CIAO DATE: 09/2014
Volume: 9, Issue: 3
Fall 2014
Moral Diversity: Asset or Liability for Liberty?
Craig Biddle, Max Borders
This debate between Craig Biddle and Max Borders was held at the “Liberty, Free Markets, and Moral Character” conference, cosponsored by the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism and the Foundation for Economic Education, at Clemson University on May 25, 2014. Download the pdf for free. Moderator C. Bradley Thompson: The gladiators are now in the cage. Let the friendly fight begin. [Laughter from the audience.] Photo: FEE Photo: FEE In many ways, the debate that’s going to take place, I think, is representative of what both the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism and the Foundation for Economic Education stand for. We’re trying to expose you to ideas, and the big ideas are not simply those of capitalism versus socialism, right versus left. Within the broader liberty movement, there is a diversity of views on a whole range of issues. Just within the libertarian movement, there are all kinds of public debates. Within the Objectivist movement, there are all kinds of debates. And between libertarians and Objectivists, there are some very important, fundamental differences. What we’d like to do today is flesh out one of the big differences between libertarians and Objectivists. I don’t think I need to introduce our two combatants today: Max Borders, from FEE, and editor of The Freeman; and Craig Biddle, editor of The Objective Standard. So we have the editors of two major liberty-oriented publications. I know Max and Craig have a lot that they agree on, and we’re going to find out what they disagree about. And we’re going to conduct this, of course, not as a cage fight, but as a civil discourse among friends. Here’s the format: Craig and Max will each be given fifteen minutes for opening remarks, then they will each get five minutes to either respond or make follow-up comments, and then they’ll get another five minutes each to respond or make further comments. After that, we’re going to open up the floor to you for questions. So we’re going to have at least forty minutes for Q&A from the floor.
Donna Hassler on the Sculptures of Daniel Chester French
Joseph Kellard
Donna Hassler is executive director of Chesterwood, the former summer home and studio of Daniel Chester French (1850–1931), a renowned and prolific American sculptor of public monuments best known for the sculpture of Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial. Located in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Chesterwood is a historic site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a privately funded nonprofit. I recently spoke with Hassler about French’s life and work, Chesterwood, and the value of public art. —Joseph Kellard Joseph Kellard: Donna, thank you for taking time to speak with me about this great sculptor. I love the works of Daniel Chester French, and I’ve photographed many of them, so it’s a real treat for me to chat about him and his work with such an expert on the subject. Donna Hassler: You’re welcome. JK: French was quite prolific, producing more than one hundred monuments, memorials and other works. What would you say are some of the distinctive features and themes of his art? DH: Daniel Chester French was an American Beaux-Arts sculptor. Trained in Florence and later Paris, he was inspired by the ideal beauty of Greco-Roman art and architecture early in his career. In fact, he didn’t even stay around for the unveiling of the Minute Man sculpture in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1874, because he had accepted an invitation from Ned Powers, the son of the prominent American neoclassical sculptor Hiram Powers, to stay with his family in Florence and study sculpture with another American artist, Thomas Ball. The artist looked to nature in modeling his figurative works but improved upon her in the classical tradition. Allegory and symbolism also played a more important role in his sculpture, especially when he memorialized individuals without portraying them in a realistic manner. JK: French’s most celebrated sculptures are Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial and The Minuteman in Concord, Massachusetts; many of our readers have seen and enjoyed these. Which of his lesser-known works do you think deserve special attention, and why? . . .
Ari Armstrong
Edge of Tomorrow, directed by Doug Liman. Written by Christopher Mcquarrie, Jez Butterworth, and John-Henry Butterworth, based on the novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. Starring Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, and Brendan Gleeson. Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, 2014. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, language, and brief suggestive material. Running Time: 113 minutes.
Star Trek: First Contact
Ari Armstrong
Star Trek: First Contact, directed by Jonathan Frakes. Written By Rick Berman, Brannon Braga, And Ronald D. Moore. Starring Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Levar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates Mcfadden, Marina Sirtis, Alfre Woodard, James Cromwell, And Alice Krige. Distributed by Paramount Pictures, 1996. Rated PG-13 for some sci-fi adventure violence. Running Time: 111 minutes. Reviewed by Ari Armstrong Imagine a future in which humans rove the galaxy in starships; colonize the moon, distant planets, and space stations; and radically expand their knowledge of the universe. Star Trek: First Contact invites us to imagine just such a future, and it does so in the context of a nail-biting action story pitting the “next generation” crew of the Federation ship Enterprise against mankind’s most frightening foes of their fictional universe: the collectivist Borg, who rasp, through cybernetic implants, “Resistance is futile.” Although each of the four films involving The Next Generation (the crew led by Captain Jean Luc Picard) has its merits, First Contact rises above the rest in its storytelling. In the film, the Borg first attack Earth and then send a probe back to their past (our future) to hinder mankind’s development and make Earth easy prey for the Borg. What is the singular event the Borg hopes to stop? It is the first human space flight involving “warp” (faster than light) travel, something that (in the world of Star Trek) takes place on April 4, 2063. That the pivotal event of the film is a major technological advancement says a lot about the spirit of the franchise. The crew of Enterprise follow the Borg probe back in time, leading to a twofold story: In Montana, part of the crew help an inventor of 2063 repair his warp ship damaged by the Borg, while on Enterprise (orbiting Earth) the rest of the crew battle a Borg takeover. . . .
