Cultural Critics

"The media no longer hesitate to whip up lurid anxieties in order to increase sales, in the process undermining social confidence and multiplying fears."

"New and challenging moral dilemmas are always likely to arise, so we need to try to make ourselves the kind of people who can respond thoughtfully."

"A civilized society is one which never ceases having a discussion with itself about what human life should best be."

"Of all the questions we can ask ourselves the most important is: how is one best to live?"

"Folly tends to predominate over wisdom because it is usually easier to understand and more convenient (or exciting) to believe; but a little reflection usually sifts one from the other."

"Emancipation is always at risk from the usual sources—demagogues, civil and international war, the tenure that superstitions have over the human imagination—so there are no guarantees that progress will continue."

"Remembrance Day should therefore also be about war’s causes: ugly faiths, intolerance, lust for power and revenge, mutual hatreds prompted by historical accidents or differences of colour, custom or culture."

"The claim is that educating moral sensibility through imagination has a general tendency, not a universal effect."

"They beautifully illustrate the recipe for nonsense, which is: take something strange-looking, whose meaning is now forgotten, and liberally stir in imagination and superstition. In this respect the divinatory tarot is a paradigm of all superstitions and wonderfully illustrates humanity’s clever, ingenious, and intricate capacity for folly."

"“Evil” is first and foremost a religious notion. It means whatever a religion dislikes."

"It is an oddity that those who invoke the sanctity of life are not as invariably opposed to war, arms manufacture and capital punishment as they are to euthanasia and abortion. Yet these latter are intended to help the living, while the former are designed to harm them. A proper sense of what makes death good or bad has to include this premise: that the quality of life is the sacred thing, not its mere quantity."

"It is the technique of the baboon to try to get its way by violence."

"On the best view, justice is fairness."

"Power’s tendency to corrupt is a function of the work it does in liberating man’s worse characteristics."

"These amazingly recent achievements were built on dead bodies. For centuries ordinary people struggled against absolute monarchs, rich aristocrats, princely bishops, colonisers, landowners and industrial magnates for a say in the running of their own lives. They did it on barricades, in demonstrations charged by saber-wielding mounted cavalry, in sit-ins crushed by tanks. These people are dishonored by stay-at-homes on polling day."

"Sceptics and idlers think that their one vote will make no difference either way. They are wrong—wrong both in practice: some elections turn on mere handfuls of votes, as witness Al Gore’s fate in Florida—and in principle: for every refusal to vote is an act of self-disenfranchisement in which a citizen, betraying the endeavours of history, demotes himself into a serf."

"When the Bible was the only book people knew, they naturally thought it embodied all that is true; but when their reading expanded, and with it the world, and a sense of other times, other voices, other possibilities and points of view, that authority could not last."

"“The first principle of a civilised state,” said Walter Lippmann, “is that power is legitimate only when it is under contract.”"

"Aristotle’s thought is that to live well and flourishingly, a person needs to be educated—which means: informed, and able to think. He is of course right."

"Thus justice is not equality but equity; as Aristotle says, “Injustice arises when equals are treated unequally, and unequals are treated equally.”"

"Part of the problem facing teaching in the contemporary world is that its status as a profession has been undermined by the contemptible view that only what makes money is admirable."

"Politicians react to terrorism by limiting liberties….Zealots, most especially religious zealots, hate the liberality of liberal society; their terrorism aims to destroy it. To start putting handcuffs on ourselves is to achieve their goals for them."

