"Why can't we get over our post-Marxist nostalgia?"

"That's just on the way, I suppose, to understanding the late quartets of Beethoven," says philosopher Denis Dutton about "the pleasure that people get from their dogs and cats." Image of Baby defending his turf from our October 2005 post "What immortal hand or eye?"

"These sorts of factors in the human personality cry out for a Darwinian explanation," says Arts & Letters Daily founder and editor, philosopher Denis Dutton in "A Talk With Denis Dutton" at Edge, making the case con brio for his theory that "aesthetics have a universal basis in human psychology, ultimately to be illuminated by the processes of evolution," as Steven Pinker explains in a jewel of an introduction. A few Dutton excerpts that caught our eye:

"It's not just art. Why do people have pets? — other species of animals — and devote inordinate amounts of time and love to them?" I mean, the standard answers have always been, well, they're surrogate children or something like that or they're filling a void in people's lives. No. There's something stronger there, the pleasure that people get from their dogs and cats and other animals that they have is deeper than that. To me that's very curious … Why do we like various cheeses? Why do we like the various foods we like? That's just on the way, I suppose, to understanding the late quartets of Beethoven. They move us deeply. They give us intense pleasure, and music is universal. These sorts of factors in the human personality cry out for a Darwinian explanation.

We are totally sympatico with Dutton's thesis and were delighted with his linking of our species' love of beasts and Beethoven as points on a spectrum. It called to mind our favorite Thoreau quotation:

The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.

"Many people believe that this consilience between the arts, humanities and sciences represents the future of the humanities, revitalizing them with a progressive research agenda after the disillusionments of postmodernism," notes Pinker in his introduction. We're not sure what he means by "progressive," but given the pervasive moral relativism left in the wake of the Gramscian march through the institutions, we're skeptical of postmodernism's demise anytime soon. Nevertheless, Dutton on postmodernism's nemesis — universality — is music to our ears:

As a second comes universality. What we've had over the last forty years is an ideology in academic life that regards the arts as socially constructed and therefore unique to local cultures. I call it an ideology because it is not argued for, it is just presupposed in most aesthetic discourse. Allied with this position is the idea that we can seldom or perhaps never really understand the arts of other cultures; other cultures likewise can't understand our arts. Everybody's living in his or her own socially constructed, hermetically sealed, special cultural world.

But of course, a moment’s thought reveals that this can’t possibly be true. We know people in Brazil love Japanese prints, that Italian opera is enjoyed in China. Both Beethoven and Hollywood movies have swept the world. Think of it — the Vienna Conservatory has been saved by a combination of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese pianists …

Pleasure, universality, spontaneous development. We see them in the cross-cultural realities of music, the universality of storytelling, as well as things like food tastes, erotic interests, pet-keeping, sports interests, our fascination with puzzle solving, gossip — the list is indefinitely long. Charles Darwin has a lot more to say about how we evolved as inventive and expressive social animals with our remarkable personalities than has been given credit for. These aspects of evolution have deep implications for the origins and evolution of the arts.

 

"I love William Blake's 'The Tyger,'" we wrote in answer to the question "What is your favourite poem?" for our normblog profile back in October of 2005. "Dazzling imagery red in tooth and claw makes mincemeat of the peaceable kingdom paradigm," we added with relish. In photo Tiny, one of "our own in-house tygers …with fire burning bright in [her] eyes as [she and her brother] defended their turf from the intruder."

"Why can't we get over our post-Marxist nostalgia for economic or cultural determinism and accept human reality as it actually is?" asks Dutton, seemingly without irony. Doesn't he realize that generations of scholars have long since invested their intellectual capital in the left's utopian, blank-slate, noble-savage project that denies any such thing as human nature?

One more related thought. "Survival of the fittest usually makes one think of the biggest, strongest, or smartest individuals being the winners, but in a biological sense, evolutionary fitness refers to the ability to survive and reproduce in a particular environment," explains the PBS Evolution Library, making a point that people who aren't paying attention often miss:

Popular interpretations of "survival of the fittest" typically ignore the importance of both reproduction and cooperation. To survive but not pass on one's genes to the next generation is to be biologically unfit. And many organisms are the "fittest" because they cooperate with other organisms, rather than competing with them.

The same dynamics apply in the evolution of ideas. As we blogged a few years back in our post "Fear societies, heavy and lite":

Democratic Europe's go-along-to-get-along types in turn call to mind those members of academia who go along with politically correct groupthink they may not agree with in order to protect their careers. Call it "Fear Society Lite." Sharansky's "mechanics of tyranny that sustain such a society" are at work in those lofty intellectual bubbles just as surely as they were in the old Soviet Union and are today in the Arab tyrannies. A repressive society is a repressive society, wherever it may fall on a continuum of brutality and thought control. The crushing of dissent brutalizes the human spirit. Sharansky's optimism encourages the human spirit to soar.

