Choosing Your Own Designer History, One That Works for You

“Since there is no objective truth, history may be rewritten according to the needs of a particular group. If history is nothing more than ‘a network of agonistic [i.e., fighting, contending] language games,’ then any alternative ‘language game’ that advances a particular agenda, that meets ‘success’ in countering institutional power, can pass as legitimate history. …

Margarine of the Arts

“Based on his study of twenty-one world civilizations—ranging from ancient Rome to imperial China, from Babylon to the Aztecs—Toynbee found that societies in disintegration suffer a kind of ‘schism of the soul.’ They are seldom simply overrun by some other civilization. Rather, they commit a kind of cultural suicide. Disintegrating societies, he says, have several …

Postmodernism Much Larger Than Its Theorists

“Modernism, however, is being replaced by the new secular ideology of postmodernism. This new set of assumptions about reality—which goes far beyond mere relativism—is gaining dominance throughout the culture. The average person who believes that there are no absolutes may never have heard of the academic exercise of ‘deconstruction.’ The intellectual establishment may disdain the …

Too Many Kinds of Pleasure

“The real objection to a merely hedonistic theory of literature, or of the arts in general, is that ‘pleasure’ is a very high, and therefore very empty, abstraction. It denotes too many things and connotes too little. If you tell me that something is a pleasure, I do not know whether it is more like …

Aesthetic Vulnerability

“We must risk being taken in, if we are to get anything. The best safeguard against bad literature is a full experience of good; just as a real and affectionate acquaintance with honest people gives a better protection against rogues than a habitual distrust of everyone” (C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism, p. 94).