An Introduction to the Political Philosophy of Isaiah Berlin Through His Free Writings & Audio Lectures


Isa­iah Berlin casts a long shad­ow over mod­ern polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy. Ris­ing to promi­nence as a British pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al in the 1950s along­side thinkers like A.J. Ayer and Hugh Trevor-Rop­er, Berlin (writes Joshua Che­miss in The Oxon­ian Review of Books) was at one time a “cold war­rior,” his oppo­si­tion to Sovi­et Com­mu­nism the “lynch­pin” of his thought. But his longevi­ty and intel­lec­tu­al vital­i­ty meant he was much more besides, and he has remained a pop­u­lar ref­er­ence, though, as Che­miss points out, Berlin’s rep­u­ta­tion took a beat­ing from crit­ics on the left and right after his death in 1997. Born into a promi­nent Russ­ian-Jew­ish fam­i­ly, Berlin grew up in mid­dle class sta­bil­i­ty until the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion dis­man­tled the Czarist Rus­sia of his youth and his fam­i­ly relo­cat­ed to Britain in 1921.

Berlin’s child­hood expe­ri­ence of the Bol­she­viks was nev­er far from his mind and pre­cip­i­tat­ed his aver­sion to vio­lence and coer­cion, he con­fess­es above in a 1992 inter­view with his biog­ra­ph­er Michael Ignati­eff (who spent ten years in con­ver­sa­tion with Berlin). Orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast on BBC 2, Ignatieff’s inter­view serves as an intro­duc­tion to both the man him­self and to his past—in lengthy seg­ments that detail Berlin’s his­to­ry through pho­tographs and nar­ra­tion. Refer­ring to Berlin’s huge­ly influ­en­tial cat­e­go­riza­tion of intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry, The Hedge­hog and the Fox, Ignati­eff tells us: “He once wrote, ‘A fox knows many things, but a hedge­hog knows one, big thing.’ He was a hedge­hog, all his work was a defense of lib­er­ty.… All of his writ­ing can be read as a defense of the indi­vid­ual against the vio­lence of the crowd and the dog­ma of the par­ty line.”

Berlin was enor­mous­ly pro­lif­ic, in print as well as in record­ed media, and we have access to sev­er­al of his lec­tures online. One radio lec­ture series, Free­dom and its Betray­al, exam­ined six thinkers Berlin iden­ti­fied as “anti-lib­er­al.” Per­haps fore­most among these was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In his lec­ture on Rousseau above (con­tin­ued here in Parts 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6), Berlin elab­o­rates on his impor­tant dis­tinc­tion between types of lib­er­ty, a theme he returned to again and again, most famous­ly in a lec­ture, even­tu­al­ly pub­lished as a 57-page pam­phlet, called “Two Con­cepts of Lib­er­ty.” Berlin adapt­ed much of the ideas in these lec­tures from his Polit­i­cal Ideas in the Roman­tic Age—writ­ten between 1950 and 1952 and pub­lished posthumously—a text that Berlin called his “tor­so.”

BerlinDraft

Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty hosts an exten­sive “Isa­iah Berlin Vir­tu­al Library” that details the com­po­si­tion of “Two Con­cepts of Lib­er­ty,” from its ear­li­est draft stages (above) to its pub­li­ca­tion his­to­ry. You can read the full text of the pub­lished lec­ture here and lis­ten to Berlin’s record­ed dic­ta­tion of an ear­ly draft below.

In the pub­lished ver­sion of “Two Con­cepts of Lib­er­ty,” Berlin suc­cinct­ly sums up his major premise: “To coerce a man is to deprive him of free­dom.” Then he goes on:

free­dom from what? Almost every moral­ist in human his­to­ry has praised free­dom. Like hap­pi­ness and good­ness, like nature and real­i­ty, the mean­ing of this term is so porous that there lit­tle inter­pre­ta­tion that it seems able to resist….[There are] more than two hun­dred sens­es.… of this pro­tean word….

