Excerpt from Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (1955) By Max Forrester Eastman (1883-1969) People who read these reflections may wonder how I arrived at the understanding that socialism has failed. I am describing the whole experience in another book, but here a brief glance at the intellectual road I traveled may be helpful. It has […]
Max Eastman on abandoning socialism [text] Read More »
I wrote this piece 15 years ago — my explanation of how two lines of development of modern art culminated in postmodernism. (Translations via here into German, Spanish, Korean, and Portuguese). Now I feel the need to write a follow-up: Why Art is Still Ugly. Related: * Taking Modern Artists at Their Word. September 2014.
Why Is Art *Still* Ugly? Read More »
At the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, Marina Abramović hired a man to lie on a bed and scream for 2.5 hours (or until his voice gives out, according to the show’s pamphlet). Nearby, at the Finglefarber Asylum for the Touchingly Insane, one may also hear a bedded man screaming — but the two
Art that screams for attention — progress in postmodern art Read More »
I was interviewed for PanAm Post by columnist María Marty. The 13-minute interview itself is in English with Spanish subtitles and is prefaced by Ms. Marty’s summary in Spanish. PanAm‘s title is “América Latina debe abandonar su victimismo y abrirse al mundo” (“Latin America Needs to Abandon Its Victimization and Embrace the World.”) The topics:
Interview: “Latin America Needs to Abandon Its Victimization and Embrace the World” Read More »
Recently, I met a young man in Miami. Instead of taking a taxi I decided to try Uber for the first time. Rafael (not his real name) showed up a few minutes later. Traffic was bad in rush-hour Miami, and along the way we started chatting. He was a Cuban, I learned, and until recently
Uber, Cuba, and Freedoms Small and Large [Good Life series] Read More »
The Decline of the West By Oswald Spengler Translated from the German by Charles Francis Atkinson New York: A. A. Knopf, 1918 Spengler’s Preface to the First Edition The complete manuscript of this book — the outcome of three years’ work — was ready when the Great War broke out. By the spring of 1917
Spenger’s Introduction to *The Decline of the West* [text] Read More »
From January 6-16 I’ll be giving a total of eight talks in Poland: Bydgoszcz, Chojnice, Warszawa, and Kraków. Several of the talks are tied to the newly-published Polish edition of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. The Polish translation by Piotr Kostyło and Katarzyna Nowak was published as Zrozumieć postmodernizm. Sceptycyzm
Lecture tour in Poland, January 2017 Read More »
Art begins in the mind of a creative individual. The artist takes his significant experiences and thoughts as raw material and creates a perceptual embodiment for them. Each artist makes independent judgments about which of his experiences and thoughts are significant. And to the best of his ability and with his unique style, each artist
Post-Postmodern Art [original text] Read More »
Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State (1871) Chapter 1 Who is right, the idealists or the materialists? The question, once stated in this way, hesitation becomes impossible. Undoubtedly the idealists are wrong and the materialists right. Yes, facts are before ideas; yes, the ideal, as Proudhon said, is but a flower, whose root lies in
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[Originally published at EveryJoe.com.] Many smart people — including Thomas Friedman in The New York Times, Naser Khader in Newsweek, John Lloyd in The Jerusalem Post, Ayaan Hirsi Ali in The Wall Street Journal — are hoping that the Reformation will come to Islam. Some are calling for an Islamic Martin Luther. Sorry, but no.
No Reformation for Islam, Please [Good Life series] Read More »