Andrew Klavan – having faith in the arts
Giving a talk about “sex & German philosophy”
Our culture has been shaped largely by a triumvirate of news
media, the entertainment industry and the academy. There is now a counter-revolution because technology is
democratizing media allowing people to bypass intermediaries and gatekeepers. The significance of the arts is to convey
the nature of the human experience, usually through metaphor,
stories, images and symbols. Our biggest problem is the rewriting of
history by the left, both through misinformation and the censoring of truth. An overly sexualized culture is a
lesser problem.
For the left sex is the only significant
human activity exempt from government control. The reason is because at the core of
leftist philosophy is an image of man as a soulless meat puppet,
whereas a more holistic view of man includes a spiritual being
shaped by choices and free will. This implies the importance of
the right to chose and the significance of freedom which depends upon this
spiritual view. Within this framework sex is not the
goal, love is what powers people.
After Newton and the formulation of modern science there was a
juxtaposition of science and faith in the minds of many people. This brings us to German philosophy in the form of Kant vs Nietzsche. Kant said that science will provide reasons for what
we perceive but there is a reality beyond that in which it will still make sense to believe
Judeo-Christian ideals. Nietzsche said no, god is dead, continue
deconstructing morality and go beyond good and evil (atleast as
interpreted by some people).
There was a spiritual revival in intellectual
circles after WWII which filtered down into the population at large. But then there was a rise of French philosophers in the
1960s pushing ideas of postmodernism, moral relativism and
multiculturalism.
A concluding story: the Alan Lerner song
“Wouldn't It Be Loverly?” from My Fair Lady was originally only
about creature comforts – it bombed, then he added the spiritual
element of love which is the climax of human yearning and it became a big hit, a
classic of musical theatre.
People are spiritual beings with the right to
chose for themselves. We must take the leap of faith that there is a higher
morality, something transcendent. Conservatives need to realize that the arts will convey this message and sing the song of freedom.