Berlin reduces the more than two hun­dred to two: neg­a­tive liberty—dealing with the areas of life in which one is free from any inter­fer­ence; and pos­i­tive liberty—his term for that which inter­feres in people’s lives for their sup­posed ben­e­fit and pro­tec­tion. Berlin’s con­cep­tions of these two types is anchored in spe­cif­ic geopo­lit­i­cal arrange­ments and philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tions, as Dwight Mac­Don­ald explained in a 1959 review of the pub­lished text. He saw Com­mu­nism as an abuse of pos­i­tive lib­er­ty and wished to enhance so-called neg­a­tive lib­er­ty as much as pos­si­ble. As such, Berlin is often cit­ed approv­ing­ly by politi­cians and philoso­phers with more clas­si­cal, lim­it­ed under­stand­ings of state pow­er, although these may include lib­er­tar­i­ans as well as lib­er­als, find­ing com­mon ground in val­ues of eth­i­cal plu­ral­ism and robust civ­il lib­er­ties, both of which Berlin defend­ed stren­u­ous­ly.

Berlin draws his account of neg­a­tive lib­er­ty from the work of clas­si­cal lib­er­al polit­i­cal philoso­phers like John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Stu­art Mill. Most of his cri­tique of pos­i­tive lib­er­ty focused on Roman­ti­cism and Ger­man Ide­al­ism, in which he saw the begin­nings of total­i­tar­i­an­ism (above, hear Berlin’s final 1965 lec­ture on the “Roots of Roman­ti­cism,” con­tin­ued in Parts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7). Despite his pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with kinds of free­dom, his thought was extra­or­di­nar­i­ly idio­syn­crat­ic, wide-rang­ing, and diverse. Oxford hopes to soon add the text of much of Berlin’s pub­lished work to its Vir­tu­al Library. Now, in addi­tion to “Two Con­cepts of Lib­er­ty,” it also hous­es online text of the essay col­lec­tion Con­cepts and Cat­e­gories. While we await the post­ing of more Berlin texts, we might attend again to Berlin’s con­cep­tion of types of free­dom, and hear them defined by the philoso­pher him­self in a 1962 inter­view:

As in the case of words which every­one is in favour of, ‘free­dom’ has a very great many sens­es – some of the world’s worst tyran­nies have been under­tak­en in the name of free­dom. Nev­er­the­less, I should say that the word prob­a­bly has two cen­tral sens­es, at any rate in the West. One is the famil­iar lib­er­al sense in which free­dom means that every man has a life to live and should be giv­en the fullest oppor­tu­ni­ty of doing so, and that there are only two ade­quate rea­sons for con­trol­ling men. The first is that there are oth­er goods besides free­dom, such as, for exam­ple, secu­ri­ty or peace or cul­ture, or oth­er things which human beings need, which must be giv­en them, apart from the ques­tion of whether they want them or not. Sec­ond­ly, if one man obtains too much, he will deprive oth­er peo­ple of their free­dom – free­dom for the pike means death to the carp – and this is a per­fect­ly ade­quate rea­son for cur­tail­ing free­dom. Still, cur­tail­ing free­dom isn’t the same as free­dom.

The sec­ond sense of the word is not so much a mat­ter of allow­ing peo­ple to do what they want as the idea that I want to be gov­erned by myself and not pushed around by oth­er peo­ple; and this idea leads one to the sup­po­si­tion that to be free means to be self-gov­ern­ing. To be self-gov­ern­ing means that the source of author­i­ty must lie in me – or in us, if we’re talk­ing about a com­mu­ni­ty. And if the source of free­dom lies in me, then it’s com­par­a­tive­ly unim­por­tant how much con­trol there is, pro­vid­ed the con­trol is exer­cised by myself, or my rep­re­sen­ta­tives, or my nation, my peo­ple, my tribe, my Church, and so forth. Pro­vid­ed that I am gov­erned by peo­ple who are sym­pa­thet­ic to me, or under­stand my inter­ests, I don’t mind how much of my life is pried into, or whether there is a pri­vate province which is divid­ed from the pub­lic province; and in some mod­ern States – for exam­ple the Sovi­et Union and oth­er States with total­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments – this sec­ond view seems to be tak­en.

Between these two views, I see no pos­si­bil­i­ty of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.  

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leo Strauss: 15 Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Yale Course

Alain de Bot­ton Tweets Short Course in Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

“Lol My Thesis” Showcases Painfully Hilarious Attempts to Sum up Years of Academic Work in One Sentence

ThesisOrigin

Image from Ph.D. Comics

A true fact about the the­sis stage of an advanced degree: What­ev­er the aca­d­e­m­ic field, whether writ­ing a fifty page bachelor’s or master’s the­sis or 250 plus page doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion, at some point, you will need to win­now your argu­ment down to an abstract sum­ma­ry of a cou­ple suc­cinct para­graphs. Then, one inevitably finds—when rid­ing ele­va­tors with col­leagues and men­tors, talk­ing to rel­a­tives over hol­i­day din­ners, jus­ti­fy­ing one’s exis­tence to friends and acquaintances—that the whole damned thing needs to some­how reduce to one intel­li­gi­ble sen­tence or two. It’s all any­one has the patience for, hon­est­ly, and it saves you the trou­ble of try­ing to recon­struct com­plex argu­ments for peo­ple who won’t under­stand or care about them and who gen­er­al­ly only asked out of polite­ness any­way.

