This is pretentious claptrap. There is a substantive disagreement on a concrete topic: whether bad politics means bad art. This is an issue that has had real consequences, some of them nasty. People have been shot and their works burned because others had one view of the matter. And the issue is persist ant, it won't go away.
Plato wanted to banish the poets and playwrights because they told lies. Even in a fairly liberal society with a high shock threshold art that some people think has bad politics has political consequences. And political consequences are not the only kind that matter. If bad politics means bad art, and Yeats had bad politics (which he did), then I am mistaken when I cherish his work as great. Incidentally I am not aware that anyone here has adopted the position that good art is work that causes pleasure, an interesting, though I believe, indefensible idea. Yeats does, it happens, cause me pleasure, but that is because I think his work is great, not vice versa.
There is real disagreement amongst people here on the issue. It is simply flat wrong to think no one cares if anyone is actually right. Charles sides with Plato. (Although he would condemn Plato on the grounds of bad politics.) I side not just with Mill, who would tolerate bad art created by people with bad politics, but with Marx, who thought that people with bad politics, like Balzac, could make great art that we can learn from.
These propositions are not susceptible to rigorous definitive proof. Few propositions outside mathematics, logic, and the hardest of the hard scientists are. As a student of Kuhn and a follower, on this point, of Quine, neither of whom could be mistaken for a postmodernist, I will assure you that a scarily rigorous case that the same holds even for those kinds of propositions. I can provide the citations; if anyone was interested, I could summarize in the arguments.
Nonetheless, even if a proposition or theory cannot be proved beyond doubt to be true, that does not mean that it is not susceptible to rational discussion. Grounds can be offered, weaker or stronger, in favor of one or another of the conflicting views. These grounds may themselves be subject to criticism and analysis. Much reasoning proceeds by example. I offered, for instance, a reductio: if Charles was right, I said, we'd have to condemn as bad art the following, who most people regard as great art. That put (as I saw it) the ball in Charles' court to explain why my reasoning was mistaken or the work in question ruined by its politics. If there is something defective about this procedure, I would like you to explain what it is.
As I understand it, the specific basis of your excursus into the unsatisfactory nature, as you see it, of the humanities was that you found it objectionable that people would discuss Orwell in the context of his politics, raising the question of the relation of the quality of art to the acceptability of its politics, instead of discussing the specific truth or falsity of the statements Orwell made.
I will say only two things here. The first is that you do not dictate the term of the discussion: if people which to take the mention of Orwell as an occasion for raising a different question -- one the validity of which both you and he, it happens, acknowledged, that is not a sign that they are vapid pomos incapable of reasoning and uninterested in the truth. It means they are interested in something other than the question you raised. The second point is that the reasoning, if it can be dignified with so lofty a term, displayed in this little excursus, manifests every vice it attacks, plus, as someone else has observed, plain ignorance of the history of metaphysics.
--- > > Striving at Meaningless...
> >
> > The form this discussion has taken reminds me of
> popular essay and "seminar"
> > topics given by lecturers when I was a student. And I
> have good reason to
> > suspect this prefence is typical of humanities
> "discourse" in general (I've
> > sought in vain evidence to the contrary). It is asking
> a question (so
> > interpreted at any rate) where it's impossible to
> imagine an answer, even a
> > wrong answer...indeed it seems an answer isn't
> seriously sought.*
> >
> > I think that the humanities present one of the last
> safe havens for secular
> > metaphysics, providing the verbal refuge of various
> "theories". Of course,
> > at best it's a kind of watered down metaphysics,
> much as the arguments given
> > by "Creationists" are watered down and
> muddled versions of various proofs,
> > such as the First Cause argument, originally though up
> by philosophers in
> > the employ of the church. In it's most extreme
> form, however, is postmodern
> > theory, where so much contempt his held of meaning
> passable student essays
> > can be written by a computer program and were fact and
> rational action are
> > under direct assault.
> >
> > I wouldn't bother mentioning this fact,
> weren't it for it's political
> > consequences. There is a determination to bring the
> same contempt for
> > reality forth in confrontation major, even life
> threatening political,
> > economic and environmental problems (though for an
> artist the related
> > question of politics corrupting artistic integrity is
> a serious problem).
> > This a fact Orwell himself was keen to point out and
> probably an important
> > part of the reason he is found so "annoying"
> by left intellectuals,
> > especially those employed in the humanities.
> >
> > *When I brought up an Orwell essay dealing with, in
> practical terms, the
> > exact problem the original post raised, the question
> was not, Was the essay
> > true or false or irrelevant? It was, Was Orwell a
> "good" writer or not? Does
> > reading him cause displeasure or not? I think think
> this can only regraded
> > are a willful effort to avoid thinking about the
> original question in terns
> > of political--i.e., concrete--application. To remain
> orbiting in some
> > "realer" ethereal intellectual sphere.
> >
> >
> _________________________________________________________________
> > Cut through the jargon: find a PC for your needs.
> > http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/130777504/direct/01/
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
> Ugh, you could fill out a BINGO board with this stuff.
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