The Dictionary of Human Form, by Ted Seth Jacobs
Daniel Wahl
The Dictionary of Human Form, by Ted Seth Jacobs. Santa Fe: Mariposa Press, 2011. 819 pp. $150. Reviewed by Daniel Wahl Ted Seth Jacobs painted The Open Window—one of the most beautiful paintings of the twentieth century. He taught Jacob Collins and Tony Ryder—two of the realist movement’s most influential teachers. And he has written three books on art—Drawing What the Eye Sees, Light for the Artist, and The Dictionary of Human Form. This last is his latest, and it is arguably one of the greatest books of art instruction ever written. In fact, with more than twenty-five hundred drawings and diagrams on the structure of human form, no other book comes close to being as detailed and as comprehensive. Most books about how to render the human form focus on anatomy. But Jacobs, who has a unique view on this issue (and many others), does not think the study of anatomy is necessary or helpful for artists. He says, for example: Anatomy gives a picture of the skeletal system, of where muscles originate and insert, and their names and functions. I have talked with doctors and biologists, and both have assured me that the appearance of muscles in a dead dissected body is entirely different from that of a living subject. Perhaps that is why, most often, muscles drawn in anatomy books resemble skinny, attenuated, paramecium forms. (p. 10) And: I have not seen all the extant anatomy books for artists, but I have never seen one with what I would consider a mastery of drawing. Anatomy is more applicable to scientific disciplines than to the needs of the artist. Most commonly lacking in anatomy books and courses, is the sense of the special three-dimensional shapes of forms on the surface of the body. (p. 10) And: If you know anatomy as thoroughly as a doctor, but don’t know structure, you will not be able to draw correctly. If you don’t know any anatomy, but thoroughly understand structure, you will be able to learn to draw like an old master. (p. 1) The Dictionary of Human Form is thus not at all about anatomy; its focus is structure. Jacobs defines structure, most broadly, as “the way in which living organic forms are organized” (p. 7). He then explains why studying the structure of the body is of value to artists: . . .
he Rape of the Masters, by Roger Kimball
Daniel Wahl
The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art, by Roger Kimball. New York: Encounter Books, 2005. 200 pp. $17.95 (paperback). Reviewed by Daniel Wahl Roger Kimball begins The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art by asking why we teach and study art history. “It is a question,” he says, “that elicits a complicated answer.” To learn about art, yes, but also to learn about the cultural setting in which art unfolds; in addition, to learn about—what to call it? “Evolution” is not quite right, neither is “progress.” Possibly “development”: to learn about the development of art, then, about how over the course of history artists “solved problems”—for example, the problem of modeling three-dimensional space on an essentially two-dimensional plane. Those are some of the answers, or some parts of the answer, most of us would give. There are others. We teach and study art history—as we teach and study literary history or political history or the history of science—partly to familiarize ourselves with humanity’s adventure in time. We expect an educated person in the West to remember what happened in 1066, to know the plot of Hamlet, to understand (sort of) the law of gravity, to recognize Mona Lisa, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, or Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère. These are aspects of a huge common inheritance, episodes that alternately bask in and cast illuminations and shadows, the interlocking illuminations and shadows that delineate mankind’s conjuring with the world. All this might be described as the dough, the ambient body of culture. The yeast is supplied by direct acquaintance with the subject of study: the poem or novel or play, the mental itinerary a Galileo or Newton traveled, the actual work of art on the wall. In the case of art history, the raison d’être—the ultimate motive—is supplied by a direct visual encounter with great works of art. Everything else is prolegomenon or afterthought: scaffolding to support the main event, which is not so much learning about art as it is experiencing art first hand. Or so one would have thought. What has happened to the main event? (pp. 1–2) As Kimball makes clear, the main event has changed. . . .
The Martian, by Andy Weir
Ari Armstrong
The Martian, by Andy Weir. New York: Crown, 2014. 384 pp. $24 (hardcover). Reviewed by Ari Armstrong Imagine you’re on a mission on Mars. Your space suit, not to mention your body, was punctured by an antenna blown loose by a raging sandstorm. Luckily, although the blow knocked you unconscious, the blood from your wound helped seal the hole, so you didn’t die from lack of oxygen. Now that you’re awake and moving again, you realize an unfortunate fact: Your entire crew, reasonably thinking you died and facing the dangerous storm, took off in the MAV (Mars Ascent Vehicle) and left you behind. You are now totally alone on a planet hostile to life. Your food supplies are running low, and you have no obvious way to communicate with Earth, much less to get home. What do you do? If you’re Mark Watney, the main character of Andy Weir’s near-futuristic, science fiction novel The Martian, you carefully think about what you need to do to stay alive and get rescued, and then you methodically do it. Watney’s training as a botanist and a mechanical engineer gives him the skills he needs to survive; and his fierce desire to live, his fortitude, and his quirky sense of humor give him the strength of will to do it. Fortunately, Watney’s own mission and various other missions to Mars have left a number of important tools at his disposal. He has a reasonably well-stocked Hab (basically, a giant pressurized tent), some solar cells, several functional space suits, two functional rovers, duct tape, glue, and various other machines and items. Oh, and he has some live potatoes, which his crew was supposed to have cooked for Thanksgiving dinner. Don’t forget the potatoes! They become crucially important in Watney’s efforts to survive. The story revolves around Watney coming up with clever ways to keep sucking air and consuming calories, then figuring out how to travel some two thousand miles across the cold Martian landscape to the site of a future Mars landing. . . .
Craig Biddle
Welcome to the Fall 2014 issue of The Objective Standard.