But how, how, to cram years of research, agony, tur­moil, crush­ing fail­ure and soar­ing epiphany into bite-sized con­ver­sa­tion­al nuggets with­out gross over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion to the point of tau­to­log­i­cal absur­di­ty? Can it even be done?! The blog “lol my the­sis,” start­ed last year by a Har­vard senior study­ing Human Devel­op­men­tal and Regen­er­a­tive Biol­o­gy, sug­gests that it can, but not with­out hilar­i­ous results. Part of an explod­ing genre of aca­d­e­m­ic par­o­dy (and pro­cras­ti­na­tion) sites, lol my the­sis proud­ly ven­tures forth in its mis­sion of “sum­ming up years of work in one sen­tence” with open sub­mis­sions from cur­rent stu­dents. Many of the sub­mis­sions are from the sci­ences, and many from under­grad­u­ate the­ses, but a fair num­ber also come from human­i­ties and post-grad­u­ate stud­ies. Take, for exam­ple, the fol­low­ing sub­mis­sion from an MFA Cre­ative Non­fic­tion stu­dent at Emer­son Col­lege, which direct­ly address­es the intend­ed audi­ence:

“A col­lec­tion of non­fic­tion essays, which means they’re writ­ten about real peo­ple and events, mom. Remem­ber all those times you accused me of not lis­ten­ing to the things you said?”

A pas­sive aggres­sive exam­ple that most of us who’ve been through the process can relate to at some lev­el. Anoth­er one that hits home is this, from a Vas­sar Polit­i­cal Sci­ence major, who dis­cov­ers too late that the argu­ment doesn’t work: “Oops: Turns out self-pub­lished poet­ry didn’t actu­al­ly affect Indi­an pol­i­tics but I’m 60 pages in, so.”

The sub­mis­sions from the sci­ences do not dis­ap­point. For exam­ple, from a Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land stu­dent of Bio­log­i­cal Sci­ences: “We spent thou­sands of gov­ern­ment dol­lars to cre­ate a mouse mod­el for a dis­ease only 32 peo­ple in the world have.” And a Sci­ence Writ­ing stu­dent at M.I.T. gives us this par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive exam­ple of brevi­ty: “Wolves + humans, the ulti­mate fren­e­mies.” Not to be out­done, a Stem Cell Biol­o­gy stu­dent at Har­vard offers a grim­ly terse con­fes­sion­al: “I have killed so many fish.”

The sub­mis­sions are anony­mous, but some good sports have cho­sen to include links to their the­ses, endear­ing­ly hop­ing that some­one besides their advi­sor will actu­al­ly want to read them. Most of the sub­mis­sions, how­ev­er, sim­ply com­bine two qual­i­ties every advanced stu­dent knows all too well: a well-earned feel­ing of futil­i­ty and the mor­dant wit required to keep going any­way.

More wit­ty sum­maries can be found at lol my the­sis.

Relat­ed Con­tents:

The Illus­trat­ed Guide to a Ph.D.

Grad­u­ate School Bar­bie: A New Gift Idea for The Demor­al­ized Grad Stu­dent in Your Life

The Ph.D. Grind: Philip J. Guo’s Free Mem­oir Offers An Insider’s Look at Doc­tor­al Study

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock

Today I am pleased to bring you sam­plings of a hand­ful of my favorite bands. It so hap­pens they are all most­ly-female or female-front­ed punk bands. This fact to me seems almost inci­den­tal to my enjoyment—these are all fan­tas­tic musi­cians, song­writ­ers, and/or per­son­al­i­ties. And yet their com­mon­al­i­ties are high­ly remark­able all the same. Punk intro­duced aggres­sive, all-female bands like The Slits and front­women like Sioux­ie Sioux who nev­er had to play vul­ner­a­ble objects, des­per­ate seduc­tress­es, jilt­ed lovers, femme fatales, etc. and yet still man­i­fest­ed their pow­er in their sex­u­al­i­ty as well as in their fierce intel­li­gence and fury. In the late ’70s, women strode out in front as lead­ers in punk scenes in the UK and US, and helped to change the gen­der pol­i­tics of rock and roll.