"I cannot understand why there still is so much resistance among academics to such ideas," Dutton continues, puzzled at his peers' willful blindness to "human reality as it actually is":

If you want to be a one-dimensional determinist, go ahead and make it all "culture." My side of the argument isn't trying to make it all "nature," make it all genetics. Human life is lived in a middle position between our genetic determinants on the one hand and culture on the other. It's out of that that human freedom emerges. And artistic works, the plays of Shakespeare, the novels of Jane Austen, the works of Wagner and Beethoven, Rembrandt and Hokusai, are among the freest, most human acts ever accomplished. These creations are the ultimate expressions of freedom.

Like Thoreau's wildest, "The most alive is the freest. Not subdued to any man, its presence refreshes him."

Update: We were horrified to realize, as Charles Johnson wrote the other day, that "The Top 3 GOP Governors [are] All Creationists." We proudly stand with Johnson's band of "Some Anti-Creationism Bloggers" who share Randy Barnett's view that "A Republican candidate who is an avowed adherent to creationism will not be elected President of the United States":

Volokh Conspiracy: Defining "Creationism" down

Noblesse Oblige: Which Controversy? Discovery Institute vs Science

Daimnation!: Darwin’s next fight

The Atheist Conservative: If I saw an angel or if man was made of brass

Chicago Boyz [Hi, Mitch! 'Hope you and Winston are well.]: Happy 200th Birthday, Charles Darwin

Well That’s Just Dandy: I Don’t Know Why This Is So Hard To Understand

Kerplunk - Common sense from Down Under: The Discovery Institute’s willful destruction of Christian values

sisu: "Why can’t we get over our post-Marxist nostalgia?" [Plus, All Darwin All the Time]

An old friend and philosophy geek: Blog Here Now

More here

What hath Got wrought?

Update II: Noah had nothing over Steve at Modulator. Friday Ark  #232 now boarding.

Comments

[goomp]

For many people it is frightening to face a universe that cannot be explained, or a life without explainable purpose. Hence the creation by man of such ideas as God, of religions, of the theory intelligent design. They must feel that there is a master plan of which they are an important part. When science challenges these beliefs, they may accept the newfound facts but also must be able to continue to have what they believe is an understandable master plan.

[Gayle Miller]

And some people are just lazy! And since everything will be "equalized" - that suits them just fine. Let goomp. Sissy, Tuck and Gayle work extra hard, so they don't have to! That's the appeal of Marxism.

The appeal of the Babe, however, is timeless and enduring. What a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy.

[retriever]

First Novalis on Ars Psychiatrica, now you're reminding me to read Dutton. I thlnk his book will be the first thing I order on my new Kindle.

A lot of good people I know are Creationists and so it becomes a kind of don't ask, don't tell. People I love and otherwise admire at church. Good people often have really dumb ideas. Whereas my favorite course in college was with E.O. Wilson and I took my kids on a pilgrimage to the Darwin exhibit when it was in the city near us. Not that his theories are perfect, but we so admire him as an adventuring scientist. And think it sweet that he delayed publishing his findings for twenty years so as not to upset his deeply religious wife.

Random animal book I am just starting: Temple Grandin's "Animals Make us Human". Sort of bizarre that she (often pointed to as the poster child for a successful autistic person) earned fame for her design of more humane slaughter houses. That she was able to design them so well because she could intuit how the animals might be feeling at different stages.

Although you are a cat person (we are too, but keep a dog as well) have you read the Jeffrey Moussaieff Mason books on animals, mostly dogs? I don't always agree with some of his later work, but he beautifully observes pack behavior in dogs and the ties between humans and their pets.

[Rick Caird]

Goomp made exactly the same silly argument she (it sounds like a she) is complaining about. Faced with someone who believes in creationism, she retreats to her own calming explanation that those people are merely uncomfortable with lack of a "master plan". Goomp would be startled to learn her god is randomness.

BTW, Darwin has nothing to say about the origin of life or the origin of the universe.

Rick

[Sissy Willis]

retriever: Thanks for your interesting and enlightening comments.

I am a great admirer of Temple Grandin's work and linked to her Wikipedia page in this post from a couple of years back:

Why do sausages have to be so delicious?

Fascinating that it was her autism that allowed her to empathize so deeply with our fellow sentient creatures.

RickC: Huh? Oh, and had you been paying attention, you would realize that goomp is the patriarch of our clan, a wise and venerable man who wasn't born yesterday.