"There are even more general points to be made about “cultural politics”. Despite appearances in the absurd and often comic debate about “political correctness”, the concept of high culture is not the possession of the political Right, nor does rejection of “post-modernism” and its essence, relativism (rejection of which is required for defence not just of the notion but of the value of high culture), amount to rejection of a progressive political perspective. Political resistance against hegemonies of wealth, class, race and sex in the late-twentieth-century Western world has mistakenly included rejection of the idea that there are cultural and intellectual values which transcend accidental boundaries in human experience, and thereby constitute a possession for the species as a whole. It has been a cheap source of reputation for “theorists” to claim that “reality is the product of discourse”, which means that different discourses constitute different realities, and therefore the truth and value are relative. Those who mistake the politics of resentment for the politics of justice find such views useful, because they equate “high culture” with “culture of the politically and economically dominant class, race or sex”, and therefore take it that attacks on the former are attacks on the latter. One disastrous consequence is that it allows the political Right to present itself as the defender of art, literature and free intellectual speculation, whereas historically yet has it has been the right—from Plato onwards—which has sought to repress the best human endeavours in these respects, on the grounds that art, literature and the unrestricted play of reason threaten to set people free and make them equal. Rather than attacking the idea of a culture, therefore, reflective progressives (that is or should be a pleonasm) should assert their right to the high cultural terrain, and disentangle themselves from those aspects of movements, particularly in ethnic and sexual politics, whose tendency is not to promote the realisation of a just society but satisfaction of the petty appetite for revenge on groups perceived as historical oppressors. A better aim for progressives would be to free high culture from the citadel of inaccessibility—mainly financial—into which dominant groups have kidnapped it. They should not commit all their attention to promoting counter-culture or “mass” culture, for the excellent reason that—especially in respect of this latter—much of which passes for “mass” culture is a means of manipulating majorities into quiescence and uncritical acceptance of political and economic conditions favorable to dominant groups. This is notably the case with escapist entertainment and sports."

"Most moralists, and certainly all those of a religious persuasion, think that pupils should be “taught values” at school, not mainly so that they can apply them in thinking about the implications of science, history and other subjects, but to make them behave in ways that they (the moralists) find acceptable. But the point of equipping people to think about ethics is not to impose some partisan set of principles upon them, but to develop their powers of reflection, and to inform them of possibilities and options so that they can think for themselves."

"Ideas are the cogs of history—and too often the barricades that stand in its way."

"The one thing that is more dangerous than true ignorance is the illusion of understanding."

"Confusion is the beginning of wisdom."

"This brings into focus a startling fact: that the practice of contemporary reviewing, whether fiction or non-fiction, owes nothing to self-styled “critical theorists”, those succubi of English Literature departments whose jargonings are read (if they are read at all) only by one another, and who have contributed nothing to the wider world since they hijacked the academic study of literature from its original Quiller-Couchian purpose: which was to educate, liberate, and civilise. The reason is that the professionalisation of the academy has diverted its form of criticism away from engagement with life."

"If there is a deity of the kind imagined by votaries of the big mail-order religions such as Christianity and Islam, and if this deity is the creator of all things, then it is responsible for cancer, meningitis, millions of spontaneous abortions every day, mass killings of people in floods and earthquakes—and too great a mountain of other natural evils to list besides."

"[Academic criticism] is not concerned with taste, but with technique; not with the common readers’ response to books and their connection with life as lived, but with specialist academic interest in methods and classifications, schools and “-isms”, unconscious influences, supposed hidden meanings, patriarchal oppressions, deconstruction of texts, and multiple readings."

"It often enough goes too far, conjuring mountains from molehills (or from nothing), but excess is better than deficit in this instance, because unless the press were absolutely vigilant, the politicians would use their time-honoured methods—cover-up, sleight of hand, rationalisation—to get away with things. They would think themselves foolish not to. In consequence, consumers of the media have to exercise their own watchfulness. They have to exercise judgement concerning whether the media are offering a good story or a good point."

"One can judge between candidates by remembering Georges Pompidou’s remark that a statesman is a politician who puts himself at his country’s service, whereas a politician is a statesman who puts the country at his own service—or that of a group or class, usually his own."

"In one collective form of insanity, whole populations of people rise from sleep at about the same time each day, move in great herds to locations at some distance from their home territory, perform repetitive manoeuvers there, return home when evening falls, slump in front of a flickering coloured light, and after a while fall asleep again. They repeat the process day after day for decades. The disease is called “normal life”, and variations from it are regarded as eccentric; if the variations are marked enough they are even called “madness” and “delusion”. This thought is intended to show that what counts as abnormal is a relative matter."

"Tolerance is not only a key feature of liberalism, but—familiarly—its paradox too. Liberalism’s tolerance leaves the democracy of ideas to decide which among opposing viewpoints will prevail. The risk is the death of liberty itself, because those who live by hard and uncompromising views in political, moral and religious respects always, if given half a chance, silence liberals because liberalism, by its nature, threatens the hegemony they seek to impose."