First up, the Run­aways, a band best known today for the lat­er careers of gui­tarists Joan Jett and Lita Ford. The Run­aways tend to get unfair­ly pegged as lit­tle more than wards and projects of man­ag­er Kim Fow­ley, but the L.A. band formed organ­i­cal­ly around Jett and drum­mer Sandy West in 1975 and suc­ceed­ed in their own right after split­ting with Fow­ley in 1977. While they did not tech­ni­cal­ly begin as a punk band, they briefly became asso­ci­at­ed with sev­er­al New York and Lon­don punks, espe­cial­ly due to Jett’s ori­en­ta­tion toward glam, garage, and punk. Ford, known for her flashy gui­tar solos, want­ed to go met­al (and lat­er did), and the band pulled apart in 1978. The Run­aways were so rock n’ roll that they were biggest in Japan, espe­cial­ly their song “Cher­ry Bomb” from their first, self-titled 1976 album. Watch them play the song above on Japan­ese TV in ’77.

Next (and my order­ing here means noth­ing, by the way), The Slits. When Ger­man-born front­woman Ari Up (step­daugh­ter of John Lydon, as it hap­pens) passed away from can­cer in 2010, many, many peo­ple mourned her death. And many more sent “Slits” trend­ing on all the social net­works. It was long past time then for a more pub­lic pro­file of the band, which reformed in 2005 but most­ly absent much crit­i­cal notice. Aris­ing in 1976 from mem­bers of a band called Flow­ers of Romance (lat­er the name of an album and song by Lydon’s Pub­lic Image Ltd.), the most­ly all-female Slits made a very dif­fer­ent sound from the Run­aways some­what for­mu­la­ic hard rock. Like the Clash, with whom they often played, the Slits evolved from raw street punk to tak­ing reg­gae ideas and mak­ing some­thing new, in their case some­thing weird­er, wob­bli­er, and more angu­lar than most any­one else at the time (though lat­er male post-punk bands like Swell Maps and Lydon’s PIL took much from them). See them do “Typ­i­cal Girls” above in a rare music video, and check out their cov­er of “Heard it Through the Grapevine.”

Siouxsie Sioux, of Siouxsie and the Ban­shees, and lat­er the Crea­tures, began her career in London’s punk scene as a fol­low­er of the Sex Pis­tols. In a scene thronged with inven­tive kids com­pet­ing for atten­tion, she stood out. Once she decid­ed to take the stage her­self (after an impromp­tu jam of “The Lord’s Prayer” with gui­tarist Steve Sev­erin and Sid Vicious on drums) and form her own band, she seemed to Slits gui­tarist Viv Alber­tine to have arrived “ful­ly made, ful­ly in con­trol, utter­ly con­fi­dent.” Siouxsie was “unlike any female singer before or since,” wrote rock jour­nal­ist Jon Sav­age, “com­mand­ing yet aloof, entire­ly mod­ern.” She was also a phe­nom­e­nal song­writer and, along with The Cure, Bauhaus, and The Damned, gets credit—for bet­ter or worse—for the ori­gins of goth rock. See Siouxsie com­mand the stage in 1978 above, doing “Hong Kong Gar­den.”

I feel I would be most remiss if I did not include Wendy O. Williams. As we seem to end­less­ly debate the social val­ue of cer­tain female pop stars clum­sy attempts to shock us, Williams spent most of the ‘70s onstage top­less, saw­ing gui­tars in half with chain­saws, and set­ting cars on fire. Was her band, the Plas­mat­ics, any good? It’s hard to say. They were… uneven. Not much of a singer, Williams and the Plas­mat­ics embraced a more rau­cous ver­sion of the Runaway’s hard rock and even­tu­al­ly moved toward met­al. This is not nec­es­sar­i­ly music you lis­ten to, it’s music you expe­ri­ence, in the sheer amount of bare­ly-con­trolled chaos Williams and the band con­jured onstage. Some of the stunts might look sil­ly in hind­sight, but bear in mind, she pushed the bound­aries of deco­rum over thir­ty years ago with the kind of sex­u­al frank­ness and pow­er that still makes our cul­ture very ner­vous. Williams’ antics made her a prime fig­ure for tele­vi­sion (like gross-out punk provo­ca­teur G.G. Allin, she became some­thing of a nov­el­ty act on the talk-show cir­cuit). See her above with the Plas­mat­ics on Sol­id Gold in 1981, with the added bonus of an inter­view with the “Madame” pup­pet (of Way­land Flow­ers and Madame) after the per­for­mance.

