In a post enlightenment world, art seems superfluous. It does not serve any immediately obvious practical purpose. Reading a good work of fiction is not going to help me earn more money. A beautiful painting uses up skills and materials that could have been better spent by the artist helping his neighbour fix his house. Listening to a beautiful symphony is time wasted, time which could have been used to make more money. It seems that art is unnecessary and, in fact, gets in the way of bigger and better things. This notion, however, is completely bogus. The first obvious indicator of this is that we as humans are captivated by good art and continue to create copious amounts of it. Cultures that have sought to suppress good art (like many of the Marxists regimes) have also always seemed to devolve into places of misery and despair. These two things are related. There is something about the creation and enjoyment of art that is tied up with what it means to be human. I came...
“If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.” -C.S. Lewis