herdofturtles | Entries tagged with essays

The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment

In England we have lately had a controversy about Capital Punishment. I do not know whether a murderer is more likely to repent and make good on the gallows a few weeks after his trial or in the prison infirmary thirty years later. I do not know whether the fear of death is an indispensable deterrent. I need not, for the purpose of this article, decide whether it is a morally permissible deterrent. Those are questions which I propose to leave untouched. My subject is not Capital Punishment in particular, but that theory of punishment in general which the controversy showed to be called the Humanitarian theory. Those who hold it think that it is mild and merciful. In this I believe that they are seriously mistaken. I believe that the “Humanity” which it claims is a dangerous illusion and disguises the possibility of cruelty and injustice without end. I urge a return to the traditional or Retributive theory not solely, not even primarily, in the interests of society, but in the interests of the criminal.( Read more... )

Vol. II Ch. I: Why Democratic Peoples Show A More Ardent And Enduring Love For Equality Than For Liberty:

The first and most lively of the passions to which equality of conditions gives birth, I need hardly say, is the love of this same equality. One will therefore not be astonished that I speak of that before all the others.

Everyone has remarked that in our time, and especially in France, this passion for equality is every day gaining ground in the human heart. It has been said a hundred times that our contemporaries have a far more ardently and tenacious love for equality than for freedom; but as I do not find that the causes of the fact have been sufficiently analyzed. I am going to try.( Read more... )

Drawing is akin to creative writing. There are several ways which one can go about crafting the image. One is to draw the whole image simple, so that the essential idea is crafted. Then the task is to fragment the image, so that the truly important details are highly focused, while the weight of the lines becomes loose where the importance of the detail lessens. And last is the control of the idea, the layout of composition, and the artist's skill in exploring different unified tastes, or themes. This last one is the ability of the artist to shrink or magnify any aspect of the world in art that they please—each and every point of the art bends towards one, singular and primary goal. ( Read more... )

Producing video, art, or text on the internet is an odd experience because there isn’t anything tangibly being given to anyone. A blog isn’t the same as a printed book—which is consciously chosen by the reader, sought out and stored on a shelf or table. A book is a belonging. A blog post is not belonging to anyone. I have given nothing but raw data.

This principle runs through video, music, and art just the same. A Vinyl record is different from a car radio; a movie DVD is different from streaming. In its furthest form, the scrolling of mixed short media is nothing tangible to hold onto at all.( Read more... )

XIX. On Gossip about Heredity:

A SHORT time ago a distinguished scientific expert, pleading for a more normal and less panic-stricken treatment of consumptives, summed up one aspect in the decisive words: ‘Consumption is no more hereditary than measles.’ He said, of course, that it could attack successive members of the same family, and for the same reason as measles. I have no authority to speak on the technical point; but a statement like this, which may fairly be called authoritative, turns my mind back on the vast and sprawling treatment of the topic of heredity, in popular science and public opinion. And, though I do not claim to know much about the medical facts or falsehoods set forth in this particular case, I rather think I do know something of the moral facts and falsehoods that lie behind them and are their sole and continuous motive-power. There are undoubtedly individual professors, who fight each other on tiny points out of pure impersonal curiosity, or possibly out of pure personal dislike. But when any part of the general public is drawn into a debate on physical science, we may be certain that it has already become a debate on moral science. Mobs are always moral. There never was a mob that rose to demand the squaring of the circle or the closer observation of the Transit of Venus. Professor Higgle and Professor Haggle may argue the hind-leg off a donkey, or the hundredth leg off a centipede, to settle a question that nobody can understand but themselves. But if ever the dancing donkey and the writhing centipede become heraldic figures on the flags and ensigns of the crowd, then we may be quite certain that for some sort of reason (probably quite an unreasonable reason) these biological questions have somehow been entangled with faith and morals; and that what is raging in the street is the war of two philosophies.( Read more... )

On Criticism:

"It used to be supposed that one of the functions of a critic was to help authors to write better. His praise and censure were supposed to show them where and how they had succeeded or failed, so that next time, having profited by the diagnosis, they might cure their faults and increase their virtues. That was what Pope had in mind when he said, ‘Make use of every friend—and every foe.”

"I am going to contend that when your own work is being criticized you are, in one sense, in a specially advantageous position for detecting the goodness or badness of the critique."

"If by criticism, you mean solely valuation, no man can judge critiques of his own work."

"Now in so far as his reviewers do that, I contend that the author can see the ( Read more... )

In the sixteenth century when everyone was saying that poets (by which they meant all imaginative writers) ought to please and instruct, Tasso made a valuable distinction. He said that the poet, as poet, was concerned solely with pleasing. But then every poet was also a man and a citizen in that capacity he ought to, and would wish to, make his work edifying as well as pleasing.

Now I do not want to stick very close to the renaissance ideas of ‘pleasing’ and ‘instructing’. Before I could accept either term it might need so much redefining that what was left of it at the end would not be worth retaining. All I want to use is the distinction between the author as( Read more... )

Historical Background:

This excerpt was written in 1928, on the cusp of the Chinese Civil war. It is one of several essays which earned Shiqiu heavy criticism from communist writers of China, and especially his ideological rival Lu Xun.

Summary:

Literature can be influenced by its era, it can influence the following era, but a specific spirit of writing should not be coerced out from a writer. Further, Literature as a genre belongs to the whole world, all classes, and all people because literature does not receive value from the effect it produces but from being founded on expressing the fixed universal human nature.

Literature and Revolution:

During a period of revolution, literature very easily takes on a particular shade. We certainly cannot say, however, that within a revolutionary period all writers must create “revolutionary literature.” Why should they? Poets, indeed all literary men, are those who stand at the forefront of the times. People’s suffering, society’s corruption, political darkness, false virtue: none feels these things earlier, or deeper, than the writer. It is not that people living under vile conditions, rich or poor, are without perceptions or unaware of suffering, but that ( Read more... )

14 - Summary:

According to Wager, in Haydn and Mozart, dramatic music translates into ideal dance rather than dramatic action. Pre-Beethoven there is no conclusion, problem, or solution in a piece, and never do two themes of dramatically opposite character confront one another.

Beethoven first introduces the storm—a passion of drama in music. But the storm needs a conclusion, it cannot end on a dime or it will be simple caprice. The only way to transition the storm into satisfaction is to have an object, and it needs a moral will to evolve one mood into another mood.

14 - Dramatic Pathos:

“Staunchly he threw his anchor out; and this anchor was The Word. Yet this word was not that arbitrary and senseless cud which the modish singer chews from side to side, as the gristle of his vocal tone; but the necessary, all-powerful, and all-uniting word into which the full torrent of the heart’s emotions may pour ( Read more... )

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Essay from C.S. Lewis's God in the Dock
Chapter from Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America
A short musing on Art
A short musing on becoming internet content :  
Essay from G.K. Chesterton's All is Grist
Quotations from C.S. Lewis's Of Other Worlds
Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to be Said | C.S. Lewis
Summary and Excerpt from Liang Shiqiu's Literature and Revolution
Summary and Quotations from Wagner's On Music and Drama

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Turtles' Lair

quotes hoard from whatever I've recently read.

Entries tagged with essays

Essay from C.S. Lewis's God in the Dock

The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment

Chapter from Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America

Vol. II Ch. I: Why Democratic Peoples Show A More Ardent And Enduring Love For Equality Than For Liberty:

A short musing on Art

A short musing on becoming internet content :

Essay from G.K. Chesterton's All is Grist