I can­not begin to do jus­tice here to the groundswell of excel­lent female punk bands from the ‘70s and ‘80s (not even to men­tion the ‘90s), and I can’t over­state their impor­tance. Dr. Helen Red­ding­ton, for­mer bassist and singer for ’70s punk band The Chefs, approv­ing­ly quotes jour­nal­ist Car­o­line Coon, one­time man­ag­er of both The Clash and The Slits as say­ing: “it would be pos­si­ble to tell the whole sto­ry of British punk sole­ly through its female bands and artists” (this is much less the case in U.S. punk his­to­ry). You might wish to check out the rather crude­ly made, but inter­est­ing doc­u­men­tary She’s a Punk Rock­er and the data­base on punk77.com for more. I haven’t men­tioned Pat­ti Smith, but we cov­er her body of work fre­quent­ly enough here. Yes, I’ve left off Blondie, and of course X‑Ray Spex, and two more favorites of mine—the sad­ly under­rat­ed but tru­ly awe­some Bush Tetras and the obscure, Devo-like Mo-Dettes. The list, as always, could go on, but per­haps some of you have your own favorite female or female-front­ed punk bands. If so, add them to the com­ments, prefer­ably with a link to audio or video.

via Net­work Awe­some

Relat­ed Con­tent:

CBGB’s: The Roots of Punk Lets You Watch Vin­tage Footage from the Hey­day of NYC’s Great Music Scene

The Art of Punk Presents a New Doc­u­men­tary on The Dead Kennedys and Their Grit­ty Aes­thet­ics

New Doc­u­men­tary Brings You Inside Africa’s Lit­tle-Known Punk Rock Scene

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

100 Years of Rock in Less Than a Minute: From Gospel to Grunge

Click the image above and you’ll enter an interactive/moving graph­ic that gives you a fair­ly nice geneal­o­gy of rock n roll and the many forms of music it lat­er spawned. The graph­ic starts you with the blues, appalachi­an folk, and blue­grass. Even­tu­al­ly you hit the 1950s and the advent of rock. Then you keep trav­el­ing through time, reach­ing the hard rock, glam rock and punk of the 70s; the pow­er met­al and emerg­ing grunge of the 80s; the post met­al and neo folk of the 90s; and beyond. At any point, you can click the pause but­ton, click on the name of a par­tic­u­lar musi­cal genre (eg Gotha­bil­ly), and hear a sam­ple of the music. When you’re done, you might want to check out some of the relat­ed items below:

A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

The Evo­lu­tion of the Rock Gui­tar Solo: 28 Solos, Span­ning 50 Years, Played in 6 Fun Min­utes

The His­to­ry of Music Told in Sev­en Rapid­ly Illus­trat­ed Min­utes

The Sto­ry of the Gui­tar: The Com­plete Three-Part Doc­u­men­tary

via Digg

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Barry White’s Philosophy of Music and Making Love, Animated

Blank on Blank returns with an ani­mat­ed inter­view with Bar­ry White, the singer-song­writer who rose to promi­nence dur­ing the 1970s, record­ing songs that put us all in a lov­ing mood. With hits like “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love Baby,” “You’re the First, the Last, My Every­thing,” and “Love Theme” (record­ed by his 40-piece orches­tral group The Love Unlim­it­ed Orches­tra), White reached right into our bed­room and tried to nur­ture the best parts of human­i­ty and sub­due the worst. As he says in the ani­mat­ed inter­view above, “When a man is mak­ing love, the last thing he thinks about is war!” (Yes, it’s a gen­dered com­ment, but, let’s face it, it’s almost always men that screw up the world.) Oth­er artists and authors fea­tured in the Blank on Blank ani­mat­ed series include Kurt CobainGrace Kel­leyJanis JoplinRay CharlesThe Beast­ie BoysDavid Fos­ter Wal­lace, Jim Mor­ri­son & Dave Brubeck.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

Read Dictator Kim Jong-il’s Writings on Cinema, Art & Opera: Courtesy of North Korea’s Free E‑Library

kim jong il books

Kim Jong-Il (1941–2011), son of North Korea’s despot­ic Kim Il-sung and a tyrant in his own fil­ial right, had as many titles as he did tal­ents, with hon­orifics includ­ing the Sun of the Nation and the Shin­ing Star of Paek­tu Moun­tain. High­fa­lutin nick­names aside, the younger dic­ta­tor was a pret­ty able guy. North Kore­an sources assert that the Dear Leader once shot a 38 under par with 11 birdies (in his first and only game of golf), and could alter the weath­er using the pow­er of his mind. Hav­ing turned his intel­lect to acad­e­mia, Kim wrote 1500 books while study­ing at uni­ver­si­ty. He also the­o­rized exten­sive­ly about art, cin­e­ma, and opera.

