MachineMachine /stream

It is possible that we have a kind of built-in moral resistance to the runaway pathologies now visible in the arts. Where did that resistance come from? Judging from his new book Beauty, Roger Scruton’s idea of a nice view would probably be the Wiltshire countryside circa 1750, and a scene like that on his homepage. In contrast, judging from Denis Dutton’s Darwinian The Art Instinct, a congenial vista for that author might be Ethiopia’s Omo Valley circa 1,000,000 BC. Yet in spite of these differences I expect that across a wide range of cultural artefacts and activities both their tastes and their distastes would chime.

They each believe in the best that has been written, painted, or composed. They each know what it is. Both of them grieve to see it dishonored and trashed. “A determination to shock or puzzle has sent much recent art down a wrong path,” Dutton writes in his introduction. “A Darwinian aesthetics can restore the vital place of beauty, skill, and pleasure as high artistic