This is a work in progress. Corrections and additions welcome. The long comparison table below is also here in PDF format. Summary 96 issues included as of April 2016. Agreements: 19 Disagreements: 70 Semi-agree/ disagree: 7 Of the agreements: Negative agreements: 8 Positive agreements: 11 Bibliography Nietzsche’s works cited Rand’s works cited A The Antichrist […]
Nietzsche and Rand: 96 Similarities and Differences Read More »
The opening of my latest column at EveryJoe: “A survey asked our generation’s leading artists and critics to identify the most influential artist of the twentieth century. Who won? If you guessed Pablo Picasso — nice try, but he came in second. “Before identifying the survey’s winner, let’s ask why it matters who topped the
The Most Important Artist of the Century [new The Good Life column] Read More »
I’ve been enjoying Qiu Xiaolong‘s series of mystery novels set in Shanghai in the 1990s. One thing I like is Xiaolong’s ability to recreate a culture in transition, with characters of the generation of the Cultural Revolution interacting with characters of the liberalizing and modernizing generation. Early in the Death of a Red Heroine, the
Dancing in communist China Read More »
Wagner, in a letter to Franz Liszt: “If I am obliged to plunge once more into the waves of an artist’s imagination in order to find satisfaction in an imaginary world, I must at least help out my imagination and find means of encouraging my imaginative faculties. So I cannot live like a dog, I
Creative geniuses as selfish — Richard Wagner version Read More »
Earlier this week I gave a talk in Indianapolis at the excellent Liberty Fund on whether free-market capitalism is good or bad for art. The question matters in today’s intellectual context because thinkers on both left and right argue regularly that art suffers under free market systems. Traditional conservatives such as Robert Bork and neo-conservatives
Talk at Liberty Fund on art and free markets Read More »
I’m reading Steven Johnson’s The Invention of Air, which is primarily about the Joseph Priestley, the great chemist and adviser to the American founding fathers. Along the way, Johnson quotes historian Tom Standage: “The impact of the introduction of coffee into Europe during the seventeenth century was particularly noticeable since the most common beverages of
Coffee and the Enlightenment Read More »
The Non-fiction “Ayn Rand.” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001. Ayn Rand was a major intellectual of the twentieth century. Born in Russia in 1905 and educated there, she immigrated to the United States after graduating from university. Upon becoming proficient in English and establishing herself as a writer of fiction, she became well-known as a
My theme will be the relationship between art and liberal cultures, focusing on economically free cultures especially.
Is capitalism bad for art? Read More »
1/31 Well worth browsing: peripheral artists. 1/30 Frederick Douglass: “Everybody has asked the question . . . ‘What shall we do with the Negro?’ I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples
Worth Reading for January 2006 Read More »
1/31 Update: Tim Blair has an excellent set of photo-essay on the Iraq election. And The Female in Aristotle’s Biology. And required reading for students of Aristotle’s politics is Fred Miller’s classic study, Does it matter which college you go to – or that you go to college? And at 2 Blowhards: the FDA’s drug-approval
Worth Reading for January 2005 Read More »