Kim once served as the Movie and Arts Divi­sion Direc­tor in North Korea’s Pro­pa­gan­da and Agi­ta­tion Depart­ment, and was a renowned cinephile. As befit­ting a man whose per­son­al video library report­ed­ly housed over 20,000 titles, Kim (or some unfor­tu­nate ghost­writ­ers) pub­lished numer­ous lec­tures and pam­phlets on film, some of which are avail­able in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Korea’s E‑Library. In his text The Cin­e­ma and Direct­ing, for exam­ple, Kim shows off his tal­ents for writ­ing stilt­ed aca­d­e­m­ic prose while dis­cussing ide­ol­o­gy:

The ide­o­log­i­cal ker­nel of a pro­duc­tion is the seed which the direc­tor and all the oth­er cre­ative work­ers should bring into flower through their col­lec­tive efforts and wis­dom. It is not only the basis of the inter­pre­ta­tion by the indi­vid­ual cre­ative work­ers, but also the foun­da­tion on which they all com­bine to pro­duce one sin­gle cin­e­mat­ic pre­sen­ta­tion. When all inter­pre­ta­tions are con­duct­ed on the basis of one seed, they form the com­po­nents of one cin­e­mat­ic pre­sen­ta­tion because they are built on the same foun­da­tion [et cetera, ad nau­se­um].

Kim also pon­tif­i­cat­ed on mat­ters of lit­er­a­ture. The trea­tise, enti­tled Life and Lit­er­a­ture, offers the Ever-Vic­to­ri­ous, Iron-Willed Com­man­der’s thoughts on the essence of writ­ing:

Lit­er­a­ture belongs to the domain of human­ics [sic]. The essen­tial char­ac­ter­is­tic of lit­er­a­ture as a human­ics [sic] con­sists of describ­ing real peo­ple and serv­ing man… To say that lit­er­a­ture por­trays peo­ple means that it describes peo­ple and their lives, peo­ple who live, breathe, think and act as they do in real life. That lit­er­a­ture serves man means that it solves urgent and impor­tant human prob­lems through peo­ple and their lives and thus teach­es them what life is and influ­ences them to lead an hon­ourable life. It is only through an accu­rate por­tray­al of peo­ple and their lives that lit­er­a­ture can pro­vide prop­er solu­tions for valu­able human prob­lems, and exert a great influ­ence on peo­ple.

The key words here are “peo­ple” and “lives.” Got it?

Lest you dis­miss these writ­ings as pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­al non­sense, it’s impor­tant to note that some philo­soph­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tion is required. It’s the mean­ings behind the words, and the things that Kim leaves unsaid, that make up the real meat and pota­toes of the piece… Or some­thing.

You can find more of Kim Jong-il’s writ­ings (along­side those of his father, Kim Il-sung) at the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Korea E‑Library. Oth­er titles include On the Art of the Dra­ma and On the Art of Opera, which gets some pret­ty stel­lar reviews on Ama­zon. Take for exam­ple: “With over five books pub­lished per year in North Korea, it is a chal­lenge to pick a sin­gle favorite. How­ev­er, this book is a stand­out for North Kore­an opera con­nois­seurs and begin­ners alike.”

