I’ve probably projected some of my own prejudices onto this simple story of a man returning to natural urban environments and natural ink-making technologies:
If urban people possess no ink, can they be said to live in an ‘Art Desert?’
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On that note, I’d like to extend a naturally grown, non-GMO Olive Branch to anyone in the humanities seeking good stewardship of the books, poems and works of art that might mean something to you. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m worried some of these ideological true-belivers (cultists, really) have taken over many university sinecures and popular liberal publications (The Atlantic, The New Yorker).
Like you, I just want to read a good poem now and again, and frankly, I know it’s not cheap (no, I’m not asking for money), but it shouldn’t be this costly.
Hippie idealism can be woven into a thread of philosophical idealism which can provide some direction as to that thorny old question of: ‘Why should I read this stupid old poem, anyways?’
‘Just because, man’ is probably a better answer than: ‘For the coming revolution, comrade’ or to ‘to smash the Patriarchy, believe all women and destroy all men.’
Interesting paper presented by Erika Kiss, beginning about minute 32:00 (the whole conference is likely worth your time for more knowledge on Oakeshott).
According to Kiss, Oakeshott’s non-teleological, non-purposive view of education is potentially a response to Friedrich Hayek, Martha Nussbaum, and Allan Bloom, in the sense that all of these thinkers posit some useful purpose or outcome in getting a liberal education.
Hayek’s profound epistemological attack on rationalist thought is still a system itself, and attaches learning to market-based processes which eventually drive freedom and new thinking in universities. The two are mutually dependent to some extent.
Nussbaum attaches liberal learning to ends such as making us ‘Aristotelian citizens of the world’, or better citizens in a democracy, which has struck me as incomplete at best.
Allan Bloom is profoundly influenced by Straussian neo-classicism, and wants love, classical learning, honor and duty to perhaps be those reasons why a young man or woman should read the classics. This, instead of crass commercialism, the influences of popular music, deconstructionism and logical positivism.
On this site, see: Mark Pennington Via Vimeo: ‘Democracy And The Deliberative Conceit’
A taste of her Nussbaum here. Also, see: From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’
Via C-SPAN-The Historical Context Of Allan Bloom
…Timothy Fuller At The New Criterion: ‘The Compensations Of Michael Oakeshott’John Gray At The Literary Review Takes A Look At A New Book On Michael Oakeshott: ‘Last Of The Idealists’
Is there anybody whom you trust to decide what you should and shouldn’t read?
Parents? Great authors? Public intellectuals? Professors? God? Laws and lawmakers? Religious leaders? A school-board? A democratic majority? People who think like you? A Council of Cultural Marxists?
The Department of Institutionalized Idiocy?
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