Martha Woodmansee's The Author, Art, and the Market misunderstands the concept of autonomous art: it does not deny art's instrumental role in life, but rather reconceives this role as essentially psychological. The work of art becomes an emblem of self?control, and as such of great social import. But as Richard Goldthwaite's Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy suggests, this role is traduced by the tendency of capitalism increasingly to eschew the high art exemplified by the Renaissance when there (...) is money to be made in unchallenging, trashy popular culture. (shrink)

Whatever scholarly and intellectual reasons are given for the regression to the Pre-Socratics in contemporary philosophy, the regression itself is part of philosophy's effort to recover vitality and imagination spent withstanding onslaughts that sought to dispense with it, or at least reduce it to an accessory role in the service of science. Where philosophy was once handmaiden to theology, it is now pressed into the service of natural science, as a clarifier of concepts, a purifier of perception, and, in general, (...) a jack-of-all-trades, but one trustworthy only with petty tasks, viz., logical not experimental. (shrink)

Frederick Turner argues in The Culture of Hope that avant‐garde attitudes have become obsolete, inhibiting, and altogether blind to the creative possibilities of the future, with its new science and technology and triumphant capitalism. Paradoxically, Turner argues, the cultural future involves a regression to a classical spirit, indeed, to traditional modes of representation and a new religiosity. But Turner has sold avant‐garde achievement short, even misrepresented it, however correct his analysis and assessment of its current character. He has also overestimated (...) capitalism and religion, and his paradigm deploys clichés of decadence and renewal in a Manichean struggle. While his hopefulness is admirable, it is tragically inadequate. (shrink)