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

North Kore­a’s Cin­e­ma of Dreams

A Slo-Mo Look Inside North Korea

Orches­tral Manoeu­vres in North Korea Prove Yet Again That Music is Uni­ver­sal

Alain de Botton Shows How Art Can Answer Life’s Big Questions in Art as Therapy

Alain de Bot­ton, pop philoso­pher, has come out with a new book. Like his oth­ers, it’s full of sweep­ing ideas about an entire mode of human exis­tence. He’s writ­ten on reli­gion, sex, suc­cess, and hap­pi­ness, and now he takes on art in Art as Ther­a­py, co-writ­ten with art his­to­ri­an and author John Arm­strong. Like all of de Botton’s ven­tures, the new book is sure to polar­ize. Many peo­ple find his work pow­er­ful and imme­di­ate, many see it as blithe intel­lec­tu­al tourism. To the lat­ter crit­ics, one might reply that de Botton’s approach is some­what like that of oth­er non-pro­fes­sion­al philoso­phers ancient and mod­ern, from Pla­to to Schopen­hauer, who addressed any and every area of life. And yet de Bot­ton is a pro­fes­sion­al of anoth­er kind—he is a pro­fes­sion­al author, speak­er, and self-help guru, and unlike his pre­de­ces­sors, he express­ly sells a prod­uct. There’s no inher­ent rea­son why this should ren­der his phi­los­o­phy sus­pect. Yet, to use a favorite descrip­tor of his, some may find his media savvi­ness vul­gar, as Socrates found the so-called “sophists” of his day (a term of abuse that may be gen­er­al­ly unde­served then and now).

In the video above—one of de Botton’s “Sun­day Ser­mons” for his School of Life, an orga­ni­za­tion that more and more resem­bles his vision of a “reli­gion for athe­ists”—de Bot­ton lays out the book’s argu­ment in a pret­ty uncon­ven­tion­al way. The intro looks exact­ly like an evan­gel­i­cal church ser­vice, scored by a Rob­bie Williams song, which de Bot­ton uses as his first exam­ple of “art.” It’s a tongue-in-cheek demon­stra­tion of de Botton’s claim that “art is our new reli­gion… cul­ture is some­thing that is immi­nent­ly suit­ed to fill­ing [religion’s] shoes.” Whether all of this large talk, pseu­do-reli­gios­i­ty, and Rob­bie Williams music inspires, bores, or dis­turbs you is a per­son­al mat­ter, I sup­pose, but it does pre­pare one for some­thing very dif­fer­ent from a philo­soph­i­cal lec­ture in any case. This is, in fact, a ser­mon, replete with lit­er­ary and the­o­ret­i­cal ref­er­ences, tai­lored to offer answers to Life’s Big Ques­tions.

art as therapyDe Bot­ton first iden­ti­fies the prob­lem. While the sec­u­lar gate­keep­ers of cul­ture pre­tend to believe in the mol­li­fy­ing spir­i­tu­al effects of art, “in fact,” he says, “the idea is dead.” Muse­ums are mori­bund because, for exam­ple, they don’t direct­ly address individual’s fear of death. Pre­sum­ably, his “art as ther­a­py” approach does. The book’s web­site con­tains snip­pets divid­ed into broad cat­e­gories like “Pol­i­tics,” “Work,” “Love,” “Anx­i­ety,” “Self,” and “Free Time.” In his ser­mon, de Bot­ton doesn’t seem to evince any recog­ni­tion of the field of art ther­a­py, which has been chug­ging along since the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, but as he tells Joshua Roth­man in an inter­view for The New York­er he means the word therapy—“a big, sim­ple, vul­gar word”—broadly. Sound­ing for all like an Angli­can the­olo­gian, de Bot­ton says of an annun­ci­a­tion altar­piece by Fra Fil­lip­po Lip­pi:

There’s a sud­den ten­der­ness here, which is so far removed from the harsh­ness out­side. If I were to put a cap­tion here, it might say: ‘Our world, for all its tech­no­log­i­cal sophis­ti­ca­tion, is lack­ing in cer­tain qual­i­ties. But this paint­ing is a vis­i­tor from anoth­er world, where those qualities—tenderness, rev­er­ence, and modesty—are very high­ly val­ued. Take it as an argu­ment against Fox News and the New York Post. Use it to find the still places in your­self.’ 

The notion of this piece of art as “an argu­ment” on the same con­cep­tu­al plane as cor­po­rate mass media seems to con­tra­dict de Botton’s premise that it’s “from anoth­er world.” This cheek-by-jowl ref­er­enc­ing of the sacred and pro­fane, high and low, offends the sen­si­bil­i­ties of sev­er­al philo­soph­i­cal thinkers, and may have offend­ed Fra Fil­lip­po Lip­pi. But per­haps it’s too easy to be cyn­i­cal about de Botton’s pop­ulist approach. If all of his evan­ge­lism seems like noth­ing more than elab­o­rate pub­lic­i­ty for his books, he’s cer­tain­ly made things dif­fi­cult for him­self by found­ing a school. Whether you find his ideas com­pelling or not, he proves him­self a pas­sion­ate, if not par­tic­u­lar­ly mod­est, thinker attempt­ing to grap­ple with the prob­lems of mid­dle-class West­ern malaise and exis­ten­tial angst.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alain De Bot­ton Turns His Philo­soph­i­cal Mind To Devel­op­ing “Bet­ter Porn”

