Latest news with #Schopenhauer
Spectator
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
The vapidity of New York's intellectuals
Fran Lebowitz, the apparently acid-tongued commentator on Manhattan manners, will slip through British customs next month to dazzle the easily dazzled. Though to judge by the interview she granted an earnest lady in the Observer, other verbs leap to mind. From this distance it looks suspiciously like a fog of self-regard. According to the profiler, Megan Nolan, Lebowitz is 'a poster girl for a certain kind of crusty but erudite and essentially good-natured New York archetype, intellectual and judgmental, and walking the line between rudeness and frankness with engaging grace'. Cor! Is this a private ritual between consenting adults, or can we all join in? 'America could be more like New York,' she says, oblivious to the fact that many Americans beyond the Hudson have no desire to hold hands with people who despise them. 'It is my belief that the people in the cities should make the laws.' There's erudition for you. As for her good nature, the wit of the West Village is clearly not the cheeriest singer in life's bathtub. 'The human being is a horrible species,' she tells Nolan, confirming Dickens in his view that those who rail most vigorously against humanity tend to rank among its most unpleasant specimens. She's a philosopher, too. 'There are two kinds of people in the world. The kind who own Rembrandts, and the kind who are racing to get the F train.' As Lorenz Hart wrote in a lyric for Richard Rodgers: 'I was reading Schopenhauer last night – and I think that Schopenhauer was right.' Hart was Jewish, like her; homosexual, like her; a native New Yorker, like her. Unlike her, he was witty rather than clever. His songs were not 'judgmental'. They were for everybody, and will continue to entertain those who value wit above flummery until the East River flows into the Gulf of Mexico. Lebowitz does not lack company in the gallery of Manhattan pseuds. She was pally with Andy Warhol (of course), and nobody trapped the nerve of New York solipsism more painfully than that talentless berk. Robert Mapplethorpe, the trendy snapper, must also be numbered among the throng. All those penis-shaped flowers – so daring. Yet, as the restaurateur Keith McNally has written in his recent memoir, Mapplethorpe and his lover, the ghastly Patti Smith, were quite happy to berate waiters. Little people, you see. Not interleckshuals like us. And let's not start on that thundering bore, Susan 'I've read everything' Sontag. Some witnesses saw what lay behind the curtains of celebrity. Tom Wolfe captured the madness in The Bonfire of the Vanities. 'What are we going to do with these Republicans?' a guest asked Wolfe at a dinner party. 'We could vote for them,' he replied. The man who really exposed the charlatans was Robert Hughes, the great art critic for Time magazine. Hughes, an Australian republican, was no stick-in-the-mud. He wrote The Shock of the New, that tour d'horizon of 20th-century painting, and always championed new work. Great were the howls of rage, therefore, when he denounced Julian Schnabel, the darling of the New York art scene, in language which still stings. Nor did he care for Jean-Michel Basquiat, a well-heeled drop-out who passed himself off as a street urchin. Basquiat fooled many New York intellectuals; not Hughes, who spotted 'radical chic' at a hundred paces. What a gruesome crew they make, the salon society thinkers and drinkers who have tried to bag seats once occupied by Dorothy Parker, Edmund Wilson, Robert Benchley, Cole Porter, P.J. O'Rourke and Christopher Hitchens. But let's be generous to Lebowitz when she gets here, for she needs all the affirmation she can get. Nolan obviously sees herself as an understudy: Anne Baxter to Lebowitz's Bette Davis. 'I will tell you all about Eve,' George Sanders says in the opening scene of that great Broadway satire. I will tell you all about Fran, Nolan seems to be saying. Sorry, love, as they don't say on Madison Avenue. We've heard enough already.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Fertility clinic bombing in Palm Springs sheds light on nihilistic violence
The bombing of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs last weekend points toward a dark philosophical dead-end. The alleged perpetrator seemed to have a misanthropic, anti-life worldview. According to a report by the LA Times, a website that may be linked to the bomber advocated for 'sterilizing this planet of the disease of life.' A speaker there declared, 'I'm angry that I exist.' The fertility clinic was likely targeted as a symbol of birth, life and hope. The root problem here has been described as 'anti-life nihilism.' A more familiar term may be pessimism. The 19th Century pessimist, Arthur Schopenhauer, said life was an 'unprofitable episode disturbing the blessed calm of non-existence.' He suggested it would be a favor to the next generation to 'spare it the burden of existence.' It is easy to imagine this leading to violence. The Washington Post warns of a rash of nihilistic violence, claiming that 'nihilistic extremists are often motivated by a philosophy that seeks to hasten the world's downfall.' If you think existence is rotten, you may want to annihilate it all. Those who hate life may view life-affirming people with bitter animosity. But nihilism is not necessarily violent. If life stinks, indifference is as likely as hatred. Disillusionment and despair often give birth to apathy and listlessness. If nothing matters, then why bother with anything? Various solutions to nihilism have been proposed. Religion is an obvious one. The loving God of Christianity gives meaning and purpose to life despite suffering, sadness and death. In Buddhism, salvation is found in the insight that suffering is caused by attachment to the ever-changing world of experience. A different approach can be found in art, science and humanism, rooted in ancient Greek philosophy. Greek philosophers argued that human virtue and wisdom were intrinsically valuable, despite the indifference of nature and the gods. Modernity builds upon this. Scientific knowledge has value in itself. It is amazing to understand the immensity of the cosmos, the history of humanity or the inner workings of cells and atoms. The quest for knowledge makes life worth living. There is always something new to discover and more wisdom to be gleaned. The nihilist gives up on knowledge. One cure is to rediscover the joy of curiosity. Art also has intrinsic value. We can delight in the music of Mozart, the lyrics of Bob Dylan or the architectural wonders of the world. We can also actively create art. The fun of drawing, singing or writing is freely available. A nihilist might complain that nothing human lasts. But the energy of the creative imagination is an antidote to that complaint. We can also find value in friendship and love, as well as in natural beauty, physical pleasure or athletic achievement. Social life and purposeful activity provide deep wells of meaning. When nihilists reject life, they reject these basic goods. This indicates a broken spirit lacking in vision, compassion and ambition. The great American philosopher William James offered a cure for pessimism in an essay entitled 'Is Life Worth Living?' He said that pessimism results from too much thinking and not enough active responsibility. The gloomy, world-weary nihilist suffers from what James called 'speculative melancholy.' The solution is to stop whining, get out in the world and get to work. We have a choice in the matter of meaning. If life seems meaningless, remember that you are free to create something better. As James said, 'Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.' As we celebrate Memorial Day, we discover another remedy for nihilism. We can learn from the commitment of those who sacrifice their lives in service to others. We all die. But this gloomy fact need not undermine the will to live. Rather, faith in life is renewed by observing that the best lives are lived in uplifting others. Pessimism and nihilism are perennial problems. They indicate a deep challenge for the human spirit. We are the only beings in the universe — as far as we know — who wonder whether life is worth living. If we understand our unique capacity to ask this question, we may also realize how wonderful it is to exist as beings who think, question and create. Andrew Fiala is the interim department chair of Fresno State University's Department of Philosophy.
