Schiller's 1795 "On the Aesthetic Education of Man" was a call to honor both art and truth in the new modern form of society. How do his ideas look today?
Agreed. I’ve come to read Schiller's 1795 "On the Aesthetic Education of Man" as part of a necessary trilogy of works, spanning three centuries; a companion book to Matthew Arnold’s 1869 “Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism”, and Northrop Frye’s 1971 “The Critical Path: An essay on the social context of literary criticism”.
“Live with your century, but do not be its creature. Serve your contemporaries but give them what they need, not what they praise“ Nietzsche said something (I keep losing the quote) about how the most important function of philosopher was to to embody the important ideals that were most absent from his time. Similarity there
America's greatest essayist, Joseph Epstein, writes, "Culture can take grand swings, from richness to near barren paucity. We seem just now to be living in the latter, an age of cultural barrenness, a sad slump, with no known great figures at work in any of the arts, and with little in the way of high expectations for the immediate future. "
Shared songs, stories have gone to the dustbin. Public art is grafitti with bubble letters on rail cars and viaducts, Name a snappy tune from a turkey like " Hamilton."
Culture needs refreshing intellects like Ms. Nagle and you chaps.
I think it’s a good start that many people are finally admitting that culture is totally dead. That’s a first step we have to take. Then you can begin to have a really interesting discussion and won’t take for granted that art will always magically appear.
Another important aspect is the balkanization of tastes into smaller and smaller niches across books, films, music and other art forms. If there were notable great artists working today, it's a Byzantine maze trying to galvanize enough attention so that a critical mass even notices.
Agreed. I’ve come to read Schiller's 1795 "On the Aesthetic Education of Man" as part of a necessary trilogy of works, spanning three centuries; a companion book to Matthew Arnold’s 1869 “Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism”, and Northrop Frye’s 1971 “The Critical Path: An essay on the social context of literary criticism”.
“Live with your century, but do not be its creature. Serve your contemporaries but give them what they need, not what they praise“ Nietzsche said something (I keep losing the quote) about how the most important function of philosopher was to to embody the important ideals that were most absent from his time. Similarity there
America's greatest essayist, Joseph Epstein, writes, "Culture can take grand swings, from richness to near barren paucity. We seem just now to be living in the latter, an age of cultural barrenness, a sad slump, with no known great figures at work in any of the arts, and with little in the way of high expectations for the immediate future. "
Shared songs, stories have gone to the dustbin. Public art is grafitti with bubble letters on rail cars and viaducts, Name a snappy tune from a turkey like " Hamilton."
Culture needs refreshing intellects like Ms. Nagle and you chaps.
https://www.commentary.org/articles/joseph-epstein/whatever-happened-to-culture/
I think it’s a good start that many people are finally admitting that culture is totally dead. That’s a first step we have to take. Then you can begin to have a really interesting discussion and won’t take for granted that art will always magically appear.
Another important aspect is the balkanization of tastes into smaller and smaller niches across books, films, music and other art forms. If there were notable great artists working today, it's a Byzantine maze trying to galvanize enough attention so that a critical mass even notices.