A Guide to Hap­pi­ness: Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Six Great Philoso­phers Can Change Your Life

Alain de Bot­ton Pro­pos­es a Kinder, Gen­tler Phi­los­o­phy of Suc­cess

Down­load 100 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Benjamin Bratton Explains “What’s Wrong with TED Talks?” and Why They’re a “Recipe for Civilizational Disaster”

TED Talks — they give your “dis­cov­ery-seek­ing brain a lit­tle hit of dopamine;” make you “feel part of a curi­ous, engaged, enlight­ened, and tech-savvy tribe;” almost giv­ing you the sen­sa­tion that you’re attend­ing a “new Har­vard.” That was the hype around TED Talks a few years ago. Since then, the buzz around TED has mer­ci­ful­ly died down, and the orga­ni­za­tion has gone on, stag­ing its con­fer­ences around the globe. It’s been a while since we’ve fea­tured a TED Talk whose ideas seem worth spread­ing. But today we have one for you. Intrigu­ing­ly, it’s called “What’s Wrong with TED Talks?” It was pre­sent­ed by Ben­jamin Brat­ton, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Visu­al Arts at UCSD, at none oth­er than TEDxSanDiego 2013. Brat­ton makes his case (above) in 11 min­utes — well with­in the 18 allot­ted min­utes — by argu­ing that TED does­n’t just help pop­u­lar­ize ideas. Instead, it changes and cheap­ens the agen­da for sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy and tech­nol­o­gy in Amer­i­ca. He begins to frame the prob­lem by telling a sto­ry:

I was at a pre­sen­ta­tion that a friend, an astro­physi­cist, gave to a poten­tial donor. I thought the pre­sen­ta­tion was lucid and com­pelling.… After the talk the spon­sor said to him, “you know what, I’m gonna pass because I just don’t feel inspired …you should be more like Mal­colm Glad­well.”

Think about it: an actu­al sci­en­tist who pro­duces actu­al knowl­edge should be more like a jour­nal­ist who recy­cles fake insights! This is beyond pop­u­lar­iza­tion. This is tak­ing some­thing with val­ue and sub­stance and cor­ing it out so that it can be swal­lowed with­out chew­ing. This is not the solu­tion to our most fright­en­ing prob­lems – rather this is one of our most fright­en­ing prob­lems.

Brat­ton then con­cludes, “astro­physics run on the mod­el of Amer­i­can Idol is a recipe for civ­i­liza­tion­al dis­as­ter.” If “our best and bright­est waste their time – and the audi­ence’s time – danc­ing like infomer­cial hosts,” the cost will be too high, and our most dif­fi­cult prob­lems won’t get solved.

In watch­ing Brat­ton’s talk, I found myself agree­ing with many things. Sure, TED Talks are often “a com­bi­na­tion of epiphany and per­son­al tes­ti­mo­ny … through which the speak­er shares a per­son­al jour­ney of insight and real­iza­tion, its tri­umphs and tribu­la­tions.” Yes, the talks offer view­ers a pre­dictably “vic­ar­i­ous insight, a fleet­ing moment of won­der, an inkling that maybe it’s all going to work out after all.” Maybe TED Talks some­times pro­vide noth­ing more than “mid­dle­brow megachurch info­tain­ment.” But is TED real­ly chang­ing the agen­da for sci­en­tists, tech­nol­o­gists and philoso­phers? Are schol­ars actu­al­ly choos­ing their intel­lec­tu­al projects based on any­thing hav­ing to do with TED (or TED-inspired ways of think­ing)? Is some­one at the NIH dol­ing out mon­ey based on whether a project will even­tu­al­ly yield 15 good min­utes of diver­sion and enter­tain­ment? Short of empir­i­cal evi­dence that actu­al­ly applies to TED (the anec­dote above does­n’t), it feels like Brat­ton is giv­ing TED way too much cred­it. Maybe TED mat­ters on YouTube. But let’s get real, its pull large­ly starts and ends there. You can read a com­plete tran­script of Brat­ton’s talk here.

via The Guardian

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture in 2014. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 16 ) |

« Go BackMore in this category... »
Quantcast