Ethics: February 2004 Archive Page

--Netstore USA (opengroup.com)

Buy my book, Technology in American Drama, 1920-1950... Priced at just $197.70! Outside of the US, that's $216.60, or about a dollar a page! Order now!

Sheesh! At that price, with the royalties I've earned so far, I could buy THREE WHOLE COPIES! Oh, wait, they already charged me for the advance copies I purchased, I guess I could buy just two more copies.

Thanks for the so-disturbing-you-just-have-to-laugh link, Rosemary. (It's much cheaper at Amazon, but if you ask your local university library to buy a copy, they'll be able to get it for less, and more people will get to read it.)

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

OSCAR WILDE

--Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (Project Gutenberg)

Note... Wilde doesn't offer any pithy judgements on those who find beautiful meanings in ugly things (according to Wilde, they would be corrupt but charming) or who find ugly meanings in ugly things (I assume Wilde finds them uncultivated, but does that make them barbarians or simply pragmatists?).

I've been involved in the discussion of a proposed new design for Seton Hill University's website, so I've turned to Oscar Wilde to help me understand the mindset of those who prefer their designs beautiful but useless. While it's possible to test a design for useability, it's not possible to test it for beauty.

When the newest cheating scandal surfaces at some prestigious southern university known for its military school style "honor code," the headlines leap across the tabloids like stories on child molestation by alien invaders.

It's almost never suggested that all this might be something other than a disaster for higher education. But that's exactly what I want to argue here. -- Russel Hunt --Four Reasons to be Happy about Internet Plagiarism  (St. Thomas University)

Found via the Plagiarism Resource Site.