"The nonsense people talk about cloning stems from the prison-cell of religious belief. Pious exclamations about the sanctity of life, and about not interfering with God’s purposes, conceal a farrago of confusion. Life’s sanctity resides in its quality, not its mere quantity, for there is nothing sacred in suffering. And if we were to “avoid interfering with God’s purposes” we would not use penicillin, nor raise money for the Third World’s starving, nor build a roof over our children’s heads (which, as it happens, Jesus instructed us not to—“consider the lilies of the field”—but not even Christians are foolish enough to obey)."

"There are many ways that reviewing can be dishonest. Here is one illustration, drawn from no less a personnage than the self-appointed doyen of the literature dons, Terry Eagleton. A standard rhetorical device in discursive literature has the form “some say X, but I say Y.” The author might not disagree with X, but thinks Y is the more important point. A scurrilous reviewer can systematically misrepresent the author by saying, “the author says X” and omitting the author’s rider “Y”. This is one of Eagleton’s techniques of choice (chapter and verse can be abundantly supplied). Of course, this might not be intentional on Eagleton’s part; he might merely be stupid or lazy. But since it is better to doubt this, we have to conclude instead that he is guilty of wilful misrepresentation. It is alarming to think that such are the ethics of criticism he teaches his students at Manchester University."

"Prudery expresses itself most forcibly as censorship."

"And sometimes Bloom is thunderously wrong—which is itself valuable, because he thereby ignites explosions of disagreement that prompt thought; and anyone who makes us think does us a service."

"Among the striking ideas that everywhere blossom in Bloom is his view that Shakespeare’s imaginative resources “transcend those of Yahweh, Jesus and Allah”, and provide a grander alternative vision of human nature. He is right. He says that genuinely intelligent people do not think ideologically; right again."

"And then, to sink the roots of this fear deep, the church introduces the idea of evil and the devil to children, for it knows that if it can cut early psychological scars it has a better chance of holding on to the minds thus wounded. All religions are anxious to proselytise the young. Society seems not to see either the absurdity or the danger in the fact that pupils in one school are taught, as truths of history, that the Normans conquered England in 1066 and that Jesus is the son of God, in another that the Normans conquered England in 1066 and Jesus is not the son of God but that Mohammed received the definitive divine revelation, in a third that the Normans conquered England in 1066 and that neither Jesus nor Mohammed is of any significance besides Guru Dev—and in a fourth that the Normans conquered England in 1066 and all three of Jesus, Mohammed and Guru Dev are false distractions, attention to whom is likely to provoke God’s jealous wrath. Yet in schools all over the country these antipathetic “truths” are being force-fed to different groups of pupils, none of whom is in a position to assess their credibility or worth. This is a serious form of child abuse. It sows the seeds of apartheids capable of resulting, in their logical conclusion, in murder and war, as history sickeningly and ceaselessly proves."

"There is no greater social evil than religion. It is the cancer in the body of humanity."

"The growth of civilisation is measured by refinements of living and increasing distance from the immediacies of survival."

"Since the public no longer participates in debates on national issues, it has no reason to inform itself about civic affairs. It is the decay of public debate, not the school system (bad as it is), that makes the public ill informed, notwithstanding the wonders of the age of information. When debate becomes a lost art, information, even though it may be readily available, makes no impression."

"If elites speak only to themselves, one reason for this is the absence of institutions that promote general conversation across class lines. Civic life requires settings in which people meet as equals, without regard to race, class, or national origins."

"Here and there, I see farmers' melancholy faces. The faces are dark, looking only at the ground. On the ground, spring, like smallpox, is ponderously erupting."

"Why can't one love with one's body those whom one loves with one's heart?"

"Some people say my poetry is sensual. It may be that some are like that. Still, a correct view opposes it. Nothing "sensual" can be the motive of my poetry. It is a chord over the keynote. Or an ornament. I am not a man who can get intoxicated on the senses. What I truly try to sing of is different. It is that atmosphere—the sound of a fife you hear on a spring night. It is not the senses, not a passion, not an excitement, but simply the nostalgia of a cloud that quietly drifts in the shadow of a soul. It is a tearful yearning for a reality far, far away."

"I love human beings. Nevertheless I fear human beings."

"Of the lukewarm unpleasantness of the sensation of a man at such a moment a disastrous crime is born. A heart afraid of crime is the forerunner of a heart that gives birth to a crime."

"Sometimes I escape from everyone and become solitary. And my heart loving everyone becomes tearful. I always like, while walking on a deserted lonely beach, to think of the crowds in the distant city."