[lbo-talk] conserativism in America

joanna 123hop at comcast.net
Sun Dec 2 10:26:46 PST 2007


Robert Wrubel wrote:


>Thanks to Charles for his long comment on Ortega y
>Gasset and European conservativism in the early 20th
>century. I would add one observation: Ortega's
>description of mass man isnt only of a proletariat
>threatening to take power, but an emerging
>middle-class with time and means to consume (things
>and ideas) but without the "culture" to know what was
>valuable. He describes an ennui and alienation that
>arises from surfeit that is very evident in the US
>today. In this, Ortega is in the same tradition as
>Matthew Arnold and TS Eliot.
>
>
>
Ditto on the "thanks." Ortega's description of ideas - good if they are consistent with a pre-existing hierarchy, bad if they do not - begs the question of how those ideas came about in the first place and neglects a third possiblity, that culture can have a consensual, make it up as you go along basis. This sort of art neither falls neatly into a pre-existing hierarchy; nor is it a form of bullying. In other words, his aesthetic is able to distinguish between classical and fascist art, but it cannot understand the emergence of a vernacular art: Dante's "Commedia," the "dolce stil nuovo," jazz, commedia del arte, blues, etc.

I liked his description of fascist culture, its bullying arbitrariness and I especially liked his characterization of fascist ideas as "appetites in words." (That one is a keeper.) There's a lot of this that describes what's happening in the U.S. exactly.

Joanna



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