USA Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts

USA Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, American art and literature took most of its cues from Europe. Writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry David Thoreau established a distinctive American literary voice by the middle of the nineteenth century. Mark Twain and poet Walt Whitman were major figures in the century's second half; Emily Dickinson, virtually unknown during her lifetime, is recognized as another essential American poet. Eleven U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, most recently Toni Morrison in 1993. Ernest Hemingway, the 1954 Nobel laureate, is often named as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. A work seen as capturing fundamental aspects of the national experience and character—such as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851), Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925)—may be dubbed the "Great American Novel." Popular literary genres such as the Western and hardboiled crime fiction developed in the United States. Postmodernism is the most recent major literary movement in the world, and though on the theory side postmodernism began with French writers like Jacques Derrida and Alain Robbe-Grillet, and was transitioned into largely by Irish writer Samuel Beckett, it has since been dominated by American writers such as Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, John Barth, E.L. Doctorow, Kurt Vonnegut and many others.

The transcendentalists, led by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thoreau, established the first major American philosophical movement. After the Civil War, Charles Peirce and then William James and John Dewey were leaders in the development of pragmatism. In the twentieth century, the work of W. V. Quine and Richard Rorty helped bring analytic philosophy to the fore in U.S. academic circles.

In the visual arts, the Hudson River School was an important mid-nineteenth-century movement in the tradition of European naturalism. The 1913 Armory Show in New York City, an exhibition of European modernist art, shocked the public and transformed the U.S. art scene. Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and others experimented with new styles, displaying a highly individualistic sensibility. Major artistic movements such as the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein have developed largely in the United States. The tide of modernism and then postmodernism has also brought American architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Frank Gehry to the top of their field.

One of the first notable promoters of the nascent American theater was impresario P. T. Barnum, who began operating a lower Manhattan entertainment complex in 1841. The team of Harrigan and Hart produced a series of popular musical comedies in New York starting in the late 1870s. In the twentieth century, the modern musical form emerged on Broadway; the songs of musical theater composers such as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Stephen Sondheim have become pop standards. Playwright Eugene O'Neill won the Nobel literature prize in 1936; other acclaimed U.S. dramatists include multiple Pulitzer Prize winners Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and August Wilson.

Though largely overlooked at the time, Charles Ives's work of the 1910s established him as the first major U.S. composer in the classical tradition; other experimentalists such as Henry Cowell and John Cage created an identifiably American approach to classical composition. Aaron Copland and George Gershwin developed a unique American synthesis of popular and classical music. Choreographers Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham were central figures in the creation of modern dance; George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins were leaders in twentieth-century ballet. The United States has long been at the fore in the relatively modern artistic medium of photography, with major practitioners such as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Ansel Adams, and many others. The newspaper comic strip and the comic book are both U.S. innovations. Superman, the quintessential comic book superhero, has become an American icon.

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"The Myth of Moral Relativism"

There have been several comments in the last week about how no one has the right to "the moral high ground" on any issue. This is a concept known as moral relativism and is a cancer that represents, in my opinion, everything that is wrong with the American education system today.

Philosopher Dr. Jonathan Dolhenty has a great essay exposing the hypocrisy of moral relativism. An excerpt:

The purpose of this brief essay is to show that moral (or ethical) relativism is a philosophical myth that is accepted by no one who has critically examined its tenets and that those who claim to be moral relativists are really not. We are dealing here with two aspects of a specific condition:

First, with a "belief" that states there are no fixed values, there are only fluctuating human valuations, or that ethical truths are relative, that is, the rightness of an action depends on or consists in the attitude taken towards it by some individual or group, and hence may vary from individual to individual or from group to group.

Second, with "actions" based on this belief which clearly show that the agent is, more or less, acting or behaving in a way that is consistent with the belief that moral relativism is, in fact, the true and only philosophical position.

As is usually the case in this type of reflective situation, the belief comes first, the action follows, but the action taken tells us something about the commitment to the belief undergirding the action taken.

It is easy in our contemporary society to find statements which apparently show a commitment to moral relativism. Consider just a sampling:

What's true for you may not be true for me.

Nothing is really right or wrong, but thinking makes it so.

Ethical judgments are just a matter of personal opinion.

Anything goes.

One man's meat is another man's poison (in regard, of course, to morals).

We should not judge another's personal morality.

No society is better or worse than another (in regard to social ethics).

The above statements, and ones similar to them, are now bandied about in ordinary conversation as if they were truths about which no one should disagree. Moreover, those who claim to be moral or ethical relativists and are bold enough to declare it would simply say: "All morals are relative and that's the end of it," or some such "philosophical" assertion.

Opinion surveys recently taken in America have shown the pervasiveness of the position promoted by moral relativism. For instance, in one survey where adults were asked if they agreed with the statement "there are no absolute standards for morals and ethics," seventy-one percent said that they agreed with it. Other surveys have shown even higher numbers who think that morality and ethics is a matter of personal opinion and that there are no universal standards by which one can determine the rightness or wrongness of a human act.

Now, I never question what a person tells me regarding his or her personal beliefs, unless I have a valid reason to think otherwise. If someone tells me that truth is a relative matter, then I accept that that is what that person believes. I then consider that person's actions to see if they are consistent with the beliefs stated. And that is where the "rubber meets the road," so to speak. I find that those who claim "all truth is relative" may spout that belief, but they never act as if its true. Similarly, I find that those who say they believe in moral relativism never act as if they really do. In fact, I find them to be moral absolutists, not moral relativists. Belief is one thing; actions are another. And it is in the realm of action that moral relativism takes the fatal "hit."

The old adage "actions speak louder than words" has a special significance here. If the "words" (beliefs) are really committed to by the moral relativist, then his or her "actions" should be consistent with those words or beliefs. And it is precisely here that moral or ethical relativism becomes a "myth." While many may claim to be moral relativists, their actions show they are not. In fact, their behavior shows them to be moral absolutists of a type, the very opposite of what they claim to be. And it is this point that I want to address in the remainder of this essay.

The self-proclaimed moral relativist does not and cannot maintain his or her commitment to the "philosophy" of moral relativism. In fact, the record clearly shows that these "moral relativists" are not relativists at all, but moral absolutists. This assertion is based on their behavior, not on their alleged support of a philosophical position. To wit:

Modern "liberal" political groups who promote "political correctness." These groups want to suppress what they consider to be offensive language and views. Most of these people claim to be moral relativists, yet they promote a doctrine that includes an "absolutist" program, that is, "statements that are politically incorrect must be eliminated or even made illegal." No relativism here.

Groups promoting "Multiculturalism." All the beliefs and practices of non-Western cultures must be considered as "good" regardless of the belief and practice, but Western civilization and the "white European" are evil and to be eliminated as soon as possible. No relativism here.

Pro-abortion groups. Claiming that morality is a matter of personal opinion, these groups are now attempting to legally quash any opposition to their position. They want "special protection" and do not want to confront any philosophical opposition. No relativism here.

The above are simply examples of "absolutist" behavior parading as moral relativism.