A philosophical dialogue on the nature of art.
Playing God: The Rise of the Actor and the Decline of Tragic Art
In The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche argues that, through his protégé Euripides, Socrates had injected into Greek tragedy the seed of questioning doubt that brought an end to the religious animus of drama, the fire that fueled its creation and sustained it. Thus, cold reason killed tragedy. Although he would later modify this view, it remains a powerful and influential polemic in the history of aesthetics.
The Real Redneck
The return to the soil, to nature, is a recurring preoccupation of the civilized. Whenever a society reaches a state of high development it seems a repeating pattern that a segment of the population begins to yearn for the good ol’ days of yore. Ironically, even the ancients knew this temptation. Recall Cicero’s lament: “O the times! O the morals!” Continue Reading …
Please Patronize Me
Have the arts lost their way without the guiding hand and vision of the right benefactors?
The Genre of Despair
With the fall of Rome, the desire to escape what seemed to be a hopeless and dying world was the impetus for Christianity’s rise. Is our current trend toward escapism a sign that we’re repeating the same pattern?