A tradition of moral reflection from Shaftesbury in the eighteenth century to Meinong, Scheler, and Scotsman W. D. Ross in the twentieth, defends a realist theory of values claiming that humans have ready access to discrete, extra-mental value-tones: e.g. if I say `peach’ you now have the taste and smell of a peach clear to…
Yesterday Loyola University Maryland hosted the Annual Andy Warhol Lecture sponsored by the Committee on Catholic Social Thought. I will give a brief summary. The theme was music and began with the observation that even young toddlers dance on hearing music (for those familiar with this blog know that Huizinga bells were going off…
Below is a very interesting article about changes and variations in the British male body and how suit companies are responding. The article starts out noting how much taller and bulkier the average Briton is today from fifty years ago. This is obvious: even if you don’t think you are especially bulky, just try getting…
Over the last month, I have posted on natural law and how its approach to ethics can help us think about costume and body modification. St. John Paul II made a distinctive contribution to natural law thinking. I argued in Ecstatic Morality and Sexual Politics (2005) that this contribution brilliantly develops aspects of Aquinas’s…
The corset is making a comeback. Some worry there are political implications, that corsets objectify by pushing the female body to “perverse proportions” (https://www.wsj.com/articles/waist-management-test-driving-springs-corset-trend-1488471042). How to assess the morality of “perverse proportions”? In a previous post, I noted Adam Smith’s aesthetic objections to the corset (http://www.ethicsoffashion.com/adam-smith-on-corsets/). Recalling that for Smith beauty and morality…
Dance and fashion has many famous associations though Coco Chanel’s collaboration with the Russian Ballet is surely the most well-known. Dior has a dance advert for its new perfume Poison (https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/intelligence/fashions-dalliance-with-dance?utm_source=Subscribers&utm_campaign=16fa1fd8f8-&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d2191372b3-16fa1fd8f8-417297929). The dance is contemporary but draws upon the most primordial patterns of civilisation. Huizinga (see my discussion of his ideas V&R Chapter…
Trans-humanism is both very new and very, very old. Whether the promise of wearing a chip that will immediately report the start of cancer cells in your body or an AI “doctor” diagnosing you from data your handheld collects when you jolt with a pang of sciatica, Trans-humanism recalls the very origin of clothes, the…
*Special note: V&R broadly relies on a natural law argument, that moral values are universal, real, and persuasive. I am often asked for a good introductory book to natural law but I cannot say that I know of one. The history of ideas offers a variety of natural law theories and even in Thomism, the…
*Special Note: I’d like to thank Chris Wojtulewicz, a good friend in England, for helping me think about this topic. “Gabbana, Victoria Beckham, or McQueen?” The beaux often ask each other this sort of question. Thanks to the entrepreneurial spirit of a recent college graduate, an answer in the future might be “McQueen, literally.”…
http://jw.marriott.com/post/121300675372/poise-and-grace-watch-how-jw-marriott-has-taken For a brief account of Shaftesbury’s aesthetics, please see my earlier post: Why do women buy Kate Middleton’s nose?