Great article! I fully agree with your criticism of Schorske's book. Its insistence on the existence of only purely "aesthetic" artists in fin-de-siècle Vienna always appeared too narrow-minded, as Arthur Schnitzler for example very explicitly mentions social issues in his work (in particular antisemitism).
As always, you make the sparks fly with your prose. I'm a big fan of William Morris, who deserves to be included in the catalogue of aesthetes who cared deeply about ethical and social issues.
So to add to "the false dichotomy between ethics and aesthetics and matter and spirit, worldly concerns and art." I will add a bit from my recent read of The Alphabet & The Goddess by Leonard Schlain...
He sets up a huge dichotomy between left- brain & right-brain thinking that pits written language against intuitive knowledge!
Right! I know that book and argument. One thing that needs to be remembered in this context, is that some language is imagistic and poetic, thus not strictly categorizable under logical (though the word comes from LOGOS). And on and on.
Awesome bit about the moralist / ethicist distinction…
… and 100% unrelatedly, do add an “s” here!!!!!: “It comeS from the fact that I am an engineer.”
Great article! I fully agree with your criticism of Schorske's book. Its insistence on the existence of only purely "aesthetic" artists in fin-de-siècle Vienna always appeared too narrow-minded, as Arthur Schnitzler for example very explicitly mentions social issues in his work (in particular antisemitism).
As always, you make the sparks fly with your prose. I'm a big fan of William Morris, who deserves to be included in the catalogue of aesthetes who cared deeply about ethical and social issues.
So looking forward to your Musil book!
YES! You know I love Morris as well!
So to add to "the false dichotomy between ethics and aesthetics and matter and spirit, worldly concerns and art." I will add a bit from my recent read of The Alphabet & The Goddess by Leonard Schlain...
He sets up a huge dichotomy between left- brain & right-brain thinking that pits written language against intuitive knowledge!
There's more of course to this...
Right! I know that book and argument. One thing that needs to be remembered in this context, is that some language is imagistic and poetic, thus not strictly categorizable under logical (though the word comes from LOGOS). And on and on.
Thank you...interesting to hear others felt the same way!