learn to think is to write and to speak. It helps give shape and voice to our ideas. This is the main reason why I write on this music board, present my music lectures and contribute to a couple of other political sites; it helps me to think and shape my ideas and has been incredibly useful in that regard since retirement. When Professor Peterson said that about developing skills in thinking I remember my response was, "of course; I always believed that". (And he's more handsome than the law allows! )

[barney]

I don't think post-modernism has been all bad. It had a kernel of insight, which got corrupted by massive accretions of idiocy and agenda. You don't have to believe that truth is relative, let alone insert these ludicrous theories that Dawkins refers to; it can be useful to question orthodoxy's unspoken assumptions and analyse who benefits. Dawkins has always misunderstoode the philosophical underpinning of science because he has no time for philosophy as a discipline, and therefore thinks of science as neutral, value-free inquiry. Post-modernism has helped show the limitation of that understanding, without undermining the scientific method.

Disclaimer: I am not a post-modernist myself.

[Belle]

Valid comments. My concern, as a culture-lover, is that it has excused philistine excesses in the art and music world; ergo, that Emin's "unmade bed" and Duchamp's "Urinal", inter alia, are equivalent to "The Nightwatch" by Rembrandt because it's contingent upon no one artefact having more value and meaning than another. People embark on very long journeys to look at these masteerworks of art hundreds of years after their creation because they speak of something transcendent about what it is to be human. That's my beef (carrying on the abattoir metaphor!). And I'd be prepared to go the battlements to defend those iconic and great works of cultural significance - defend them from philistinism. Camille Paglia has called that out, so it's great to have the heavies onside with their artillery/intellectual firepower.

And I don't always agree with Dawkins, but I celebrate his intense intelligence and ability to argue a case in the public square. This is what I miss about Christopher Hitchens, though I didn't always agree with his passionate, somewhat obsessive, beliefs about the poison of religion. He spoke his mind and was prepared to stand by it; he didn't surrender his space, inch by inch, in the march backward into loss of the self.

[barney]

Yes, I agree on culture. But I see no reason to suppose that one opinion is as good as another. One has to justify one's opinion, and argue WHY the urinal is as worthy as Nightwatch. Not easy. Urinal had a certain importance because of its place in our social history. But we have a canon in art for a reason, and that reason can be explicated: technique, insight, magnitude of difficulty etc etc. Post-modernism has little useful to say here.

[barney]

Re Dawkins, we will just have to differ. In my view, his undoubted cleverness in science has given him an unjustified credibility when it comes to religion and philosophy. Whatever he doesn't know or understand, he dismisses as unimportant and unworthy. A.C. Grayling is far more trivial and obvious, however, in his futile attempts to replace Hitchens as the fourth horseman of the anti-apocalypse.
I always enjoyed Christopher Hitchens, a wonderful polemicist. The strongest anti-religion arguments, I suggest, come from Bertrand Russell and Dostoyevsky.

[Belle]

I haven't read the works of that great Russian author but my eldest son has read them and loves Dostoyevski and Tolstoy. "The Idiot" is one of the favourites of A.C. Grayling too, as it happens.

Professor Jordan Peterson tells his class of Psychology students in Canada about Dostoyevski. God, wouldn't I love to have had a professor like that!!! The man has a brain the size of a planet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlj2fuJsGLI

This is absolutely excellent. British and North American intellectuals - yes!! One doesn't have to agree with them to enjoy the interaction: Hitchens is the standout, IMO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7IHU28aR2E

My answer to all four of them would be, "This composer 'took it on faith'". Spiritual, religious and numinous:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Roa-5BV46f0

[jbuck919]

Valid comments. My concern, as a culture-lover, is that it has excused philistine excesses in the art and music world; ergo, that Emin's "unmade bed" and Duchamp's "Urinal", inter alia, are equivalent to "The Nightwatch" by Rembrandt because it's contingent upon no one artefact having more value and meaning than another.

No serious writer on art claims that a Dada work like "Urinal" is on the same level with Rembrandt, any more than they claim that John Cage (or at the other end Pérotin) is on the same level with Beethoven. However, Dada is an enduring if dead-end art movement with a statement, a commentary, if you will, to make, and Duchamp was a talented artist capable of creating serious more traditional works if he had wanted to. A better example might be Serrano's "Piss Christ."

[Belle]

Valid comments. My concern, as a culture-lover, is that it has excused philistine excesses in the art and music world; ergo, that Emin's "unmade bed" and Duchamp's "Urinal", inter alia, are equivalent to "The Nightwatch" by Rembrandt because it's contingent upon no one artefact having more value and meaning than another.

No serious writer on art claims that a Dada work like "Urinal" is on the same level with Rembrandt, any more than they claim that John Cage (or at the other end Pérotin) is on the same level with Beethoven. However, Dada is an enduring if dead-end art movement with a statement, a commentary, if you will, to make, and Duchamp was a talented artist capable of creating serious more traditional works if he had wanted to. A better example might be Serrano's "Piss Christ."

You're right, 'no serious writer on art' claims that equality but plenty of people insist all works of art have equally validity and worth. The late Robert Hughes never did, though he was very fond of abstract art - much of which I have a problem with.